Review of After the Fireworks: A Life of David Ballantyne by Bryan Reid (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004). 'Nineteen years after [Ballantyne's] death', writes Reid, a colleague and lifelong friend of David Ballantyne, 'I have tried to find some reasons for the failure of the springtime fireworks to re-ignite the flame and for the subsequent denial of his rightful place in New Zealand literature' (vii). (1) The phrase 'springtime fireworks', borrowed from Frank Sargeson, here refers to Ballantyne's early promise when he published The Cunninghams (1948) at the age of 24. It was Sargeson, again, who shrewdly anticipated in an aside to Alec Pickard (A. P. Gaskell) that the young Ballantyne might 'go too fast and use up too much of his material before he can do his best by it' (53). Ballantyne felt thwarted by the long gap between publication of The Cunninghams and his other major novel, Sydney Bridge Upside Down (1968), but Reid shows that the intervening years were scarcely inactive: Ballantyne wrote ceaselessly, leaving an extensive archive of notes, letters, unpublished manuscripts, newsprint articles, and diary entries, from which Reid quotes generously in an assured and readable account.
