NEW RELEASES 11.5.23
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Since the Accident by Jen Craig $35
In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long-dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind. In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.
”Since the Accident effectively realises a formal alternative to the realist tradition that dominates contemporary Australian writing, yet does so in an accessible way that deserves to find a wide readership. This ability to explore innovative novelistic form that cuts to the core of the human condition without lapsing into gratuitous experimentation is very rare, and to be highly commended.” —Anthony Macris
”Both of Jen Craig’s novels, Since the Accident and Panthers and the Museum of Fire, exhibit a distinctive style which features careful precision of the narrative voice, coupled with an intriguing digressive approach. This draws the reader in to stories that seem endlessly reflective, yet the novels quickly display a logic and continuity that is sustained until the very last sentence. She has the astonishing ability to make us believe she has held every word of the story in her head, then delivered it onto the page in a seamless whole. There is a powerful hypnotic effect upon the reader of Craig's work, and it is not too much of a stretch to compare her work with the otherwise incomparable WG Sebald.” —Debra Adelaide
>>New by Jen Craig: Wall.
>>Read Thomas’s review of Panthers and the Museum of Fire.
>>Relative wholeness.
>>[S.E.P.]
Mothercare: On ambivalence and obligation by Lynne Tillman $39
An honest and beautifully written account of a sudden, drastically changed relationship to one's mother, and of the time and labor spent navigating the healthcare system. When Tillman’s mother's unusual health condition, normal pressure hydrocephalus, renders her entirely dependent on her, her sisters, caregivers, and companions, the unthinkable becomes daily life. In Mothercare, Tillman describes doing what seems impossible: handling her mother as if she were a child and coping with a longtime ambivalence toward her. In Tillman's celebrated style and as a 'rich noticer of strange things' (Colm Toibin), she describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and anxious eleven years of caring for a sick parent. Mothercare is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.
“A true force in American literature.” —George Saunders
“'A new thought in every sentence.” —Lydia Davis
”Lynne Tillman has always been a hero of mine.” —Jonathan Safran Foer
>>Read an extract.
A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha - An anthology of new writing for a changed world edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy $40
Sixty-eight writers and eight artists gather at a hui in a magnificent cave-like dwelling or meeting house. In the middle is a table, the tepu korero, from which the rangatira speak; they converse with honoured guests, and their rangatira-korero embody the tahuhu, the over-arching horizontal ridge pole, of the shelter. In a series of rich conversations, those present discuss our world in the second decade of this century; they look at decolonisation, indigeneity, climate change . . . this is what they see. Edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy, this fresh, exciting anthology features poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, as well as korero or conversations between writers. The lineup from Aoteraoa includes Alison Wong, Paula Morris, Anne Salmond, Tina Makereti, Ben Brown, David Eggleton, Cilla McQueen, Hinemoana Baker, Erik Kennedy, Ian Wedde, Nina Mingya Powles, Gregory O'Brien, Vincent O'Sullivan, Patricia Grace, Selina Tusitala Marsh and Whiti Hereaka. Guest writers from overseas include Jose-Luis Novo and Ru Freeman.
>>Look inside.
>>How to respond to SOS messages.
Calamities! by Jane Arthur $25
In her second, spine-cracking collection, Jane Arthur wants ‘to get morbid’. Moving with ease between the cerebral and the ethereal she measures her anxieties against a cosmic canvas — taking in everything from meteorites and distant planets to pomanders and cat’s ears. Whether contemplating time, regret, or the end of the world, these poems don’t flinch. But in writing against hope, Arthur also writes against hopelessness, and finds, at the heart of it all, a bear, sleeping soundly — or perhaps dead.
”Calamities! is a compelling book of the unsettled and unsettling, set in a world where comfort is an endangered animal and the apocalypse lurks outside our front doors. Jane Arthur’s perceptive and all-too-relatable poems are what we need in these uncertain times — they make me an even bigger fan of her already astonishing body of work.” —Chris Tse
“It’s hard for poems to be funny without undermining their own seriousness, but Arthur’s are like that.” —Kate Camp
”She seems to me a poet of scale and embodiment. Her moments are informed by awe and intelligence — quick and seamless. They don’t have to try so hard. I felt novels and films in these poems. I thought: this is a poet of capacity.” —Eileen Myles
>>Craven.
The Artist by Ruby Solly $30
At first there is nothing but black sand, then something begins to grow; a gentle song emerges so bright that sound becomes sight . . . And so from the black the world is sung into being, not for us, but for itself, but for the song. In a Southern land, where the veil of time and space has worn thin, twins with otherworldly ways are born to a stone carver and his wife. As they grow into themselves, the landscape and its histories will rise up to meet them and change their whānau forever. Cave art leaps from walls, pounamu birds sing, legends become reality, and history becomes the present in this verse novel by Ruby Solly (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu). The Artist brings to life the histories of our great Southern iwi through the whakapapa of its characters and the rich world they and their ancestors call their tūrakawaewae—their place to stand, their place to sing.
>>Tōku Pāpā.
>>Ode to the aunties.
>>Compositions.
This Is a Story About Your Mother by Louise Wallace $25
In her latest collection, Louise Wallace raises an existential eyebrow at pregnancy-birth-motherhood. Is this universal rite-of-passage really an intimately personal event, down to the degree of fluid rising in your ankles, or is it a societal machine, forever churning out the next generation to an unrelenting voiceover of parenting advice? Wrestling auto-generated Huggies text and her own sometimes heart-breaking experiences into meaning, Wallace weighs the evidence. With equal parts curiosity and pique, she writes her way through to the human.
”Wallace's exquisite poems declare that women's lives matter (mothers or otherwise), and domestic and emotional labour matters because this unseen and undervalued work permits society to function. Few other poets capture the possibilities of domestic mess so well, and make me laugh at the same time.” —Sarah Jane Barnett
The World and All That It Holds by Aleksander Hemon $38
As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum, a summer stroll and idle fantasies can't put in perspective. And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller and Pinto's protector and lover. Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches and find themselves entangled with spies and Bolsheviks. As they travel over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman that will truly survive.
”A staggering work of beauty and brutality.” —Douglas Stuart
”A twisting, turning epic rooted in love in all its forms; an odyssey of statelessness; a haunted museum of history ranging from Sarajevo to Shanghai and Jerusalem . . . This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon's masterpiece.” —David Mitchell
“An explosive novel. Bursting with energy, wits, and insights, it's an epic meditation on history, philosophy, and human conditions. Aleksandar Hemon once again proves himself to be one of our most innovative and invigorating novelists.” —Yiyun Li
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans discovered Europe by Caroline Dodds Pennock $38
We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New', when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others — enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders — the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a story of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse — a story that has largely been absent from our collective imagination of the times. From the Brazilian king who met Henry VIII to the Aztecs who mocked up human sacrifice at the court of Charles V; from the Inuk baby who was put on show in a London pub to the mestizo children of Spaniards who returned 'home' with their fathers; from the Inuit who harpooned ducks on the Avon river to the many servants employed by Europeans of every rank: here are a people who were rendered exotic, demeaned, and marginalised, but whose worldviews and cultures had a profound impact on European civilisation. Drawing on their surviving literature and poetry and subtly layering European eyewitness accounts against the grain, Pennock gives us a sweeping account of the Indigenous American presence in, and impact on, early modern Europe.
”A thrilling, beautifully written and important book that changes how we look at transatlantic history, finally placing Indigenous peoples not on the side-lines but at the centre of the narrative. Highly recommended.” —Peter Frankopan
”An untold story of colonial history, both epic and intimate, and a thrilling revelation, not about the invasion of the Americas by Europeans, but the journeys of Indigenous people to Europe. Caroline Dodds Pennock is the perfect guide, cannily and eloquently shifting the axis of global history away from its Eurocentric grip.” —Adam Rutherford
The Bear and the Wildcat by Kazumi Yumoto, illustrated by Komako Sakai $30
One morning the bear was crying. His friend, the little bird, was dead. When the little bird dies, the bear is inconsolable. Full of grief, he locks himself in his house and ventures out again only when the smell of young spring grass blows through his window. He meets a wildcat and finally feels understood. As the cat plays on her violin, the bear remembers all the beauty that he has experienced with the little bird. Now he can bury his friend, because he knows he'll always have his memories. A new edition of this beautiful, gentle picturebook about grief.
>>Look inside!
Sentience: The invention of consciousness by Timothy Humphrey $50
We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes his fifty-year quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind. The goal is to solve the hard problem: to explain the wondrous, eerie fact of ‘phenomenal consciousness’—the redness of a poppy, the sweetness of honey, the pain of a bee sting. What does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What is it for? And why has it evolved? Humphrey presents here in full a new, plausible solution that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals are startling and provocative.
To Trap a Taniwha (te Reo Pākehā edition) by Jane Cooper $25
To Trap a Taniwha | He Raru ki Tai is an adventure story set in seventeenth-century Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland when the hapū of Ngā Oho/Ngā Iwi predominated. Armed with the courage of their convictions, two girls embark on a perilous journey to challenge their leaders’ actions. Cousins, Te Kawenga and Kakati learn of a plan being hatched against a neighbouring iwi and strange activity occurring at a seasonal fishing camp. A huge trap is being built to snare and kill Ureia, the taniwha of Hauraki iwi. The cousins fear the retribution that will be taken on their people if Ureia is killed. So they take a dangerous journey to defy the decision of their people and try and save the taniwha.
>>He Raru ki Tai.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel $25
In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core. Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. Sea of Tranquility is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. New edition.
>>Read Stella’s review.
Children of the Night: The strange and epic story of modern Romania by Paul Kenny $25
Balanced precariously on the shifting fault line between East and West, Romania's schizophrenic, often violent past is one of the great untold stories of modern Europe. The country that gave us Vlad Dracula, and whose citizens consider themselves descendants of ancient Rome, has traditionally preferred the status of enigmatic outsider. But this beautiful and unexplored land has experienced some of the most disastrous leaderships of the last century. After a relatively benign period led by a dutiful King and his vivacious British-born Queen, the country oscillated wildly. Its interwar rulers form a gallery of bizarre characters and extreme movements: the corrupt and mentally unbalanced King Carol; the fascist death cult led by Corneliu Codreanu; the vain General Ion Antonescu, who seized power in 1940 and led the country into a catastrophic alliance with Nazi Germany. After 1945 power was handed to Romania's tiny communist party, under which it experienced severe repression, purges and collectivisation. Then in 1965, Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power. And thus began the strangest dictatorship of all.
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh $35
For generations, deadly storms have ravaged Mina's homeland. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curse them with death and despair. To appease him, each year a maiden is thrown into the sea, in the hopes that one day the 'true bride' will be chosen and end the suffering. Many believe Shim Cheong — Mina's brother's beloved — to be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is sacrificed, Mina's brother follows her, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong's stead. Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina finds the Sea God, trapped in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man and a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits, Mina sets out to wake him and bring an end to the storms once and for all. But she doesn't have much time: a human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking.
28 Days: A novel of resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto by David Safier $25
Warsaw, 1942. Sixteen-year old Mira smuggles food into the Warsaw ghetto to keep herself and her family alive. When she discovers that the entire ghetto is to be "liquidated"—killed or resettled to concentration camps—she desperately tries to find a way to save her family. She meets a group of young people who are planning the unthinkable: an uprising against the occupying forces. Mira joins the resistance fighters who, with minimal supplies and weapons, end up holding out for twenty-eight days, longer than anyone had thought possible. During this time, Mira has to decide where her heart belongs. To Amos, who will take as many Nazis as he can with him into the grave? Or to Daniel, who wants to help orphans in a shelter?
"Throughout this complex novel, rich in evocative detail, Mira's view evolves from a narrow focus on herself and her family to consideration of the larger community around her, reflected in her first-person narrative." —Booklist
The Utopians: Six attempts to build the perfect society by Anna Neima $25
Santiniketan-Sriniketan in India, Dartington Hall in England, Atarashiki Mura in Japan, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, the Bruderhof in Germany and Trabuco College in America: six experimental communities established in the aftermath of the First World War, each aiming to change the world. The Utopians is an absorbing and vivid account of these collectives and their charismatic leaders and reveals them to be full of eccentric characters, outlandish lifestyles and unchecked idealism. Dismissed and even mocked in their time, yet, a century later, their influence still resonates in progressive education, environmentalism, medical research and mindfulness training. Without such inspirational experiments in how to live, post-war society would have been a poorer place. Now in paperback,
”Neima offers an original perspective on the entire period and a new way of navigating its artistic and ideological upheaval. By showing how a global crisis can lead people to question tradition and reshape society, the subject remains important to this day.” —Guy Stagg
>>The flower still blooms.