Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand [Paperback]

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

In the tradition of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, here is Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s ode to his personal paradise–his adopted home, New Zealand. After living in California, why did Masson settle– out of all the places on earth–in such a faraway land? It turns out that while visiting a beautiful sandy beach just fifteen minutes from bustling Auckland, Masson and his family were utterly seduced by the exotic locale. There was little deliberation. This place, surrounded by lush forest on a bay dotted with volcanic islands, would be their new home.
Masson takes readers on a remarkable journey to another world, as he and his family “slip into” the paradise that is New Zealand. For anyone who has ever dreamed of finding utopia, Masson reveals a country where neighbors talk to one another and provide a sense of real community–rarely, outside of the big cities, locking their doors–and where politics are as mellow as the weather. New Zealand is also a land of spectacular scenery, made even more famous for being the shooting location for the Lord of the Rings films. The flora is plentiful. Mangroves, banana plants, papaya trees, and more than ten thousand species of ferns grow wild and freely. The fauna is benign. There are no snakes, tarantulas, or scorpions. Children can walk to school barefoot without a care– there is nothing to sting them, bite them, or give them a rash. In the blue waters near the lush coastline, dolphins and orcas abound.

While describing his love affair with the country and his affinity for its citizens, Masson reflects on the meaning of home, the importance of acting on intuition, and what happens when we lose our connection to the place we live in. Responding to an impulse, Masson reveals, he realized a dream.

Featuring a its glossary of phrases used by New Zealanders and important Maori words, as well as the author’s recommended travel itinerary, Slipping into Paradise is ideal for anyone planning a visit to this exquisite land. Full of photographs, delightful anecdotes, and little-known facts (jogging, for example, was invented in New Zealand), Slipping into Paradise is also a book for those who fantasize about dramatically changing their lives–and who imagine something better for themselves. Jeffrey Masson’s message: New Zealand awaits.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Should you move to New Zealand? "The short answer," writes Masson in this breathless paean to his adopted home, "is 'Yes.' " Comprising two large islands, New Zealand is "the green gem in the middle of the South Pacific." Its physical beauty will be familiar to anyone who's seen The Lord of the Rings: the country boasts a temperate climate, beautiful beaches, towering mountains, exotic animals and lush vegetation. New Zealand's human inhabitants are just as remarkable, legendary for their modesty and warmth. When Masson, an American psychologist and author (The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, etc.), wants to interview the foreign minister, he finds him in the phone book. When he wants to chat with the country's most famous icon, Sir Edmund Hillary, he simply drops by his home. Though Masson is eager to portray New Zealand as "benign, gentle, friendly, and safe," he also acknowledges that it can seem remote, provincial and dull. Actually, the country's isolation may explain why it has one of the world's highest suicide rates, and why Masson spends three months of each year elsewhere. Blending history, geography, memoir and travelogue, Masson's book is a hodgepodge, but it succeeds in promoting New Zealand as an attractive place for a vacation—if not a permanent stay. Maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Jeff Masson is one of the world’s most erudite polymaths. He is also a brilliant and original thinker. So, naturally, even in paradise he is restless, but then any paradise devoid of the spice of intellectual quest and moral debate would be tedious. One does not so much ‘slip’ into Masson’s paradise as take a razorback ride, full of wit and insight, through his views on culture, national identity, public intellectuals, New Zealand history, New Zealand flora, fauna, and beaches. There is never a dull moment, and I suspect that this book will cause a further surge in the tourist boom to the Land of the Long White Cloud.”
–JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL, author of Due Preparations for the Plague

“Since arriving in New Zealand four years ago, Jeffrey Masson has traveled widely and met thousands of New Zealanders as part of his quest to better understand his adopted homeland. His book reflects that. Written by someone who clearly loves the country and is prepared to say so, it’s an effective introduction to anyone who wants to know more about a society on the cusp of new beginnings. New Zealand isn’t just a scenic wonderland, or the place that gave us Sir Edmund Hillary and Peter Jackson, and Masson suggests the reasons why.”
–PHIL GOFF, New Zealand’s minister of foreign affairs


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345466349
• ISBN-13: 978-0345466341
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Masson has had at least four lives: first as a boy raised to become a "spiritual leader" (see his denunciation of such a life in My Father's Guru). While in the middle of his disillusion, he became a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. At the same time he trained to become a Freudian analyst. Upon graduation he became Projects Director of the Freud Archives, and was scheduled to move into Freud's house in London when fate intervened: Masson found documents which seemed to show that Freud was right in believing that many women had been sexually abused as children, and that he was wrong to give up this belief, perhaps impelled by societal displeasure at his discoveries. Saying this publicly turned Masson into a psychoanalytic pariah, and he gave up both his professorship and his analytic career to delve into the far more fascinating world of animal emotions. Two of his books, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP and DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE, were New York Times best-sellers. He became vegetarian as a result of his research, and later, when he looked into the feelings of farm animals, he became even stricter, and no longer eats or uses any animal product (vegan). Harpercollins published his most recent book: THE DOG WHO COULDN'T STOP LOVING: HOW DOGS HAVE CAPTURED OUR HEARTS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. He lives on a beach in New Zealand with his two sons, Ilan and Manu, and his German wife, Leila, a pediatrician who works with children on the autistic spectrum (using the bio-medical approach), Benjy, a golden lab, and three cats. They often travel to the States, Europe, and Australia. He is now fascinated in the "us/them" phenomenon, between humans but also between humans and animals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars New Zealand Thru PC Eyes, August 29, 2004

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A Thoughtful Consumer (Southern Calif) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand (Hardcover)

This book..I loved it and I hated it. Overall-what a disappointment.There are so few books that are written to give you a 'feel' of New Zealand. As well, not much is written on the contemporary scene of that island. Thumbing quickly thru Slipping Into Paradise at the bookstore really raised my hopes. But again,disappointing. After reading his book you find that Jeff Masson is not a Kiwi, he is an American transplant who has lived in New Zealand a very short time. His outlook is American-style liberal, that is the shading he puts on his version of New Zealand. An inaccurate description in my opinion. Just a few examples.....One of the most interesting chapters, surprisingly, is about the odd trees of New Zealand and the splendid uses they afford. Of course, this led to over logging with the result that lot of fantastic trees are now quite rare. So to save their native woods and still have a building material, the Kiwis imported Monterey pine tree saplings from the US. They were planted in large tracts and are now used extensively for lumber. Great solution! Win-win. Not for Masson- he felt sad. While it is important to preserve and conserve the beautiful native woods, by bringing US pines to New Zealand the Kiwis were,in effect, 'capturing'a living thing from one continent to be used as a 'slave' on another continent for "nothing else than to satisfy greed". No Kidding! Masson really said this! Excuse me Jeff, don't you live in a house? Didn't you move to New Zealand necessitating this cruel bondage? There is a chapter on the Maori. Great, some on-site observations. You'd expect perhaps a discussion of contemporary tensions surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi. Maybe something of Maori tribal values melding into a modern world. There's little or nothing of that.There is ,however, lots of PC hyperboly, which includes 3 pages on the evils of spanking children and child abuse. Seems like there should be a little more of substance on the Maori. Lastly, the overall motive of this book is darkly suspect. Masson titles his book so as to identify New Zealand as 'paradise', He goes on and on (half the book literally) about how much of that 'paradise' is the result of so few people living there. What is Masson's course of action? He moves there-denigrating paradise by his mere presence. Further, his course of action is to write a book to attempt to entice others to move there-further denigrating paradise. I'm not sure the real Kiwis value this kind of appreciation. So what is the author's motive, entertainment, crass commercialism, satisfy greed? I have to recommend to potential readers, pass this book up. Masson doesn't impart a 'feel' of the country to you. While he is strong on much of his natural history, his descriptions will drive you nuts with their PC tone.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars JAFA: Just Another Fluent American, November 11, 2004

By 

J. M. McPartland (Auckland, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand (Hardcover)

Jeffrey Masson gushes about NZ with passion only a non-native would expose to the public. Our green gem in the South Pacific is depicted as a child-friendly egalitarian social democracy, full of friendly unthreatening people, where women occupy important political posts, and where the sun shines like no other place on Earth. Masson writes best as a social historian: comparing New Zealand to Australia, marking 50 important dates in NZ history, and transcribing a conversation with Sir Ed Hillary. The author advocates for political correctness, but then explains the Maori worldview, a decidedly un-PC deed for a Pakeha.

This 'part memoir, part philosophical reflection, and part travelogue' seamlessly weaves through nine chapters to a conclusion ('Should You Move to New Zealand?'). The NZ bush rates high praise, although facts about fauna and flora often err and conflict: 'The seal was practically the only native mammal in New Zealand', but later Masson describes four (?) native bats. Native parrots 'are rare enough that you are unlikely to spot one', yet the kea parrot appears on the next page, and is well-known to anyone who visits the Southern Alps. Pre-European ecological damage 'was by no means total or irreversible', yet moa extinction cannot be reversed. The author cannot see why feral cats are considered pests, 'because I love them,' argues against 'possum genocide', and sings the praises of ginger and other invasive alien weeds. 'It is hard to see the damage that an "introduced" tree can do, I say let a million plants grow!' Masson states that pukekos get along well with other birds, and he's never seen one fly. In fact, pukekos do fly, and they prey on ducklings, which is why DoC culled thousands of them on Great Barrier Island. The author repeatedly extols Auckland's pristine air quality, attributed to 'southerly airstreams that remove pollution'. Anyone who's spent time in the Big Smoke knows otherwise; the lack of auto emissions control is a national embarrassment.

The book's targeted audience must be armchair travelers, because natives will chafe at the book's inaccuracies. St. Heliers, Kohi, and Mission Bay are depicted as little beach towns. 'Well, town is to big a word for a single street with a bank, a bookstore, a fruit store, a travel agent, a real estate agent, and a post office.' Other offbeat assertions: the reason why children walk barefoot is because there are no snakes. Racism is rare in NZ. All signs in NZ are written in English as well as in Maori. The book would benefit from tighter editing. Describing ferns as 'small babies asleep' is cute the first time, not the third. Repeatedly lamenting a lack of NZ intellectuals gets boring. Masson highlights the 'I' in his book title - we learn about his beautiful intelligent wife (25 years younger than him, told repeatedly), his house, his car, his cats, his kids, the topics of his previous books - animal rights, child welfare, psychoanalysis, the Holocaust. It seems self-centered. Perhaps it's my point of view: an American reviewing a book by another American. Our perspectives certainly diverge, beginning on page one, when he describes falling in love with 'Newzillin' as his plane circled over Auckland. My first aerial view of the city caused a panic attack - Auckland sprawled like Los Angeles! NZ society is more complex than described by Masson, its cities more arty and edgy, and its backblocks wild, exciting and dangerous. Instead of a source for accurate travel information, this book can be recommended as a soft-focus narrative of one man's life-long search for peace and a place to call home.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is not paradise, December 31, 2005

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S. Moon - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand (Hardcover)

It's not that it's a terribly _bad_ book, just hopelessly mislabeled. A better title would be "A Dull Exposition of the Flora, Fauna, and Native Peoples of New Zealand". It's not a total loss, the author gives some insight on the pros and cons of other places (e.g.: Hawaii - too confining, London - too expensive and dirty). He also gives a nice itinerary at the end of the book, even giving directions to his beach-side house.

Several times he points out the tendency of Kiwi's to cut pretentious people down to size, which is especially ironic since the author appears to be pretentious in the extreme.

If you're looking for a book to give solid information about emigrating to New Zealand, this isn't it. If you're looking for practical day-to-day advice from someone who has done it, this isn't it. If you want a heavy dose of whining and pontification - this is the book for you.

My recommendation: "Browse" the book at a local bookstore (you can read the 1-2 worthwhile chapters very quickly) then save your money and put it back on the shelf.