After the Fireworks

"David Ballantyne's life as a New Zealnd writer brought him little more than disappointment, despair, and an urge to self-destruction by alcohol. Yet at least two of his novels can be regarded as New Zealand classics. At 23, he was the earliest of the new young post-war New Zealand writers to have his first novel published - not in New Zealand, but in the United States. The Cunninghams, an uncompromisingly realistic portrait of New Zealand working-class life, was praised by American critics, but gtreeted almost with shock in his own country. He did not publish another novel until 15 years later and it was another five years before his best work, Sydney Bridge Upside Down, appeared, but, most undeservedly, attracted little attention. This lack of recognition and the feeling that he was a 'one-book writer' eventually plunged him into the depths of alcoholism. Miraculously, he recovered in 1973 and went on to write two more novels, and to achieve distinction as a kind of literary 'elder statesman'. Whatever his disappointments as a writer of fiction, Ballantyne, in his parallel career as a highly talented journalist, earned professional admiration and respect both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where he had considerable success also as a writer of television plays."--Back cover.