NEW RELEASES
Writer Paula Morris and photographer Haru Sameshima visited various locations in search of the writer Robin Hyde's experiences there the greater part of a century beforehand. "We set off for some of the small places Hyde lived, wondering how they managed to contain her. Everything is smaller in the past. Hyde bursts from it, vivid and roaring, all the time wanting too much, too wild inside. I try to douse my own wildfires. Hers I fear and pity and admire, watching them there, in the distance, burning out of control." The second in the series of kōrero between writers and artists published by Massey University Press.
Scanlan found a stranger's five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years, Scanlan played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the remarkable composition that became Aug 9—Fog.
>>Read Thomas's review of The Dominant Animal.
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada $34
Monsters in the Garden: An anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand science fiction and fantasy edited by Elizabeth Knox and David Larsen $35
Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa edited by Tom Doig $15
The Romance of American Communism by Vivian Gornick $33
On the Move: Poems about migration by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Quentin Blake $28
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots $35
Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time. One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole—a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
Casting its net widely, this anthology of Aotearoa-New Zealand science fiction and fantasy ranges from the satirical novels of the 19th-century utopians one of which includes the first description of atmospheric aerobreaking in world literature to the bleeding edge of now. Includes Godfrey Sweven, Janet Frame, Margaret Mahy, Maurice Gee, Patricia Grace, Owen Marshall, Phillip Mann, Witi Ihimaera, Keri Hulme, Juliet Marillier, Elizabeth Knox, Dylan Horrocks, Bernard Beckett, Anon, Craig Gamble, Danyl Mclauchlan, Pip Adam, Kirsten McDougall, Tina Makereti, Lawrence Patchett, Octavia Cade, Rachael Craw, Karen Healey, Jack Barrowman, Emma Martin, Samantha Lane Murphy, Jack Larsen, Tamsyn Muir, and some worried sheep.
The devastating summer of Australian bush fires underlined the terrifying sense of a world pushed to the brink. Then came Covid-19, and with it another dramatic shift. Fears have been raised that the all-consuming effort to control the pandemic will distract us from the long-term challenge of limiting catastrophic climate change. At the same time, many people are hoping for a post-pandemic ‘new normal’: a cleaner, greener, fairer and safer world. This book brings together researchers, commentators, activists and writers to bear witness to the current crisis.
Enchantment by Daphne Merkin $35
"My mother," says Hannah Lehmann, "is the source of my unease in the world and thus the only person who can make me feel at home in the world." Although Hannah, a 26-year-old from an Upper East Side Jewish family, lays blame upon her mother, her plight is rather more complicated. How is the revenge for perceived hurts played out upon oneself?
"Daphne Merkin's exquisitely written novel about a young woman who can't let go and who never learned to cut her losses is a supremely delicate and intelligent fiction." —Stanley Elkin
"A truly Proustian effort to conquer time, Hannah's painful, humiliating, and self-pitying narrative nevertheless burnishes some indelible portraits in the reader's memory." —Kirkus
"Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class." So begins Vivian Gornick's exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin's crimes became public. From the immigrant Jewish enclaves of the Bronx and Brooklyn and the docks of Puget Sound to the mining towns of Kentucky and the suburbs of Cleveland, over a million Americans found a sense of belonging and an expanded sense of self through collective struggle. They also found social isolation, blacklisting, imprisonment, and shattered hopes. This is their story—an indisputably American story.
Rosen's poems are divided into four groups: in the first series, he draws on his childhood as part of a first-generation Polish family living in London; in the second, on his perception of the War as a young boy; in the third, on his “missing” relatives and the Holocaust; and in the fourth, on global experiences of migration.
Chosen by Geoff Cochrane $25
He Pukapuka Tātaku: Ngā Mahi a Te Rapuaraha Nui (A Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha) by Tamihana Te Rauparaha (translated and edited by Ross Calman) $60
The nineteenth collection of poems by cult Wellington poet and pedestrian Geoff Cochrane.
"Over the years, Cochrane’s work has been a joy to me, a solace, a proof that art can be made in New Zealand which shows ourselves in new ways." —Pip Adam
A 50,000-word account in te reo Māori of Te Rauparaha's life, written by his son Tamihana Te Rauparaha between 1866 and 1869. A pioneering work of Maori (and, indeed, indigenous) biography, Tamihana's narrative weaves together the oral accounts of his father and other kaumatua to produce an extraordinary record of Te Rauparaha and his rapidly changing world. Published for the first time in a bilingual Māori/English edition. "Kāore kau he kaumātua hei rite mō Te Rauparaha te mōhio ki te whawhai, me te toa hoki, me te tino tangata ki te atawhai tangata. / There has never been a man equal to Te Rauparaha in terms of knowledge of warfare and prowess in battle, and in being so dedicated to looking after people." —Tamihana Te Rauparaha
This is Not a Pipe by Tara Black $28
"I've decided to document my life in pictures. It's hard to draw the pole, because of the pole. Beth has a pole through her arms. This is not a metaphor. A metaphor would be a lot less inconvenient. On the other side of the room, Kenneth is creating a new religion. He thinks narrative is the operating principle of the universe. He also thinks he's the hero of Beth's story. Beth is worried he's going to leave her. The creatures living in the pole may have stolen her cat. Tara Black's comic is surreal, dark, sad, perversely joyful, and if you bet someone they couldn't find another book remotely like it, you would win. It's a little bit about being married to Kenneth. It's a little bit about losing your cat. It's definitely not about the pole. I've been told I hold my pen wrong. But it's the only way I can."
"One of the most potent, unsettling texts I've encountered." —Tracey Slaughter
"Poetic, whimsical and painfully honest." —Dylan Horrocks
"A strange and wonderful book, both surreal and very real." —Tina Makereti
"A freaking masterpiece." —Pip Adam
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn't glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? As a temp, she's just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called "hero" leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she's the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realises she might not be as powerless as she thinks — data is her superpower. Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.
The half room is full of half things. A half chair, a half cat, even half shoes—all just as nice as whole things. When half a knock comes on half a door, who in the world could it be? Completely fun.
There are no easy answers to the big questions, but at least we have the questions.
In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein's father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture. Growing up in post-war rural Wales where the conflict was never spoken of, Jonathan and his siblings were at a loss to understand their father's relentless drive and sometimes eccentric behaviour. As Hans enters old age, he and Jonathan set out to retrace his journey back to Berlin.
The sequel to The Unseen finds Ingrid back on the island of Barrøy as Norway is occupied by the Nazis. How will she protect what is important to her when the world is changing in unexpected ways?
Generations of Nelsonians have lived in sight of the Arthur Range on the western border of the Nelson district. But few of them know the stories that were played out on the Tableland, the high tussock plateau of Mt Arthur, in the adjacent Cobb Valley or in the ranges and valleys beyond.
Raymond Briggs changed the face of children's picture books with his innovations of both form and subject. In this insightful commentary, children's book editor Nicolette Jones illuminates how Briggs's eclectic use of style helped him approach profound and resonant themes.
Sqirl all began with jam—organic, local, made from unusual combinations of fruits, fragrant, and not overly sweet—the kind of jam you eat with a spoon. The Sqirl Jam book collects Jessica Koslow's signature recipes into a cookbook that looks and feels like no other preserving book out there, inspiring makers to try their own hands at preserving and creating.
This book illustrates Dillon's working process by combining many of the drawings and watercolour sketches done directly from life, with finished paintings completed in his studio.
Well done.
The Climate Cure: Solving the climate emergency in the era of Covid-19 by Tim Flannery $30
Mophead Tu: The Queen's poem by Selina Tusitala Marsh $25
If governments can be guided by science to limit the impact of a pandemic, why can they not be guided by science to limit the impact of the climate crisis? Flannery has a plan.
In this sequel to the wonderful Mophead, Selina is crowned Commonwealth Poet and invited to perform for the Queen in Westminster Abbey. But when someone at work calls her a 'sellout', Selina starts doubting herself. Can she stand with her people who struggled against the Queen . . . and serve the Queen? From the sinking islands in the south seas to the smoggy streets of London, Mophead Tu: The Queen's Poem is a hilariously thought-provoking take on colonial histories and one poet's journey to bridge the divide. Selina has to work out where she stands and how to be true to herself.