From the Wistria Bush

Auckland University Press, Auckland 2001, Softcover B-format, good condition.

This memoir of the Lowry family concentrates on Vanya's father Bob, talented printer and famed partygiver, and her mother Irene. It offers glimpses into Auckland's literary life of the 50s and 60s, and is illustrated with drawings and examples of Lowry's typography. As a child in the 1950s and 1960s Vanya watched her family and their friends from the wisteria bush. She offers a child's perspective of the warmth, talent and gaiety of her parents and an intimate picture of a family with grandparents, holiday places, hand-me-downs and their own jokes. However, there were too many parties and they came to an end - Bob and Irene died - and life moved on, but echoes, memories and mementoes remain.