In a colonial situation where English middle-class social values are inappropriate, the first really believable characters in fiction are usually the eccentrics and outcasts. It was Frank Sargeson who made such types representative of an authentic New Zealand…. Sargeson follows a pattern often noticeable in Commonwealth writers: rebellion against a stodgy middle-class background, expatriation, discovery abroad that one is not British, return to the native land both as a critic of its colonial bourgeoisie and with a new awareness of it as home.

During the 1930s and '40s Sargeson worked towards creating a fictional style appropriate for his country. The result was a small body of sketches and short stories, in which language, subject, attitude, characters and form capture representative qualities of New Zealand life. Drawing upon the depression concern with the down-and-out, the out-of-work, the poor, he wrote realistically of the attitudes and world of the...