Every good book experience starts with the simplest of things. An excellent board book can open a young mind to the world and their own experience in it. At VOLUME, we are always looking for interesting picture books that will surprise and delight. Board books for the very youngest start the journey of a reading life. Here are a few recently published titles:

Titiro/Look is a bilingual first words book. Another excellent title from Aotearoa children’s author and Illustrator Gavin Bishop. The design is excellent, with its arresting illustrations and clear visual information. There’s a great range of subjects, creating plenty of opportunities to expand vocabulary and create conversations, making it a perfect book for looking at, and interacting with, for parent (or grandparent) and child.

So excited to see a new addition to the playful series from creator Antonia Pesenti. Party Rhyme! is as much fun as Rhyme Cordial and Rhyme Hungry. With hairy bread and party bats it will be hard to keep the laughter and rhyming under control. But not to worry, there will be a bear hug to keep everyone feeling cosy at the end. The lift-the-flap formula works brilliantly with Pesenti’s books, and they are robust and create just the right amount of anticipation.

If you are after a sweet bedtime book, look no further than Good Night Belly Button. Reminiscent of the classic Good Night Moon, the youngster in this story is being tucked into bed, from the tips of the toes up to the chin, all snug and sleepy. This long format board book slowly raises the blanket with each turn of the page. Good night little feet, good night little calves, good night little knees…

And here’s a wonderful title now available as a board book. Press Here by designer Hervé Tullet is brilliant. It’s all about colours and movement. It is clever and interactive without any moving parts, but plenty of lateral thinking. Highly enjoyable and endlessly fascinating! It is magic?

If you are interested in a Book Subscription for a young reader, we have designed some perfect book packages. For the youngest, we recommend WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF BOOKS. We create reading subscriptions for all ages and can adjust to fit your requirements.
Not sure which appeals the most? —Use the ENQUIRE button or just email us to start a conversation.

Marta must be quiet as a mouse. Marta must not be noticed. Marta can be in the lobby, but remain invisible. Marta must not take the elevator. Marta’s mother is a maid at the Hotel Balzaar. Things have not always been this way, but survive they must. Marta’s father is missing. The war has taken him away, and they have not heard from him in over a year. Marta watches the cat and mouse on the clock chase each other through time, she dreams in front of the strange painting, and spends her days going up the stairs, and down the stairs, waiting for the day to pass. When a countess checks into the hotel along with her bright green parrot, Marta is drawn into her web of stories. Stories that seem to nestle one inside the other. Stories with clues, maybe, to her father’s disappearance. Or maybe not. Marta wants her father to return, but how ​w​ill he find them when he doesn’t know where they are? Marta​ strikes up a rapport with the Countess and her amazing bird. A bird who, apparently, was once a General. How did this General become a parrot? It’s one of the seven tales the Countess will tell Marta. Seven tales of magic and mystery, seven tales that never quite end, but leave questions unanswered and poor Marta increasingly frustrated. ​And how does the Countess know so much about Marta? Despite these frustrations and probing questions, Marta is drawn into the world of these Norendy Tales, just as you will be, and hangs on the words of the Countess​, deeply wanting to believe that they are the key to her father’s return. But does she believe, or has she given up hope? The Hotel Balzaar is a charming tale of a young girl’s bravery in the face of hopelessness, of a girl who will venture through a hidden door to the roof of the hotel, where the world is a place of possibility and promise. Yet, just as the last story is about to be revealed — the story ​that will bind the other six tales together — our story-teller, the Countess, has departed. Marta’s story is left untold. Or is it? Another lovely tale from the excellent Kate DiCamillo, with superb Júlia Sardà illustrations completing the classic fairy tale atmosphere in this tale of bravery and hope.

Forgotten in a trunk. Left in the dark. Unwanted. Once they had been on display, crafted with care. They belonged together and they had a story. Would they be together again, and would there be a new story? Kate DiCamillo works her magic with The Puppets of Spelhorst. With the texture of a folk tale, she reveals the story of a girl, a boy, a king, an owl, and a wolf. An old man sees a puppet in the window of a toy shop and the memory of a love is rekindled. He wants to take her home and look into her eyes so like those of his sweetheart long gone, but, bothersome: he has to have all the puppets. And so, it comes to be. In the night the girl sitting atop a dresser sees the moon and describes its beauty to her companions. The old man sleeps and does not awaken. And then an adventure begins. A journey that will take them through the hands of the rag-and-bone man, to an uncle with two inquisitive nieces, where a new story will be made — one which involves all of them; even though they will have their fierce teeth tampered with (the wolf), be mistaken for a feather duster (the owl), left abandoned outside and kidnapped by a giant bird (the boy), be snaffled into a pocket (the girl), and left alone with no one to rule (the king). Yet this is not the only story. Emma is writing, and Martha is making mischief. A story is ready to be told. An extra hand and a good singing voice are needed. In steps the maid, Jane Twiddum — someone who will have a profound impact on the fate of the five friends. The Puppets of Spelhorst is an absolute delight with its clever story. A spellbound tale. "Now it all happens," whispered the boy. "Now the story begins."

• Look inside!

  This is a delightful book, and the sequel, The Hotel Balzaar, is due here soon — I am really looking forwards to it. Both books are perfect for reading and gifting.

  >>Your copy of The Puppets of Spelhorst
  >>Order The Hotel Balzaar now (stock is on its way!)

Han Kang's semi-autobiographical The White Book is a contemplation of life and death. It’s her meditative study of her sibling’s death at a few hours old, and how this event shapes her own history. Taking the colour white as a central component to explore this memory, she makes a list of objects that trigger responses. These include swaddling bands, salt, snow, moon, blank paper and shroud. “With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt I needed to write this book, and that the process of writing would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like a white ointment applied to a swelling, like a gauze laid over a wound.” Han Kang was in Warsaw - a place which is foreign to her when she undertook this project - and in being in a new place, she recalls with startling clarity the voices and happenings of her home and past. The book is a collection of quiet yet unsettling reflections on exquisitely observed moments. These capsules of text build upon each other, creating a powerful sense of pain, loss and beauty. Each moment so tranquil yet uneasy. Han Kang’s writing is sparse, delicate and nuanced. Describing her process of writing she states, “Each sentence is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air.” You can sense the narrator’s exploration and stepping out into the unknown in her descriptions of snow, in her observations as she walks streets hitherto unknown, and in her attempts to realise the view of her mother, a young woman dealing with a premature birth, and the child herself, briefly looking out at the world. Small objects become talismans of memory, a white pebble carries much more meaning than its actuality. Salt and sugar cubes each hold their own value in their crystal structure. “Those crystals had a cool beauty, their white touched with grey.” “Those squares wrapped in white paper possessed an almost unerring perfection.” In 'Salt', she cleverly reveres the substance while at the same time cursing the pain it can cause a fresh wound. The White Book is a book you handle with some reverence - its white cover makes you want to pick it up delicately. The text is interspersed with a handful of moody black and white photographs. This is a book you will read, pick up again to re-read passages, as each deserves concentration for both the writing and ideas. 

Welcome back Raccoon, Badger, Fox, Bear, and Crow!  Raccoon is reading a great book. It’s a wonderful adventure. It’s so exciting, he decides it’s time for his own expedition;— a journey around the world! For that he will need a boat, and he knows where he can find one. His friend, Badger, is just the fellow. Badger has everything, and all in their allotted places. Check out his storage shelves — so orderly! Badger also thinks he will be the perfect companion for this journey. Everyone needs a friend on such a journey. Boat and paddles in hand, they are ready to go. Setting off for the river, they meet Fox at the market selling her eggs. What about food? I better come along with you, insists Fox. The three friends are now prepared for their journey around the world. Bear is out fishing and reminds them about sea monsters and jellyfish. You’ll need a bear on your crew. Off to the river the four friends go. Crow flies past, and exclaims, I’ll be the look-out. Of course, they need a look-out for such a grand adventure. All together, they get under way. It’s a beautiful day for a journey down the river to the ocean. What a great adventure! Philip Waechter’s Around the World With Friends, like his previous picture book about our five wonderful friends ( A Perfect Wonderful Day with Friends), captures us. The five friends are adorable, their joyful and positive interactions irresistable, and the story moves at just the right pace, and with a gentleness that is sometimes missing in picture books. The illustrations are delightful and there is always more to see with each reading. Each of the friends has their special talent and all this comes in handy on their adventure down the river. An adventure which mostly goes to plan, but isn’t always plain sailing, so there will be some problem-solving along the way. There will be games on a sandy bank, scrambled eggs and oh dear! — rain. Exciting adventures are wonderful, especially with friends, but what about Fox’s chickens, and Bear needs his teddy at night, and Raccoon forgot to bring his book. Heading home is just fine — especially when there are plans for a new adventure very soon! A perfectly charming picture book for young adventurers. Recommended for gift-giving and inspiring summer adventures, filled with imagination and delight.

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From the opening pages, its gothic lettering contents page, an image of a carriage arriving in a small mountain village surrounded by forests, the looming buildings of the sanatorium, you feel as if you have entered the opening scenes of Nosferatu. Olga Tokarczuk’s novel The Empusium, subtitled A Health Resort Horror Story, builds intrigue from the outset. It’s 1913, a year before great turmoil, and curing tuberculosis is all the rage. Our young Polish hero, Mieczyslaw Wojnicz, has been sent to the Silesian village of Gorbersdorf for the fresh air, the cold baths and the expert advice of Dr.Semperweiss. The sanatorium is popular and full. Wojnicz takes a room at the more economical Guesthouse for Gentlemen run by the unseemly Optiz with help of a rugged lad, Raimund. Here his fellow guests, after a day of health procedures and walks in the village, sit down to dinner together. It’s an evening of conversation, often arguments, about existence, human behaviour, psychology, and politics; as well as the purpose of women or more accurately their flawed views on the inferiority of women. This topic of conversation, much to the surprise and annoyance of Wojnicz, who they take pleasure in warning and teasing, is a frequent and recurring theme, helped along by a local speciality, a mushroom-infused liquor— the hallucinatory effects fueling the conversation, as well as driving the gentlemen towards introspection. Wojnicz’s fellow housemates include a serial returnee who seems driven by ennui, a humanist bent on lecturing our dear young hero, a young student of art (dying), and the aptly nicknamed The Lion, his bombastic nature making him easy to dislike. Thrown into this dysfunctional playground, the timid Wojnicz is unnerved, and this is not helped by a suicide by hanging on his first day in the house. A house with strange creakings, with cooing in the attic and the whoosh of that new thing, electricity. Not to mention the horror chair with straps in the room upstairs, the graves in the cemetery with an abundance of November death dates, and the uncanny behaviour of the charcoal burners in the forests. Secrets abound, and Wojnicz has several of his own he’s keeping close to his chest. Tokarczuk builds this multi-layered tale from snippets of Greek mythology, the new ideas of the period (think Freud) and as a response to Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (published 100 years ago). Like Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead there is a mystery here, a fizzing at the edges, black humour, and a deadly serious exploration of ideas.  While Drive Your Plow is pushing the idea of eco-activist in response to harmful tradition, The Empusium is examining the misogyny of the 20th century canon and by extension the influence of these writers, philosophers and psychologists on the contemporary intellectual landscape. To counter the conversations of the ‘gentlemen’, there is a wonderful sense of being watched, that things are not what they seem, and justice will be done. In Greek mythology, the Empusa were shapeshifting creatures. Appearing as beautiful women they preyed on young men, and as beasts devoured them. Beware of those that have one leg of copper, and the other, a donkey’s. As Wojnicz finds the Guesthouse increasingly repressive, the rigours of treatment intrusive, the hallucinogenic effects of liquor to be avoided, and the tragic decline of the young man Thilo unbearable, he also finds in himself a strength as to date untapped. Whether from curiosity, delusion, avoidance of his own fraught familiar relationships, or an unconscious desire to live, our hero explores the depths of the house and the village in an attempt to discover what drives the men of this village to act so horrifically. Add into this rich psychological horror, rich, fetid descriptions of the forest, its minutiae, the fungi and foliage, an atmospheric mindscape grows. Reading The Empusium is like looking through a telescopic lens, one that fogs over, but a twitch of the controls, and a whisk of a cloth, brings it all into sharp relief. If you haven’t read Tokarczuk, it’s time to start.

TEXT EDITION

FITZCARRALDO EDITION

Right now I am reading Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium (you can pre-order now — due very soon!) and so far a big thumbs-up. I’ll be reviewing this on Monday for RNZ Nine to Noon. In anticipation of the new novel, I’ve been revisiting the excellent Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
Janina ("don’t like my first name, so please don’t address me by it") Duszejko is in her sixties and lives in a remote Polish village. An ex-engineer, she teaches children English at the local school on a very part-time basis and is the caretaker of the holiday homes closed up for the winter. It’s mid-winter and Duszejko is busy with her horoscopes, translating William Blake with her friend Dizzy, clearing snow, fixing leaks, and keeping an eye on the forest animals. She has names for her neighbours, names which reflect their character: Big Foot for the weasel of a man with big feet who traps animals cruelly, Oddball for her large-statured yet very particular closest neighbour, Black Coat for his son - the local detective, Good News for the woman who runs the charity shop, and so on. She has a close affinity with nature and with the animals that live around her - she calls the deer the Young Ladies, and her dogs (who have recently disappeared) are referred to as her Little Girls. Drawing on Blake’s philosophy of nature, voicing her beliefs in the ideal equitable relationship between human and animal (a philosophy that many of her hunting neighbours have no time for), and using astrology - the alignments and ascendencies of planets and stars and birth dates to predict outcomes for her community, Duszejko has firm opinions, which she has no qualms about sharing, on how people should behave, on traditional Polish culture, and on the importance of nature to the health (intellectual and emotional) of human psyche. Overlay this with a series of murders and you have a very compelling novel. Mrs Duszejko starts investigating, drawing together facts and suppositions based upon birth dates and star signs. The first to tumble is Big Foot, choking on a deer bone. As more hunters fall, Duszejko is convinced that this is the revenge of the animals, that they have risen up against the human hunters who pursue them mercilessly. As the net tightens, the villagers become increasingly paranoid, and rumours of corruption and bribery are rife. This is a blackly comic novel which investigates pressing ideas about the nature of traditions, cultural stereotypes and the role of the outsider, the hypocrisy of the church and other institutions of authority, and the impact of development on ecological structures. As Duszejko gets closer to the truth, her Ailments (never fully explained) become increasingly severe and her accusations extreme. Ostracised by her community she is considered a 'mad' woman. Yet it is her insistence that will lead to a revelation that will shock everyone, including her few loyal friends. Throughout the novel there are references to Blake’s writings: each chapter starts with a quoted verse, and the title of the book comes directly from Blake’s ‘Proverbs of Hell’. Olga Tokarczuk’s second book to appear in translation is an intriguing and feisty exploration of fate and free will, of cultural politics and personal endeavours, of injustice and ultimate revenge.

Love her or hate her, you will enjoy Sadie! Sadie Smith (not her real name) is undercover. She’s out to find the dirt on the eco-radicals; and if she can’t find some, she’ll get creative. In a small remote village, the Moulinards’ commune on a scrappy piece of land, overseen by the charismatic Pascal (ex-Paris, wealthy lad living it rough and oldest friend to Sadie’s hapless ‘boyfriend’ loser film-maker Lucien). Pascal, along with his selected idealistic brotherhood are hanging on the words of modern day hermit Bruno Lacombe. Bruno lives in a cave and emails the group his missives on human history, the superiority of the Neanderthal, the earth’s vibrations, and other intellectual musings of a madman and a sage. The concerns of the local farmers and the newly arrived eco-radicals are the same. Industry is moving in with its pumping of water and singular crop fixation. There have been isolated incidents of sabotage. And Sadie’s boss wants the commune gone. Sadie's job is to get inside and find out what they will do next. And if there is no to-do list, entice some action. Sadie arrives into a dry hot summer in her little white rental, enough alcohol to keep cool and then some, and is ‘waiting’ for Lucien on his family’s estate — a rundown dwelling now rigged up with sensors, high speed internet and other spy gadgetry. Sadie’s reading Bruno’s emails, but not getting a lot of information about a plot to take out the new infrastructure. What she is getting is a fascination for Bruno and his sideways take on humanity. She’s ready to meet Pascal and gain his trust. It helps, or so Sadie wants us to believe, that she is gorgeous. She easily gains his trust, more to do with her set-up relation with Lucien than anything she particularly does, and Pascal’s never ending ability to mansplain. The women at the commune have different ideas about their assigned roles, more akin to the old patriarchy than new ideas. It doesn’t take Sadie long to get offside with them. She’ll have to be more careful to avoid their ire and their mistrust. So what is Rachel Kushner up to here? In Creation Lake, she’s pointing a very cynical finger at our attempts to save ourselves. Here comes corruption and ego in several guises, here is the power of ideas that can alter lives, here come belief systems that fall flat, and there go the Neanderthals walking with us still (according to Bruno), and here is the biggest fraud of the lot: Sadie Smith, who will be unequivocally changed by her encounter with the Moulinards and Bruno Lacombe. This is a clever, funny book with an unreliable (and unlikeable) narrator at its centre, with ideas leaping from the absurd to the strangely believable, and a cast of characters who get to walk on to the stage and play their bit parts to perfection, with references to ‘types’ as well as particular possibly recognisable individuals. Creation Lake deals with big issues — the climate, politics, industry, and power — with a playfulness and Intelligence that ricochet much like the bullets in Sadie’s guns. It encompasses ideas about where we came from and where we might be going with wry wit but also a serious nod to our current dilemmas. It’s not all doom, and Kushner may be giving us the opportunity to leave our hermit caves and look up. Although this may be a riff on the riff. And cynicism may be the winner after all — unless radical social change can capture Sadie's imagination at 4am. You’ll have to decide. 

The Margaret Mahy Book of the Year is the most coveted award for children’s books in Aotearoa. Every year, from many excellent entries, one book is chosen that flies above the rest. This year the winner was a household name and a popular author with younger readers, often winning children’s choice awards, a bestselling author here and overseas, and a popular guest author at festivals and schools. Her love for horses propelled her to write 33 pony stories — some of which were pony club dramas (one became a hit TV series in the UK), while others were more nuanced tales of girls, horses, history and overcoming an issue. As a bookseller, I’ve read a few and they are immaculate in pitch and skill. Yet Nine Girls takes us somewhere new with Stacy Gregg. The author has skin in the game. It’s her childhood, and her journey in te ao Māori which resonates on every page giving this adventure story that extra bite. But it is the protaganist, Titch, who will stay with you. It’s the late 1970s and Dad has been made redundant. It’s time to pack up and move from Remuera to Ngāruawāhia — a culture shock for TItch and her sister, but also the stuff of holidays and relatives with tall tales. One tall tale takes hold: Gold! Buried gold buried somewhere on their ancestral  land. Gold with a tapu on it. Titch and her cousins think it might be time to find it. Their plans aren’t great and they are worried about being cursed, especially as more secrets come to light. What is it about the past and her family? As the past is unpicked, this is the Waikato, Titch comes to understand the complexities of relationships in this small town, piecing together information with the help of an unexpected creature (Gregg weaves in a talking eel) — a creature that is not exactly trustworthy, but definitely a source of fascination. The relationship between Titch and Paneiraira (Pan) reminded me of other fictional child/animal bond scenarios and it gives Nine Girls a wonderful and unexpected narrator to relay history and family secrets. While Pan may be a source of information, it is Tania who will become a firm friend and open a door into a new world for Titch, teaching her more about herself than she could ever have imagined. This is a coming-of-age story about family, culture and friendship; it takes on big issues like racism (the personal and the political — the protests of the Tour surface) and the emotional challenges of facing illness and death. In all these things, Titch discovers herself, and her own culture, coming home as has Stacy Gregg. And as ever, great story-telling. 

Back in the 1990s, working in a bookshop in Wellington, I came across a novel that intrigued me. It was written in verse, by an author that many now  known for his epic second novel, A Suitable Boy. Vikram Seth’s first novel was The Golden Gate. It was set in San Francisco in the 1980s and revolved around the lives of a group of successful 20-somethings in the burgeoning Silicon Valley. It’s not so much the content that has stuck with me, but the mathematical wonder of this novel. It is written in iambic tetrameter, and — as I have just now researched — composed of 590 Onegin stanzas. This formal structure took a little adjusting to, but I remember finding the rhythm of the novel within a few pages and noticing how the verse style adjusted my way of reading, making me read this novel in its very own way. That discovery of the novel in verse continues to fascinate, and when it works, it is brilliant. A more recent novel that comes to mind was the award-winning The Long Take by Robin Robertson. This is a startlingly affecting novel, an epic narrative poem about brutality and the search for kindness — a book that I will never stop recommending. I’m not sure what it is about a verse novel that appeals so much. I think it is the precision, those sharp ideas and carefully chosen words. It is the skill, the craft that poetry demands; particularly in the novel form where, like The Golden Gate, the rules are so important but the strict rhythm, once you, as the reader, are in synch you are unaware of — the content and form become seamless. Or The Long Take, where imagery meets landscape meets emotion so beautifully on the page with an intensity that surprises. And, for me, I think it is the joy of the text on the page. The space that alights around these stanzas, that says I am poetry (but not a prose poem) and can confound your expectations of the novel and what it can be. So, in the spirit of Poetry Day, I suggest expanding your horizons with a new poet or poetic form, or just giving poetry a try. It’s mind-bogglingly various. It can be serious, dramatic, emotional, confronting, and soothing, as well as amusing and ironic, and a combination of all of these; and then there are the many forms to discover. You never know where it might lead to in your reading explorations. Have a look at this week's Volume Focus for a selection of novels in verse on our shelves right now (maybe your verse-novel journey starts here!).

In a week of twists and turns and then a few  more twists and turns (!), one is in complete need of dessert. It was a Monday, but the weekend had been far from relaxing. There were some aging apples waiting for an enlightened moment, and plenty of staples to take in any direction. While the days are warmer, the evenings are still cool and something cosy and simple was front of thought. Apple pie, of course! But pie needs good pastry. And I knew where to find it: straight to my copy of Julia Busuttil Nishimura's A Year of Simple Family Food to find an excellent sweet short pastry recipe. There are a few options, but I decided on the faster 30-minute resting time. I've been a fan of this cook's pie recipes, both sweet and savoury for several years, since her first recipe book, Ostro (a recipe book that is well used in our kitchen). I've made her leek and potato pie numerous times. Her recipe has mozzarella, but works well with other cheeses, too. One of my favourite pies is in A Year of Simple Family Food. The Pumpkin Pie is delicious — hearty and rich (>>you can see my version on this Whisk post). Busuttil Nishimura's recipes range in time and complexity, but always have at their heart a love of food underpinned by great flavours and the joy of sharing and eating together. They are generous and usually arranged seasonally, so perfect for us with her Melbourne location. With her Maltese heritage, love of Italian food, and the influence of her Japanese partner, the food ranges in flavours and styles. I'm revisiting how much I enjoy her cookbooks because she has a new one, Good Cooking Every Day, out on September. And it looks like a cracker. This one has a focus on occasions, but, in typical Julia style, this is relaxed and simple, abounding with generous and tasty food. Whether it's an informal get together with friends, the joy of family occasions, garden parties, or more formal celebrations, you'll be pleased to have her enthusiasm and wonderful recipes to hand. If you haven't discovered  the pleasure of Julia Busuttil Nishimura's food you have a treat ahead of you, and if you have, then celebrate the new cookbook, due in September. >>Pre-order now.

Cruelty is never too far from the surface of Rachel Cusk's novel, Second Place. M owns an idyllic home on the marshland with her second husband Tony. They have rescued the land and built a home for themselves in this remote and abundant place, and share it, that is the cottage—the Second Place—by invitation. M has been fascinated by the art of L since an early encounter with his work in Paris after a nightmarish experience on a train, an experience that the reader is never fully informed about, yet the spectacular—a devil, metaphorical or real—remains as a threat throughout. So when M, after years of obsession with L, finally convinces the artist to come and stay, to retreat and paint, her expectations, as you can anticipate, are high. Her expectations of fulfilment, creatively and psychologically, are painfully ridiculous in a middle-aged, privileged sense. What does she expect from this special bond with L? When L arrives—by private jet of a friend’s cousin—with said friend in tow, the beautiful and young Brett, M is miffed. You can’t help but feel little empathy for her. Her desires are unreasonable and ethically questionable, let alone uncomfortable. M’s obsession with a self-seeking, seemingly loathsome and churlish fading artist is misguided at best. Add to the mix M’s daughter Justine and her German boyfriend Kurt, arrived from Berlin as their jobs pack in due to a downward economy (and Covid—although this isn’t mentioned by Cusk), and the perfect pressure cooker for a melodrama is set. The novel is told as to ‘Jeffers’ by letter. We never meet Jeffers and have little knowledge of who Jeffers is and why he plays such an important role as confidant to M. What we can decipher later, from the afterword, is that the novel is inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, published in 1932 (there’s a contemporary review in the New York Times archive) about D.H.Lawrence’s stay at her artist retreat in New Mexico. Here too, is a story of obsession and delusion, and letters to Robinson Jeffers about Mabel’s experience with the Lawrences. Yet you don’t need to know this to find the writing compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical (the storyline of Kurt deciding to be a writer and his ‘reading’ is priceless) and unsettling. It will make you squirm. This is a novel about ownership—who owns whom—and the power or agency of one over the other or the ideas of the other. M will come to despise L and L already despises M, and sets out to destroy her. Yet his ability to do so is compromised by his own weakness, according to M. And here lies the dilemma: the narrator. You can’t like her. Her complete preoccupation with herself and her property, whitewashed, much like the walls of the cottage, with a veneer of care, is revealed in her asides to Jeffers and by her knowing attitude about the creative process within the isolation of someone basically just talking to themselves. Yet, the novel reverberates within its cliches and set-ups to bring the reader to the eye-watering conclusion that Cusk has cleverly played a game of cards where most of the best cards are hers—and the reader is in second place.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Michael Hofmann)

What is this idea of utopia? Or fortune? Or a moment that passes ungraspable? In Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Winner, Kairos, the personal and the political are intertwined. It's the late1980s and the GDR is on its last legs. The society, with its face to the East but its ears and eyes impacted by the sounds, smells and occasional taste of the West, is unravelling. Katharina and Hans meet on a crowded bus. When the former leaves the bus, he follows. It’s raining and the underpass gives them shelter. Katharina is 19, a student, intelligent and attractive. Hans, a writer, is married and in his 50s. It’s not his first infidelity, but it is her first love. Whatever way you view this relationship, the power lies with Hans. The cards he holds control the situation, and even when his wife temporarily kicks him out, all remains on his terms. The borrowed apartment is an idyll — a moment of pretend. Hans will always return to his wife, and his loveless marriage. The duplicity is startling. On the family summer holiday, Katharina is close at hand in the country awaiting Hans’s bike rides and afternoon retreats from his family. She waits for him, dresses, and behaves as he instructs. And this obedience to his desires, despite her misgivings, only accelerates over the following years as the relationship becomes increasingly chaotic, with Hans’s manipulation and violence at its centre. What draws them together is a moment, and what will pull them asunder is that also, a moment. For it is Katharina’s supposed betrayal that strikes them both down. The moment that slipped by cannot be grasped again. And here, in the tumult, is East Germany. Erpenbeck lets us travel back — walk the streets, visit the cafes and theatres — to the fascination of a possibility which became a lie. Here is the idea of a better society, stretched taut. For here, look askance, we see the manipulation and the malice of political structures that fail to live up to the dream. Erpenbeck gives us an allegorical novel of ordinary lives and an intense relationship. Kairos is a book of two boxes. Archives. Notes, receipts, journals and diaries. Cassette tapes (of accusations), books and records. Threaded into the novel are authors, plays, music, architecture; shaping and forming our awareness of place and time. The first box/section is a meeting of minds and hearts, of a relationship with possibilities and the hopes of a society that is comfortable in its own skin. The second, an awareness that all is not right — deceit and despair, and recklessness, have created a chaos which is all-encompassing, personally and politically. The novel draws you in, despite your misgivings about the relationship, and Erpenbeck’s language is emotionally taut. There is a crispness in her sentences, reflecting the excitement of this new thing. As chaos ensues, Erpenbeck again uses language, tone and pace, to best advantage to relay a bone-weariness, but also the disturbance and confrontation of revolt, and the opposing inclination to hang tightly on to the status quo. Here the passages are longer, the sentence structure more convoluted, and doubt is creeping along the lines. The final pages are ambiguous, but surprisingly satisfying.

Chicanes by Clara Schulmann (translated from French by Naima Rashid, Natasha Lehrer, Lauren Elkin, Ruth Diver, Jessica Spivey, Jennifer Higgins, Clem Clement and Sophie Lewis) 

Chicanes is a collection of short pieces about voice and women’s experience. Schulmann dips and pivots, captures, and lets fly. She delves into literature and classics, art and film, exploring how women use their voice and how they are used (or stigmatised) by their voice. Her digressions move against each other building questions and ideas under the chapter headings ‘On/Off’, ‘Breathing’, ‘Fatigue’, ‘Overflowing’, ‘Speed’, and ‘Irritation’. The essays and snippets are both personal and critical (feminist theory and art critique are bundled here nicely, without being too pointy-headed; in other words, you can take it as you find it or investigate further), angry, and amusing. Taking her watching (cinema) and reading (essays and fiction), Schulmann drives us, never in a straight line, so we can observe her thinking about voice — its physical, emotional and intellectual power — and its cultural significance. How are women through their voice portrayed in films? Are they mostly silent/ screaming/ husky or simpering? How do women use their voices to protest and complain about inequality? Is it subtle? A pointed yet subtle change in mode or a tirade of small irritations (no time, too many family demands, commonplace sexism at work)? There are so many ideas packed into these short pieces, and they point in further directions and diversions. She quotes writers and draws up a map by which we can navigate her thinking out loud — about voice and in voice. In French the title is Zizanies which translates as discord or disharmony. When we say the word ‘voice’ we are likely to think of harmony or articulation. Yet if we think about the idea of voice as Schulmann has in the context of gender, discord is more than appropriate. The English language title, Chicanes: a sharp double bend, likely with some obstacle; is an apt descriptor also. Interestingly, there are several translators (one for each section), each with their ‘own voice’ interpreting Clara Schulmann’s interpretations. This observation by the author of language and tone (voice) by other writers/artists and then in turn via interpretation gives readers in English another level of voice. And then, in turn, we use our voice in its imperfect way, to reflect our emotional and cultural condition. The book is immersive and curious in the best possible way.

I have most, if not all, of Ali Smith’s novels on my shelf. I’ve been reading her for twenty years plus some, because she’s brilliant. It’s seems an appropriate time to revisit her seasonal quartet, which starts with Autumn, heads through Winter , to Spring and Summer. So, in keeping with the temperature gauge, Winter lands us in a cold house where things have gone slightly awry, but like all seasons things will turn.

Ali Smith's Winter is dazzling. The second in her ‘Seasons’ quartet, draws richness out of desolation. Strangely, the novel opens with Sophia, lonely and retired, conversing with a detached head. Not too far along we meet Arthur, her son, who has just fallen out with his girlfriend Charlotte, who has accused him of being a fraud and politically disconnected. Charlotte, aggrieved by his uselessness, has drilled holes through his laptop, taken off and taken over his ‘art and nature’ blog, posting false and possibly libelous material. Arthur (Art as he is affectionately known to his family) has to travel to Cornwall to visit Sophia for Christmas, and he is meant to be arriving with Charlotte. In desperation, he finds a stand-in, Lux, who he pays a thousand pounds to pretend to be Charlotte for the long weekend. Arriving at Sophia's home, they find Sophia sitting huddled in layers of clothes in a cold house, not quite herself. Lux takes it upon herself to make Art contact Iris, his aunt. And here the novel starts to unfold. The fraught relationship between the sisters, one the seemingly conservative businesswoman, the other the 'wild child' activist who chained herself to the fence at Greenham Common, still protesting and aiding the disempowered. The conversations between the sisters reveal much to Arthur about his upbringing. Yet more is revealed to Lux, the stranger in the mix, who Sophia seems to trust. Lux is a recent migrant, studying English literature before she ran out of money and now making do with low-pay jobs and sleeping anywhere she isn’t noticed. Her brief interlude in this winter Christmas family tale is inspired - a catalyst for change. Ali Smith draws us in with cool, icy precision - Winter, like the season, is deep, dark and melancholic when we enter the novel - yet she gives us love and hope, and lets us see the green shoots waiting for the snow to melt. Like Autumn, Winter is a book about time and place, about now - refugees, fires in substandard towers - about what binds families and also what splits them asunder. Smith can take a simple series of events with a cast of few and tell us so much about ourselves, and the culture (art, literature, language) and choices that shape us. And she does it with intelligence, wit and style.

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, classicist and translator. In Wrong Norma, variously described as prose poems or prose pieces, she is confronting writing and ideas. She allows thoughts to take the lead, to follow the other, in sometimes bewildering, sometimes illogical ways to paces where juxtapositions and contradictions segue into each other with a wonderful ‘wrongness’. And what is the idea of wrong? Her description of this project (as most of her published works are: she makes a handmade book, which is then produced as a facsimile by her publisher) is elusive and offers a brief explanation: “...a collection of wrings about different things..” And this collection is wide-ranging in subject matter, from swimming to snow, Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson, riffs on Socrates and violence, observations on poverty and displacement, a piece of writing by the Sky, in fact a week-long journal, my favourite being a conversation on Wednesday with Godot, and an image essay reimagining the meeting of the German philosopher Heidigger and the Jewish writing Paul Celan in 1966. Re-reading any one of these prose pieces is submerging. (The idea of suubmerging also links strongly to the first piece on swimming, so desire to be in water, out of air). They are endlessly curious, striving forward, to what one is never completely sure, and this makes them compelling. You return to discover something new and surprising each time, and it makes you ask questions rather than look for answers. In this work, Anne Carson seems to be asking questions and there are these wonderful scrap paper interludes between each piece. Some with merely a faintly typed comment or questions. Others that are dialogue, questions and answers, the questions often repeated, the answers varied — are they questions put to a host of visitors or characters or the author talking to herself? These repetitive questions include: “ Do you like the films of Eric Rohmer?”, followed by “Do you like jam?”, as if asking these simultaneously is a given. The other question that pops up repeatedly is “ What is yor philosophy of time?” With answers variously being: “I’m quite sure we’ll surrender” to “ how it’s sweet and how it’s moving” and “ a shallow closet with narrow bench and a rope to pull you up”. Are the recipients answering this question or even hearing it? Or are we always in conversation at cross purposes? Many of the text peices are reflecting on the process of writing. What is language, and how does it work? When translation is evoked, what happens to the text, whether this is translating yourself or others? Perspective and observation can be wrong and this wrongness leads to discoveries. Anne Carson calls these pieces wrong and enjoys herself. These is intelligent and playful writing. There is much here to amuse, as well as provoke thinking. But who or what is Norma? There is a reference in one piece to Norma Desmond, a character played in a film by Gloria Swanson, but I wondered if here the translator in Carson comes to the fore. Norma in latin can mean rule or pattern; in Greek, examiner. In an interview with Paris Review, Carson describes writing like seeing and following a fox. “I think about it as something that arrives in the mind, and then gets dealt with if it’s interesting. It’s more like a following of something, like a fox runs across your backyard and you decide to follow it and see if you can get to where the fox lives. It’s just following a track.”

I was drawn to this novel firstly by the cover. Who can resist a typewriter? And then by the description of a story pieced together by encyclopedic entries, typewriter exercises, immigration manual snippets, and snapshot interludes. That it is also published by the interesting and excellent Transit Books and the author is Chilean all added to this one finding a place on my shelf. Ania is a woman, about 40, who is in limbo. She has quit teaching and pet-sits for a bit of cash; her father has remarried and has ‘another family’ — one which Ania feels ousts her from her place as ‘daughter’; and her boyfriend is a remote figure in this story — whether this is her perspective or a reality we never know. And this is what hooks you in — Ania always seems like she is looking in, but never really participating. Her present is something she wishes to escape from and her past haunts her yet draws her back — seems to have a hold on her. This is a story about exile and migration, about worlds cleaved between past and present but inextricably linked. It’s a tale of never quite fitting in — an exploration of what belonging is and whether it can be truly achieved if you are severed from a part of yourself (whether that be literally, as in physical space, or metaphorically, as in a mental state). When Ania's uncle Augustin dies, her father asks her to go to Argentina in his place (he is unable to leave Chile while his wife is convalescing). Crossing the mountains brings back memories of her childhood summers spent with her grandparents and extended family. Every summer she would spend months as the ‘Chilenita’ — her otherness the role cast for her. Yet she was not the only outcast. Nelida (Augustin’s mother), the young bride who came from Italy and never adjusted, spends her days in the cool of her dark room slowly subsiding into madness (or sadness). Augustin wants to escape his home but doesn’t have the courage to abandon his family, so faithfully takes his typing lessons and remains bound to his mother. He is enamoured of his friend Garigilo’s ease of being and infatuated with Ania. The reader is left to pull the threads together about the state of the relationships between these characters. It seems as though something has occurred that has had an impact on all three, yet the action, if there was one, has happened off the pages, beyond the book, and it is only a residue — an unsaid feeling — that circles beneath Ania. Returning to the town, the memories of childhood are both threatening and endearing. Here she has a role, she is the ‘Chilenita’. As she is drawn into the vortex of her own past, she thinks about her family and their life as migrants from Italy. Her childhood memories butt up against her adult knowledge. What allowed her father to find his escape, while Augustin was stuck in time and place? Why did Nelida find it so hard to adjust, and does she carry a similar burden? What is the way forward if you are an exile in your own life or mind? Costamagna’s writing effortlessly moves across characters and time. The typewriter exercise, family snapshots, and encyclopedia entries give the reader pause as well as context and are interwoven between the unfolding narrative at just the right pitch. The Touch System is a beautiful example of fine writing and intriguing themes — a novel that compulsively draws you in where you are at fingertip distance of something palpable. 

Medical misadventure is the stuff of shouty headlines and third-hand anecdote: told, embellished and finger-pointing. We all know mistakes happen in all professions but when it comes to medicine we are quick to blame and sharply condemn. Accountability is fine, but where is the line between personal responsibility and institutional culpability? In Carl Shuker’s A Mistake, his latest novel, we are in crisis mode from the opening pages. A young woman with severe abdominal pain is in A&E — immediate surgery necessary. Elizabeth Taylor, perfectionist, surgeon, 27 hrs on her feet, is in charge and the theatre is ready — the stage set. We know that this is just the beginning of a disaster, and just as we, the reader, are shunted into the midst of this medical freneticism, the author calls cut and the clapper board comes down and we are taken back to 1986 — to the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. The tension is the same, the anticipation and our watchfulness as the audience just as intense. From the small confines of the theatre and looking down through Elizabeth’s eyes at her patient (well, her patient’s body — her awareness of the woman sometimes seems absent), we are suddenly surrounded by the hype and immensity of space science and we are looking up at the sky in wonder — waiting and on tenterhooks as the countdown begins. Shuker cleverly moves between these two situations building an energetic forcefield — and what some readers will feel is a distraction is anything but: technical language — medical in our hospital theatre and astrophysical at NASA mission control, blow-by-blow action — as the surgeons operate and as the NASA team relay information (the as-it-happens variety), the power hierarchy — who’s in charge in each scenario, and the realisation of the error (too late to save anyone). It all piles up around us — the chaos growing. Yet it is what happens next that will reveal more: the consequences for the medical team and for the engineers. Shuker’s Elizabeth Taylor is not the easiest character to slide along with — she’s a perfectionist, dedicated, frustrating, sometimes a lousy friend, brash, dismissive of fools, and is described variously as a brilliant surgeon and a ‘fucking psychopath’. Yet she's loyal, takes the rap for the mistake and, unlike the bureaucratic nightmare she has to work under, she’s not looking for the ‘good’ PR story even when there is wriggle room for her to distance herself from the crisis. But it’s hard to tell whether she has been altered by the mistake or is ultimately only concerned for her own record. Ego, power and success are themes that you expect in this story, and with these comes the flip side: young doctor burnout and suicide, overwork, failed relationships, doubt, recklessness and the unrelenting pressure to be right always. Shuker’s new novel is a departure in style from his previous work. The Method Actors, his first novel, which I read back in 2005, was a big, brilliant, complex book. A Mistake is sharp, scalpel-fine. Shuker has pared this novel back to bone and gristle, letting the reader feel, by being stabbed repeatedly with attack language, reckless behaviour, fleeting insights and snide dialogue, the intensity of this life and this error. The ending is as abrupt as the start and you will be wounded — but intrigued by that scalpel cut. Long after you read this novel you will have a scar to remember it by. 

[Now, also a film! Directed by Christine Jeffs, the film premiered at Tribeca Festival earlier this month. Interview with Jeffs. Releasing Aotearoa in July NZIFF.]

Cruelty is never too far from the surface of the Rachel Cusk novel, Second Place. M owns an idyllic home on the marshland with her second husband Tony. They have rescued the land and built a home for themselves in this remote and abundant place, and share it, that is the cottage—the Second Place—by invitation. M has been fascinated by the art of L since an early encounter with his work in Paris after a nightmarish experience on a train, an experience that the reader is never fully informed about, yet the spectacular—a devil, metaphorical or real—remains as a threat throughout. So when M, after years of obsession with L, finally convinces the artist to come and stay, to retreat and paint, her expectations, as you can anticipate, are high. Her expectations of fulfilment, creatively and psychologically, are painfully ridiculous in a middle-aged, privileged sense. What does she expect from this special bond with L? When L arrives—by private jet of a friend’s cousin—with said friend in tow, the beautiful and young Brett, M is miffed. You can’t help but feel little empathy for her. Her desires are unreasonable and ethically questionable, let alone uncomfortable. M’s obsession with a self-seeking, seemingly loathsome and churlish fading artist is misguided at best. Add to the mix M’s daughter Justine and her German boyfriend Kurt, arrived from Berlin as their jobs pack in due to a downward economy (and Covid—although this isn’t mentioned by Cusk), and the perfect pressure cooker for a melodrama is set. The novel is told as to ‘Jeffers’ by letter. We never meet Jeffers and have little knowledge of who Jeffers is and why he plays such an important role as confidant to M. What we can decipher later, from the afterword, is that the novel is inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, published in 1932 (there’s a contemporary review in the New York Times archive) about D.H.Lawrence’s stay at her artist retreat in New Mexico. Here too, is a story of obsession and delusion, and letters to Robinson Jeffers about Mabel’s experience with the Lawrences. Yet you don’t need to know this to find the writing compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical (the storyline of Kurt deciding to be a writer and his ‘reading’ is priceless) and unsettling. It will make you squirm. This is a novel about ownership—who owns whom—and the power or agency of one over the other or the ideas of the other. M will come to despise L and L already despises M, and sets out to destroy her. Yet his ability to do so is compromised by his own weakness, according to M. And here lies the dilemma: the narrator. You can’t like her. Her complete preoccupation with herself and her property, whitewashed, much like the walls of the cottage, with a veneer of care, is revealed in her asides to Jeffers and by her knowing attitude about the creative process within the isolation of someone basically just talking to themselves. Yet, the novel reverberates within its cliches and set-ups to bring the reader to the eye-watering conclusion that Cusk has cleverly played a game of cards where most of the best cards are hers—and the reader is in second place.

[2021]

The finalists have been announced celebrating the best in Aotearoa’s children’s and teen books. There are some exceptional gems, and some of my personal favourites from the past year have made the cut. A finalist for the Young Adult Fiction Award and the NZSA Award for Best First Book is Tsunami.

This excellent graphic novel from Paekakariki-based illustrator, animator, and comic maker Ned Wenlock deals with bullying, being an outsider, and that awkward transition from childhood to adulthood, with raw honesty and clarity.

Meet Peter, a target for the school bullies. His commitment to truth and being right isn’t always the best fit for your final days of primary school. Being twelve is never easy and, for Peter, life is just too much. Peter’s parents are too busy bickering to notice his despair, his nemesis Gus and his cronies are on his case, and there’s a new girl at school just as much a misfit as him. But she’s a badass, and it’s difficult for Peter to navigate her motives. It all feels overwhelming to Peter — like a tsunami is coming and he isn't sure he can stop it.

Told in Ned’s unique and beautifully pared-down style, Tsunami is a taut page-turner, a coming-of-age story, and nuanced examination of early teenage alienation and the unpredictable consequences of our actions. 
Another example of superb publishing from Earth’s End.