“For all the promise of his name, Jack Skeat cannot be a poet. His friend Rex Petley – eel-catcher, girl-chaser, motorbike rider – takes that prize. Is he also a murderer? And why, forty years later, does he drown out on the Gulf? Jack has to find out, and is drawn to examine their lives. Going West has long been regarded as one of the most autobiographical of Maurice Gee’s novels.” –Penguin review

“Stern, stoic, spare. Half a century of impeccably authentic New Zealand lives. The wars between and within the sexes consummately, compassionately anatomised. Men are from Mars; women are from Kohimarama.” –David Hill, The New Zealand Listener