There’s nothing like a journal to keep you up with the play, reinvigorate your thinking and introduce you to new ideas. Counterfutures is published biannually in Aotearoa, it’s peer reviewed, and has a bunch of good people on its editorial and advisory boards. It’s a multidisciplinary journal of Left research and thought, and includes essays, interviews and reviews. Published here, and about here, it also connects with international colleagues, both scholarly and grassroots. In this issue, editor Neil Vallelly interviews Princeton Professor Wendy Brown. ‘Towards a Counter-Nihilistic Politics’ is a wide-ranging interview that looks at the 2023 protests on American campuses, an analysis of current left politics, specifically in the US but also broadly relevant to other nations; — its reinvention in the face of one might say disenchantment, and a delve into political philosopher Max Weber, as well as Brown’s own work on neoliberalism and nihilism. In ‘Whakapapa of a Prison Riot’ Emma Rākete and Ti Lamusse, unpack the 2020 uprising at Waikeria Prison with an eye-opening and passionate exposition on the riot, prisoner rights, censorship and free speech. Their critique is sharp and powerful drawing on history, injustices of the past and present, and it’s a call to action for change in our criminal justice system — the kind of thinking and discussion that is missing from most media. In ‘Māori Marx, Māori Modernism: Hone Tuwhare’ Dougal McNeill gets under the skin of the poet’s work. Here is Tuwhare’s socialist connections in his words and deeds. Engaging, and adding further depth to this excellent poet’s body of work. And if you are needing to continuously find a way to unpick the complexities of Israel-Palestine, a conversation between Tariq Ali and historian Rashid Khalidi is enlightening and thoughtful. ‘The Neck and the Sword’ is an in-depth interview which gives excellent insight into Palestinian struggles for statehood. Khalidi goes back to the Arab Revolts of the late 1930s, and how it connects to the Nakba of 1947-8. He highlights the impacts of displacement, the war of 1967, the evolution of the PLO and later Hamas. This is a conversation with clarity of thought, facts and analysis, a conversation rooted in a people’s struggle, and above all humanity. While this interview was recorded in mid-2023, it feels even more important now, when booksellers can be arrested for doing their job, and powerful players are intent on a course of action in Gaza and the West Bank which will lead to further disenfranchisement. And these are just a few of the journal’s entries. Get Counterfutures: Left Thought and Practice Aotearoa on your radar and on your reading pile!
How dangerous is a sad man? Sister Perpetue is on the night shift. She is under strict instructions to watch the patient (or is he a prisoner, shackled to the bed?) — to never let her eyes or mind wander. Yet when he talks, she listens and is caught up in his tale. His horrific story. For is he merely unfortunate, or is he a monster? In The Glutton, A.K. Blakemore turns from witches (her previous award-winning novel captured the puritanical fervour of England, 1643) to the infamy of The Great Tarare — ‘The Glutton of Lyon’. A man so perverse, so tortured by his insatiable hunger, that he will eat anything. The Glutton is a glorious novel. Glorious in its writing; Blakemore paints with her words a world alive with visceral undertakings, both beautiful and appalling. Glorious in its depiction of depravity and desire; the futile attempts to capture love or meaning in a maelstrom of corruption and ignorance. Glorious in its observations of time; this turbulent history of dissatisfaction, desperation, and rebellion. The revolution calls all men to its reckoning, and a boy-man like Tarare turns the heads of more powerful men — men that will command him to perform and then spit him out like gristle that irritates the tooth. And then there are his fellows who will not claim him — who prefer him a spectacle. For what are they, but curious? Hardened and bored by the grind of their days and the poverty of their hearth and heart. In all this, can Tarare be anything other than the monstrous man with his jaws wide open, his throat slack as he ingests mountains of offal, eats small animals alive, and takes in copious buttons, belts, and other fancies as the crowd demands? Grotesque, exhilarating, and strangely beautiful, Blakemore’s The Glutton is a delectable dish. Gobble it up!
There are still plenty of gems in our fiction sale. It’s a great opportunity to discover a new author, to delve into a different genre, and improve your reading addiction. If you haven’t read Nell Zink, you can choose: Doxology or Nicotine. Both are excellent. If you like music the former, but for me the latter is still my favourite. Zink’s writing, with its overtones and undertones (plenty of sly digs at cultural norms and hilarious metaphors about relationships), is clever and exhilarating. In Nicotine she explores family and relationships in her own surprising way. Enter Penny, the unemployed business school graduate, daughter of Norm, the Jewish shaman who is famous for his healing clinics and extreme spiritualism, and Amalia, a Kogi, the young second wife rescued from the poverty of South America, who has become a very successful corporate banker. With parents like this, you know from the beginning that Penny carries some baggage. When her aged father dies, Penny is distraught and is left with more questions than answers about her family. Needing distraction, her family decides that she needs something to do. They send her to rescue her grandparents’ long-abandoned home in a dodgy suburb of New Jersey. We enter Nicotine; — the home of squatter activists whose common cause is the right to smoke. Penny is intrigued by the squatters and attracted to Rob, the very good-looking bicycle mechanic. Rather than throw them out of the house, she becomes part of the group, developing relationships with the home dwellers that will change not only her life, but theirs too. Penny, despite her seeming uselessness, becomes the catalyst for change for all, with many hilarious machinations and sly digs at social conformity on all sides along the way. Zink puts her characters through the paces, never letting up on them, (nor giving up), and plays with societal concepts of capitalism, pragmatism and spirituality. Zink is a ‘naughty’ writer — toying with her reader and her characters, constantly making fun of both in a very appealing and clever way. If you like to look at life a bit sideways then you’ll enjoy her style, playfulness and reflections on people — their gullibility, as well as their backbone.
Gliff is a book about authoritarianism, bonding, boundaries, bureaucracy, categories, choices, climate, community, crisis, cruelty, curiosity, data, definitions, devices, disconnection, doubt, exploitation, fables, fierceness, freedom, hope, horses, humanness, identity, imagination, kindness, language, lies, limitations, loss, meaning, meaningless, money, obedience, pollution, power, possibilities, power, profit, questions, rebellion, a red line, reduction, refugees, regulations, reports, resistance, revelation, rigidity, siblings, story-telling, a strange machine, surveillance, the digital world, the othered, the unwanted, toeing the line, truth, undesirables, verification, words.
It’s a book about now, our near future, the past, time. It’s a book that frightens, dances, plays, whispers and shouts. It’s a book that draws on mythology, fairytales, art, poetry and literature; and gives us words that have come before and will go ahead of us. It’s a warning and a promising embrace.
Siblings Briar and Rose are left to fend for themselves. Leif has found them an empty house to wait in. He’s taken their passports, left them with a stack of tinned food and a roll of notes. Their home has been red-lined, their camper van red-lined. There’s a paddock of horses waiting to be sent to the knacker’s yard. Rose and Gliff have formed an unbreakable bond of perfect trust. Briar is putting the pieces of the puzzle together, while Rose is clear-eyed in instinct if not in knowledge, in a world that insists on order. An order that feeds the machine of the wealthy and the powerful.
Ali Smith’s Gliff is a book that I didn’t want to finish. A book so interesting, nuanced and layered, that I did not want to depart. To stay in this playfulness of words, the richness of language and story, to be suspended with curiosity, while also confronted by the urgency of our 21st century landscape must surely be a work of genius. Fortunately, this book is one of a pair; —Glyph will follow Gliff.
“It’s the same thing time and time again, shamelessly, tirelessly. It doesn’t matter whether it’s morning or afternoon, winter or summer. Whether the house feels like home, whether somebody comes to the door to let me in. I arrive, and I want to stay, and then I leave.” All My Goodbyes is a novel for the restlessness in us all. Mariana Dimópulos’s protagonist is a young woman on the move. Leaving Argentina at 23 in an attempt to thwart her father’s ambitions and to escape the confines of what she sees as her predictable life, she heads to Madrid with the idea of being an ‘artist’, smoking hashish and hanging out, discussing ‘ideas’ with other travellers. After only a month, she is bored and on the move again, reinventing herself — being Lola or Luisa — whichever identity fits, being a tourist or a traveller, making new backstories, but never quite the truth. She is ambiguous to those she meets and, at times, to the reader also. We follow, or aptly, interact with her life over a decade as she swings between several European places — Madrid, Malaga, Berlin and Heidelberg to mention a few — and South America, washing up in rural Patagonia. The narrative is fractured as she relays her memories, skidding across one experience to the next and back again in a looping circuit, tossing us backwards and forwards in time. We are taken into conversations and thrown out again; we interact with those she has formed relationships with and ultimately said goodbye to. We see her as a traveller, tourist, voyeur, baker, shelf stacker, factory worker, farmhand. Upon this fractured narrative, a web is woven as we piece together the relationships that make her and break her — and always there is an impending sense of something or someone that will change her, a sense of threat with the axe taking centre stage. Dimópulos’s writing is subtle and agile. We do not mind being tossed on our protagonist's sea. In fact, we are curious. We love her late-night conversations with Julia in her kitchen, leaning up against the bench with the sleepy Kolya bunched up in his mother’s arms; we wonder when she will give in to the gentle charms of the scholar Alexander; and question why she is fascinated by the uber entrepreneur Stefan. We know, before it happens, that she will abandon them all, that her desire to leave is greater than her desire to stay. She travels full circle: we encounter her back in her homeland — still restless, still moving — living in the southernmost part of Patagonia. Working for Marco and his mother she finally finds a place to stop. Yet deceit and disaster settle here and take her onward and away, against her will and desire. Is she the architect of her own disaster, creating impossible situations? Her abandonment of people in her life is at times mutually beneficial, at other times cruel. Why does she not speak up, or face up to herself, when she could make a difference? Her riposte is always to leave — to turn her back. While the themes in this novel are restlessness, abandonment and departure, the writing, in contrast, is assured, subtly ironic, agile and so compelling that you will want to reread this — you will want to keep arriving.
Be careful what you wish for! A catch-cry of our present time is a desire to find meaningful connection, to be part of a community within which we are specific and individual. Yet in reality we are more likely to find ourselves awash in a social media sea. In Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House, the desire for authenticity and connection is high and the clever Bix Bouton has the key. Bix is rich and successful. A fast-thinker graduate, his start-up, Mandala, took off, but now he’s out of ideas and craving something of the magic of his younger self. Infiltrating an academic discussion group where they are prying open the social anthropologist Miranda Kline’s theory Patterns of Affinity, kicks off the lightbulb for Bix. And the beautiful cube, Own Your Unconscious, is born. Get yourself a beautiful cube and download your memory — your every moment and feeling: either just for yourself so you can revisit childhood or recall a moment; or upload for the wider community — to The Collective Consciousness — so memories can be shared and information found (sound familiar?). Now Bix is richer, more successful, a celebrity who’s a regular at The White House and loved by many. Life is good. Yet at the edges there is doubt. And not everyone is a believer. There are eluders, those that wipe themselves to escape — pretty much losing their identity for freedom from the technological behemoth. There is Mondrian, an organisation that sees ethical problems within this set-up and offers a way out for those who feel trapped. This novel has connections to her Pultizer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. There are characters who exist in both, and actions that are revisited by the curious, in particular the next generation who live with the consequences. There’s the anonymity of the urban and the claustrophobia of suburban landscapes, alongside the openness of the desert and the endless possibilities of the sea. All these landscapes play their role in the interior landscapes (the minds) of the diverse array of characters. This is a novel that does not stay still. There is no straight line in The Candy House. Egan writes explosive short pieces, chapters which connect, disconnect and reconnect (sometimes) in surprising ways. Characters are related in familial and relationship lines, or by deed, or the outsourced memory of deeds. Some we meet once, others on several occasions — they are in turn in all their guises: adults, children, parents, siblings. This may sound disjointed, and at times the narrative may lead you astray, but the thematic pulse runs continuously through. As in her earlier Goon Squad, Egan plays with structure and different narrative styles. There is the 'Lulu the Spy' chapter told in bite-sized dispatch commands — a tensely addictive reading experience; there is a brilliantly cutting e-mail conversation chapter where the narcissistic desires of the correspondents will make you wince; and there is the mathematically genius 'i, Protaganist' in which a man tries to realise his crush through obsessive statistical analysis. Knitted seamlessly into this wonderland of ideas are the concrete desires, fears and concerns of various humans, all achingly searching for authenticity within an illusionary world. An energetically clever novelist, Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House gives you sweet treats, as well as a whirlwind of sugary highs and lows. Put down the cube and pick up The Candy House.
What to do when you’re read all of one of your favourite author’s books and there is nothing new on the horizon? Go backwards, of course! When you discover a writer you enjoy, it is usually somewhere mid-stream in their writing journey. They have risen to the top of the publicity machine, or cracked the bestseller list. Or you’ve discovered them via a friend’s or bookseller’s recommendation. Maybe they have made it through the distribution chain, been spied by a bookseller, landed on a shelf, and made it to your hand almost unbidden. Possibly you noted a review or were taken by the jacket design. Whatever myriad way in which you discover new authors, it’s bound to be somewhere in the midst of their writing career. (Unless they are a one-hit wonder!) So going backwards, when forwards is not an option, is often a possibility and adds context to what has come after. I thoroughly enjoy Sheila Heti’s writing. While I appreciate her obvious knowledge of literature and her skill with language, it is her curiosity which is most endearing. A curiosity with her own psyche and with writing as an experiment as well as an experience, paired with her sly wit, make her books thought-provoking and enjoyable. Her work starting with How Should a Person Be? (not her first published work — somewhere in the middle) is based on herself or a fictionalised idea of Heti. One can never be too sure about reality with Heti, but many of her books are described as ‘novels’. Her books are equal parts hilarious, earnest, infuriating, heartfelt, and compelling. This range of responses can be raised on a single page sometimes, and maybe this is what makes her work so interesting. So, to going backwards…
Ticknor, initially published in 2005, is a historical novel of sorts. Inspired by the real-life friendship between the American historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, George Ticknor, it’s a novella exploring friendship and scholarly society. Don’t let the unfamiliar names put you off. I knew nothing about these fellows, and it didn’t matter. Ticknor is a study in envy. And also an exercise in form. It’s been compared with Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser, and garnered a bit of attention in literary circles when it was published. And here is one literary circle where the bonds of a one-sided friendship has no opening. For Ticknor, this is a closed circle, one which means more to him than he does to his fellow writers. While his childhood friend climbs the ranks of fame and fortune, Ticknor becomes increasingly psychologically distraught and paranoid. A bitterness seeps in much like the rain that wets him through as he stands outside Prescott’s house deliberating his attendance at a dinner party to the point where it is too late to venture inside! Here is Ticknor, hardly likable, and here are his cronies, even less likable and disagreeably pompous. And yet, this is what Ticknor aspires to, inclusion and feted admiration. Should we sympathise? Heti balances our hand and heart with Ticknor’s absurdities and the ludicrous situation of scholarly jealousies. Here humour, her sly wit, come to the fore, and paired with the taut writing, make Ticknor, the novel, a worthy contender, while Ticknor, the man (in this fictional telling) not a contender at all. This novella isn’t the best of Heti’s work, but I enjoyed the stylitsic form and playful pointedness, and the wit keeps you there. Heti’s writing is always pushing at possibilities and exploring new ways to tackle the novel as form, as well as exploring how we live in the world. Her latest book, Alphabetical Diaries, is a case in point. Experimental work that is amusing, and rich with ideas and curiosity.
Oscar Mardell's freezing works poems are a clever addition to the tradition of New Zealand gothic literature. Think Ronald Hugh Morrison’s The Scarecrow and David Ballantyne's Sydney Bridge Upside Down and you’ll get a sense of the macabre that edges its ways through these poems like entrails. There’s the nostalgia for the stink of the slaughter yards, the adherence to the architects of such vast structures on our landscapes, and the pithy analysis of our colonial pastoral history. That smell so evocative of hot summer days cooped up in a car travelling somewhere along a straight road drifts in as you read 'Horotiu' with its direct insult to the yards and its references to offal. In these poems, there is the thrust and violence of killing alongside the almost balletic rhythm of the work — the work as described on the floor as well as the poetic structure of Mardell’s verse.
“ th sticking knife th steel th saw
th skinning knife th hook th hammer
th spreader the chop & th claw "
“ the dull thud resonates
through bodies / still
swings rhythmically & out of time
pours out of me / equivocal ”
Most of the poems note the architect and the date of construction for these ominous structures, which had a strange grandeur — simultaneously horrific and glorious. One of the outstanding architects was J.C.Maddison, a designer known for both his slaughterhouses and churches, alongside other stately public buildings. In 'Belfast', Mardell cleverly bridges these divides — the lambs, the worship, the elation.
“ did he who set a compass
to port levy & amberly
who traced th wooden hymnhouses
for st pauls / divided
& th holy innocents / drowned ”
There are plenty of other cultural references tucked away in these poems. Minnie Dean makes an appearance in Mataura and James K Baxter in Ngauranga Abattoir. In the latter, Mardell slips in Baxter's line "sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats". Yet the poems go beyond nostalgia or clever nods to literature, to sharpen our gaze on our colonial relationship. 'Burnside' tells it perfectly:
“ & ws new zealands little lamb
to britains highest tables led
& were th final works performed
out here in godsown killing shed ”
Mardell’s collection, Great Works, is pithy and ironic with its clever nods to cultural and social history, gothic in imagery, and all wrapped up like a perfectly trussed lamb in our ‘God’s Own Country’ nostalgia, with a large drop of sauce and a knife waiting to slice.
We desperately need more time to read, so this summer we are prioritising reading over pretty much all other activities. Here are a few books we feel are pulling us towards them.
STELLA:
Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser
The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Marianna Enriques (translated by Megan McDowell)
Tremor by Teju Cole
Ticknor by Sheila Heti
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
The Royal Free by Carl Shuker
Thread Ripper by Amalie Smith (translated by Jennifer Russell)
THOMAS:
Tell by Jonathan Buckley
Diaries by Franz Kafka (translated by Ross Benjamin)
All My Precious Madness by Mark Bowles
The Planetarium by Nathalie Sarraute (translated by Maria Jolas)
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking by Han Smith
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Concerning the Future of Souls by Joy Williams
Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer
I Don’t Care by Ágota Kristóf (translated by Chris Andrews)
The Plague by Jacqueline Rose
Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton
Not pictured but certainly on the pile:
The Calculation of Volume, Book I and Book II by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara J. Haveland)
What books are on your summer reading pile? Lets us know — or let us help you build it!
Click through to find out more:
STELLA:
Gliff by Ali Smith
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
The Empusium: A health resort horror story by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
Brown Bird by Jane Arthur
THOMAS:
Parade by Rachel Cusk
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
Lori and Joe by Amy Arnold
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Spent Light by Lara Pawson
Earth’s End publishes excellent graphic novels in Aotearoa. The latest from their publishing stable is Episodes from the pen of Tāmaki Makaurau cartoonist, artist and editor Alex Scott. Here you have a series of slice-of-life stories —episodes — that capture growing up in the city in the 1990s and the influence of media and advertising on society, particularly young people. Scott has narrowed in on the influence of advertising and the role of television initially, through to the advent of social media, to disrupt and to create an arena where there can only be disappointment and confusion. In the first story eating breakfast is dominated by the hyperactive images of Space Cadet cereal. There is no touching the ground here, rather a sense of disconnect. There are stories about relationships and desire, mostly not realised, where the protagonist has romantic expectations that occur only in soap operas. A teen narrows in on an overly hyped beauty product as the key to popularity. A man is traumatised from working in the advertising world. There’s the world of the mall, and hanging out at the beach. Judgements abound based on peer pressures, heavily influenced by advertising, reality TV and the addictive nature of the TV series. Yet there are also feisty rejections of these messages, and growing suspicions on the part of some of the protagonists. As technology changes, and the media platforms vary, Scott cleverly changes the dimensions of the frame. Gone is the TV screen rectangle. The phone takes over with its vertical reference. To reflect the screen-like style, text is captioned rather than speech-bubbled, giving another sense of remove. In the later stories, social media is king, and there is a distinctive shift to self-absorption — the screen turns on the self recording every moment in that strangely manufactured way. The illustrations are wonderful, with details that will keep you looking and looking again, seeking out the familiar. In a strange way, there is comfort in the absurdity; and yet it is this exact absurdity that questions our relationship with media, especially in the formative years of childhood and the headiness of growing up. The stories in Episodes are sad and funny, thought-provoking, and all too real. Here you will find the wonderful awkwardness of adolescence, the kid that is always sideways to the world, along with the epiphany of being yourself, and the sometimes crushing, but always necessary, understanding that life isn’t like the movies. A ballad to — and a warning about — our media-obsessed society.
Here is a book where the abject meets the sublime, where objects trigger histories, and where history is bound to objects; where in every place and in every object an association can be made (some juvenile , others frightening) and where the most mundane of activities unleashes waves of emotion. Lara Pawson is on her knees cleaning the ancient tiles in her flat. She is dusting the tarnished sporting cup in which she spies a moth trap. She observes with a degree of contempt but also reassurance the sponge tucked behind the downpipe. The egg timer is its own bomb, the toaster shoved in her arms by a recently widowed neighbour a disaster waiting to happen. How can she take this functional object into her kitchen without contemplating torture? Walking with her dog along damp streets, and through scrubby wastelands, her mind wanders to other forests, other spaces of escape and entrapment. Spent Light is deplorable and beautiful. As you think you can read no more, you are drawn in by this persistent voice, by the intelligence and desperation of this mind as it grapples with history, with the objects that connect us to human actions, to human depravity and suffering. And yet, it also gives us a vision of overwhelming love, of connectedness in spite of horror; to a place where an object can tell us a history — its story, but also a story of others it has touched. For it is in the seeing, in the looking, when one thinks if only they could close their eyes, close their minds, that a truth will come. Lara Pawson is facing her demons, or is it our collective demons, and she is shocking, She confronts us with her determination and savage humour. She picks at the wound and somehow simultaneously has the ability to make a scab that will protect and heal us all. Spent Light is as compelling as it is repellent. A book filled with horrors (some intensely difficult, others facile) which are countered with remarkable acts of love and care, all held in the silent, yet powerful, presence of objects. Remarkable.
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.
Orbital is hypnotic. The first revelation is the language. Harvey’s languid prose takes you somewhere unknown, somewhere beautiful and beguiling but also strangely unsettling. Then you notice that time is upended, that all the rules of earth that you know but hardly consider are unpicked; —are absent. Because you, like the six people circling the earth, are transported into this whirring machine. You are in orbit. Here a day is sixteen days. A morning every ninety minutes. A space station observing the earth, watching a typhoon, lamenting the planet called home, recording what happens below and what happens within; —an endless cycle of experiments, observations, and routine. Six people morphing into one organism as their lives in this bubble of a world push them, more accurately float them, closer to each other to a place where dreams overlap and longings coincide. And where each of the six, ironically, captured by individual thoughts, and misgivings, are more alone than ever. They revel in the wonders of space; —the magnitude of the universe; —the mysticism of the moon, the awe of spacewalking, and the unfathomable future of life on other planets. They are in admiration of technology, while simultaneously in despair at what they observe on that precious planet, Earth. Yet, there is also reverence and wonder. A ballad to the small blue planet that sustains us and that holds so many things of beauty. From the space station nature is overwhelming; —the orange deserts, the great swathes of ocean, the ice of the polar caps, the beguiling southern auroras. Harvey’s imagining of Earth from space through the eyes of six humans from different nations as they observe an Earth that has few borders (the great rivers show, and the coasts of Europe are well lit) and a radiance that captures the planet as a whole as if you could hold it in your palm, also dives into the particular, the minuscule; —those moments that are individual and small in the scale of things (especially if you are orbiting in space). A grandmother at the market in Nagasaki, an astronaut making contact with a lonely woman on Earth via ham radio, a postcard given with love depicting a painting framing a question about viewpoint, the regret of a flippant answer, and the obsession with a disaster which becomes a ritual. These beautiful juxtapositions of the grand and the particular are caressed by Harvey's language and descriptive narrative. This is observation at its best. The observation of our planet, (triggered by the author’s watching of live feed from the ISS when suffering from insomnia), and the observation of humanity in all our glory and failure. Little wonder that this novel is Booker Prize shortlisted. Beguiling and breathless with a rhythm all its own, this is a small novel packed with ideas, a celebration of our planet, as well as a call to action for embracing and protecting all its wonder, natural and human.
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.
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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 will 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."
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.
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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.
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