 | Girl at End by Richard Brammer {Reviewed by THOMAS} The results of any laboratory testing for cell abnormality or antigen present as either positive or negative but the passage of time demonstrates the result categories to be four: true positive, false positive, false negative and true negative; or, rather, the results are either positive or negative and the cellular abnormality or antigen is either present or absent, but the two sets of two categories are not superimposed due to error margins, indeterminacy and ambiguity. What is seen and what actually is overlap only in the majority of instances. Every statement has its confidence undermined, largely due to the processes by which the statement is achieved. Girl at End is concerned with laboratory testing and is itself a form of laboratory testing even when not ostensible about laboratory testing, but, often, about music, if music is not itself a form of laboratory testing. Girl at End is a book about seeking confidence in precision but losing confidence because of uncertainty about that to which precision has been applied, precision being always more certain about its origins than its applications. Girl at End is an accumulation of data fields that may or may not represent that to which they are applied, however googlable the data in the data fields may be, data fields through which people move, impelled by whatever it is that impels people, not our concern, not knowable, not useful knowledge even if it were knowable, and as they move through the data field, the data, in constant movement, bounces off their surfaces, scattering, interpenetrating, both defining and concealing whatever, whoever, has entered the field. Only surfaces make any sense. Interference in the flow of text, for instance, is both a camouflage and a revelation. Depending on the nature of the test, the grooming of the data field, the flavour of the obsession, disparate entities may present as similar and similar as disparate. This both increases our dependence upon the tests and undermines our confidence in the tests. False positives. False negatives. What if these were in the majority? We would be liberated into indeterminacy while still clutching at the tests even though we would know these tests were less reliable than not. Our presence in the data field can produce nothing but ambiguity. Uncertainty is our signature, evidence of our presence in a field comprised of data, the more precise, the more detailed, the better. Girl at End is a “literature of exhaustion.” Northern Soul meets laboratory cytology: Girl at End is the interpenetration of the two. When one’s interest is not very interesting but just interesting enough to qualify as an interest and when one’s occupation is not very occupying but just occupying enough to qualify as an occupation, it is the interpenetration of the two, by virtue of the spinning of a turntable or a centrifuge, the interpenetration, the mixing, the mutual contamination, if we can think of it as contamination, that makes us more than either the so-called interest or the so-called occupation. Only when exhausted can we find respite. Lab-lit is best read clean and leaves no residue. “Girl at End is feeling so virtual. Branco speaks. Sheriff speaks. Branco speaks again.” What people say is only mouthed. The words are obscured by the words of the songs on the soundtrack that overwhelms the screenplay, songs from the past, incidentally, as all data is from the past, but the screenplay is vital to the TV show because without it no-one would know how to be or what was what, depending on whether the screenplay is prescriptive or descriptive, and this is itself by no means certain. The screenplay is perhaps after all no screenplay but the notebook of some alien uncertain of what is important enough to record. “Paul Sartre eats his bowl of chips. They don’t seem like anything. It’s like they’re imbued with nothing.” >> The official Girl at End book trailer. >> An excerpt. >> Another excerpt. >> And strawberries and peaches. |
 {Reviewed by STELLA} | Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest novel, The Neighbourhood, is a chilling encounter with corruption, brutality and eroticism. The story opens with girlfriends Marisa and Chabela - two beautiful and wealthy women - who become lovers. Their husbands are successful men and best friends, one a lawyer, the other an engineer, with political connections in the right places and connections to the booming industrial wealth of Peru. Set in Lima in the 1990s, the backdrop is fraught, even for the wealthy and connected: curfews are in place, armed police remind the populace of the terrorist attacks, gossip and intrigue are slapped across the tabloid newspapers, and shady secret police overlords manipulate the political and economic social fabric. When Marisa’s husband Enrique Cardenas gets embroiled in a sex scandal, Garro - a gutter press editor - attempts blackmail. Enrique is far too arrogant to pay the journalist off and a game of bluff ensues, with each thinking the other will back down. The story is printed, Garro is murdered, there are several suspects, and Shorty enters the game. Here the plot really starts to drive forward. Shorty is a hard-edged reporter, a woman who admired her sleazy boss Garro for his ambition if not so much for his method. Getting closer to the ‘real’ story, Shorty is summoned by The Doctor, a sinister character modelled on Vladimiro Montesinos, the head of Peru’s Intelligence Service in the 1990s and henchman to Alberto Fujimori, the then President. Caught up in this dangerous situation, it seems as though she has no option but to capitulate to grander forces than her own. Vargas Llosa uses the relationship between the two couples to play out the decadence and deception inherent in the political structure. The novel is part thriller, part spectacle. He cleverly sets up each chapter like an episode of a soap opera with titles such as 'A Singular Affair', 'The Scandal' and 'A Whirlpool'. The seedy underbelly of the wealthy and politically powerful rubs up against, yet never touches, the dirt of the impoverished, highlighting the vast differences in experience, the gulf between the classes and the forces of power and money. Ironically, although truths are uncovered, the rich continue to grow richer, keep their positions of power, and indulge in their erotic play and subterfuge despite the tensions and troubles that could trip them. |
>>Alpine Inspiration (an interview with Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey).
>> Vintage NZ climbing.
>> 'Winter 4K' by Sam Deuchrass.
NEW RELEASES
New books for a new month.
"Pure Hollywood is pure gold. In tales of rare wit and verve, Christine Schutt leads us into the lives of her perfectly drawn characters - couples young and old, children, skinny men, charming women - and dances on masterful prose through gardens, alcohol (often too much), luxurious homes, and resort vacation spots. Come for the art of her exquisitely weird writing and stay for the human drama." - Ottesa Moshfegh
"Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain't seen nothing yet. Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit." - Claire Vaye Watkins
What is it like to pass through middle age to the great unknown beyond, full of new uncertainties, irritations and brushes with mortality?
"This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet." - AV
"A caustically funny take on the indignities and banalities of everyday life." - New York Times
A thoughtful and wide-ranging collection, surveying the ways we think about, view, approach, climb and dream about mountains. New Zealand, after all, is only held above the surface of the ocean by the mountains upon which it depends. The selection of non-fiction, poetry, fiction and journals includes work by Rachel Bush, Freda du Faur, John Pascoe, Brian Turner, Graeme Dingle, Fleur Adcock, Edmund Hillary and Hone Tuwhare.
First published in 1977 and only now translated into English, this book introduces us to a 'new' Latin American master. Gallardo's stories are surreal and philosophical, fascinating and unsettling, melancholy and funny.
>>Read a sample story.
A good selection of influential Anglophone and translated books, well illustrated with covers, portraits, &c.
Murray spent much of his childhood either playing or working on the moor, chasing sheep and cutting and gathering peat for fuel. This book is an examination of how this landscape affected him and others. Murray explores his early life on the Isle of Lewis together with the experiences of those who lived near moors much further afield, from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland to the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Australia. Examining this environment in all its roles and guises, Donald reflects on the ways that for centuries humans have represented the moor in literature, art and folktale, how these habitats remain an essential aspect of industrial heritage and working life, and how important the peatlands are ecologically.
A man wakes up in a hospital bed, with no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The only information the doctor shares with his patient is his name: Innokenty Petrovich Platonov. As memories slowly resurface, Innokenty begins to build a vivid picture of his former life as a young man in Russia in the early twentieth century, living through the turbulence of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. But soon, only one question remains: how can he remember the start of the twentieth century, when the pills by his bedside were made in 1999?
>> What history cannot teach us.
What happens to issues and the people that they concern when the news cycle moves on? What happens when reality takes over from debate (and when debate becomes no longer possible)? New fiction, poetry, photography and essays.
The 350 images in this book, many of them published here for the first time, not only chronicle the introduction of photography in Japan, but are also useful in helping to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in mid-nineteenth century Japan. Taken between 1853 and 1912 by the most important local and foreign photographers working in Japan, the photographic images, whether sensational or everyday, intimate or panoramic, document a nation about to abandon its traditional ways and enter the modern age.
2018 marks 125 years of suffrage in New Zealand and 100 years in Britain. This beautifully illustrated book gives a blow-by-blow account of the British struggle, and potted biographies of suffragists worldwide, including Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia.
More than 100 recipes for vibrant, earthy, unexpected dishes from the culinary zone straddling Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Russia and Turkey. Nicely presented, too.
Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.
>> 'Buddha Blues' by Ornette Coleman.
>> 'India' by John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.
Visiting camps and hostels, sneaking into detention centres and delving into his own family's history of displacement, Trilling weaves together the stories of people he met and followed from country to country. In doing so, he shows that the terms commonly used to define them - refugee or economic migrant, legal or illegal, deserving or undeserving - fall woefully short of capturing the complex realities.The founding myth of the EU is that it exists to ensure the horrors of the twentieth century are never repeated. Now, as it comes to terms with its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, the 'European values' of freedom, tolerance and respect for human rights are being put to the test.
>> Trilling in Selmentsi.
A graphic novel telling of a Russian fairy tale. Very nicely done.
The internet was meant to set us free. Tech has radically changed the way we live our lives. But have we unwittingly handed too much away to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists? In light of recent data breach scandals around companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information and artificial intelligence? Are we losing our critical faculties, maybe even our free will?
The gulf between Islam and the West is widening. A faith rich with strong values and traditions, observed by nearly two billion people across the world, is seen by the West as something to be feared rather than understood. Sensational headlines and hard-line policies spark enmity, while ignoring the feelings, narratives and perceptions that preoccupy Muslims today. How can Muslims confront the issues that are destroying Islam from within, and what can the West do to help work towards that end?
Contributions from David Bezmozgis, Thi Bui, Reyna Grande, Aleksandar Hemon, Fatima Bhutto, Ariel Dorfman, Vu Tran and others.
Before the arrival of railways, canals formed the major transport infrastructure of the industrial revolution. Today there are more boats on the canals than ever, many of them expressions of the 'slow transport' revolution. Winn treads the towpaths and floats alongside many of the canals' residents to give us new perspectives on the canals in history and the present.
''A clipped, funny, painfully honest narrative voice lights up Wang's novel about a Chinese-American graduate student who finds the scientific method inadequate for understanding her parents, her boyfriend, or herself. Wang has a gift for perspective.'' - Publishers Weekly
Part memoir, part enthusiasm for life in the mountains of southern France, Thorpe's enjoyably discursive book sets off on verbal journeys, and returns always to, the old stone house in which he has lived for the past 25 years.
Definitive, wide ranging.
"For a long time, vegan cooking has lived in the shadow of the health food movement of the Sixties and Seventies, but here's a cookbook that blasts away the past and jumps boldly into a multi-culinary future where veganism isn't just about saying no to animal products but is instead about saying yes to hundreds of mind-blowing dishes from Iraq to Ireland, and from the Philippines to Peru."—Amanda Cohen, Dirt Candy
From huts to skyscrapers, human history is the history of structures. By the structural engineer responsible for the London Shard.
>> Roma the engineer.
Is the president controlled by a foreign power?
Perfect for the poetic flaneur, pacing their pentameters against the wind.
Draws extensively on five centuries of Arab sources to place the Arab experience in its historical context. This new updated edition untangles the latest geopolitical developments of the region to offer a comprehensive account of the Middle East.
"Deeply erudite and distinctly humane." - Atlantic
"Dismantle the patriarchy one cocktail at a time." Includes toasts to extraordinary women in history.
BOOKS @ VOLUME #76.
Find out what we have been reading.
Choose what you will read next.
Read our latest NEWSLETTER (26.5.18).
 | The Shadow Cipher ('York' #1) by Laura Ruby {Reviewed by STELLA} It’s New York, but not as you know it. Laura Ruby’s new series 'York' is an intriguing story about three children trying to save a building from developers. The book opens with a scene set in 1855 - a feisty young woman, Ava, is getting the better of a man who has followed her through the streets of New York. He’s after information about her employers, the famous Morningstarr twins. The genius twins were great inventors and magnificent engineers. They created mechanical machines (bugs and caterpillars) that cleaned the streets, underways and overways with sleek silver carriages, solar winged cars, buildings with complex elevators that go every which way, and other mechanical wonders and automata. The action quickly moves to present-day New York where Tess and Theo Biedermann (geeky twins named after the Morningstarrs) live in a Morningstarr building. Determined not to be booted out of their building, they get together with fellow resident and friend Jamie and set about solving a puzzle, The Old York Cipher, a puzzle that people have been trying to solve for over one hundred years. There are clues all over New York; there is even a dedicated society that spends hours collecting information and analysing the clues in a giant and wondrous archive. Yet few have got beyond the first clue. Tess, Theo and Jamie are great characters who bounce off each other and offer different perspectives to solve the cipher. The first of this trilogy, this book is called The Shadow Cipher, which implies that it’s possible that everyone’s been looking in the wrong places, or maybe there’s more than one cipher. This sets up the series nicely and leaves enough hanging to keep you looking forward to the next volumes. Add to this cross-bred and genetically altered ‘pets’ or ‘service animals’ - Tess has a wonder cat-wolf called Nine; a whole host of great side characters - the younger children in the apartment building, Cricket - a imaginative, sly and sharp six year old - and her brother Otto (a ninja, of course); the very tall Mr Stoop and very short Mr. Pinscher, henchmen of the property developer, Slant; and a fantastical New York dotted with the Morningstarrs' technology, and plenty of city history woven into the story line. An enjoyable, page-turning adventure with clues, mysteries, strange consequences and extremely likeable characters. |
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Not to Read by Alejandro Zambra {Reviewed by THOMAS}
“I am writing with a great deal of ease and fluidity. One must distrust that,” wrote Clarice Lispector, quoted by the Chilean Alejandro Zambra in one of the essays in this highly enjoyable collection of literary observations on, ostensibly, some of the more interesting largely (but not exclusively) Latin American literature of the last quarter century, literature that distrusts, as Zambra dismisses, the clichéed fluidity of the ‘Magic Realists’ most readily (and lazily) associated with Latin American literature by Western readers. Zambra instead values literature that is hesitant, inventive, always aware of new possibilities, mentally and linguistically supple, striving always towards new forms. “All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one,” wrote Walter Benjamin (not quoted by Alejandro Zambra (at least not in this book)). Because the reviews collected here are often of books the reader of Not to Read has not read and by authors with whom the reader (at least this reader) is unfamiliar, the reader at the outset may think they might skip quite a bit of the book, to make reading faster, but Zambra’s book is too interesting, too nicely written, and too enjoyable. There are indeed considerations of many authors the reader has not heard of, but the essays deliver the same fascination as reading Borges’s studies of nonexistent books (Borges thought it more worthwhile, and faster, to write about books that do not exist than to write the books themselves), with the added benefit that, just possibly, works by these authors may already be, or may one day be, available in English. At the very least, one reads to read about the writing and reading of texts, which is, after all, the most interesting thing to read about. The reader might have thought that skipping might save time, but the text runs so lightly and so sprightlyly that the reader is in any case carried forward more rapidly by following the text than they would have proceeded had it been possible to skip. The essays and reviews included inNot to Read also function as a sort of literary autobiography of Zambra himself, his concerns, approaches, influences and motivations, and provide a greater appreciation of his other work, direct yet subtle, playful yet poignant, personal yet politically and socially acute, compact yet wonderfully expansive. Zambra recommends books we are sure that we will like, even though we may never get to read them, but, more importantly, the reasons for his recommendations, his observations on and his responses to these books, provide a portrait of a reader we come quickly to admire, and who we as readers may well wish to be more like, as well as of a writer alert to the possibilities of writing. Zambra is frequently very funny, as he is in the title essay ‘Not to Read’, which starts out as a review of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Have Not Read, which Zambra has himself not read, and carries on to become a deliciously prickly lampoon of opinions formed of books without reading them, intercut with seemingly very valid reasons not to read some writers’ books. Zambra’s concision and lightness (Zambra is an exemplar of the literary qualities Italo Calvino thought most important in his Six Memos for a New Millennium) can produce beautiful sentences, such as this one on Santiago, quivering with a sensitivity that undercuts ease and fluidity and leaves us utterly aware: “It’s the city that we know, the city that would follow us if we wanted to flee from it (from ourselves), with its permanent architectural eclecticism, with the dirty river, almost always a mere trickle, cutting the landscape in half, with the most beautiful sky imaginable in those few days of autumn or winter after it rains, when we rediscover the mountains.” |
>> An interview with Bagieu about the book.
>> Watch Bagieu draw a mermaid.
>> An interview (in French).
>> Someone looks through the book.
>> Live illustration!
>> Other graphic novels by Bagieu.
NEW RELEASES
These books are in the building.
Three decades of the application of Moore's sharp and quirky mind to every cultural manifestation from books to films to politics (and back to books) has left this marvelous residue of essays and criticism.
>> "The route to truth and beauty is a toll road."
When Unn inexplicably disappears, Siss's world is shattered. Siss's struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn's fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the 'Ice Palace' are described in prose of a remarkable lyrical economy.
"How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong. How unlike any other. It is unique. It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary." - Doris Lessing
"I'm surprised it isn't the most famous book in the world." - Max Porter
>> Read an excerpt.
>> 1987 film by Per Blom.
Oil paintings of stills from fail videos, apricots plucked from novels, a porn filmmaker memorialising her son, reasons why Hollywood doesn't cast poets in films. Visual art, poetry, prose, photography, music and comedy from emerging artists.
>> There's a playlist!
Arts and letters: Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, Nick Ascroft, Joseph Barbon, Airini Beautrais, Tony Beyer, Mark Broatch, Danny Bultitude, Brent Cantwell, Rachel Connor, Ruth Corkill, Mark Edgecombe, Lynley Edmeades, Johanna Emeney, Bonnie Etherington, Jess Fiebig, Meagan France, Kim Fulton, Isabel Haarhaus, Bernadette Hall, Michael Hall, Rebecca Hawkes, Aaron Horrell, Jac Jenkins, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Wen-Juenn Lee, Zoë Meager, Alice Miller, Dave Moore, Art Nahill, Janet Newman, Charles Olsen, Joanna Preston, Jessie Puru, Jeremy Roberts, Derek Schulz, Sarah Scott, Charlotte Simmonds, Tracey Slaughter, Elizabeth Smither, Rachael Taylor, Lynette Thorstensen, James Tremlett, Tam Vosper, Dunstan Ward, Susan Wardell, Sugar Magnolia Wilson, Kathryn Madill, Russ Flatt, Penny Howard. Results of the 2018 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Award.
A fascinating insight into the vaguaries and extremities of Berlin's modern history as expressed through the lives of those living on a single street.
Winner of the European Book Prize.
Twenty-five years after his death, four women gather to share their memories of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurist poet whose subsequent uneasy relationship with the increasingly realist Soviet culture machine continued far past his suicide in 1930. In this novel, Mayakovsky's memory is contested on the eve of Stalin's death.
Applying avant-garde approaches to popular musical forms, from 1968 onward, Can opened a sort of crack to the creative unconscious through which flowed enormous amounts of musically liberating energy. This book is in two parts: a biography of the band by Young, and a symposium on musical experimentation by founding member Schmidt, and a consideration of the tentacular reach of the band's influence.
>> 'Halleluhwah' (1971).
>> Live in Soest (1970).
Graeber, author of the excellent Debt: The first 5000 years, argues the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a worth ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of bullshit jobs, in which workers pretend their role isn't as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labour with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes universal basic income as a potential solution.
>> Writing a book about bullshit jobs is not a bullshit job.
The third and final volume of this very valuable source of information about New Zealand's literary history. By the 1960s, Brasch, though very private by temperament, was a reluctant public figure, especially as editor of Landfall. He was also becoming a highly regarded poet, who eventually had six books to his name. Behind the scenes Brasch was increasingly important as an art collector and as patron and benefactor.. Among his friends Brasch counted most of the country's leading artists, writers and intellectuals including Sargeson, McCahon, McCormick, Stead, the Pauls, the Woollastons, the Baxters, Lilburn, Beaglehole, Angus, Oliver, Bensemann, Lusk, Frame and Dallas. These near contemporaries were joined by the talented young, many met as contributors to Landfall- including Gee, Cross, Shadbolt, Duggan, O'Sullivan, Hotere, Tuwhare, Caselberg, Middleton and Manhire. Brasch's lively and sometimes acerbic accounts of such people are a fascinating aspect of his journals. Behind the esteemed poet, editor and public intellectual, however, was a sensitive and often angst-ridden man, who confided his loneliness to his journals.
>> Volumes 1 and 2 are also available.
Poetry drawing its imagery and strength from Cullinane's Irish heritage and her New Zealand home.
"There is an elegance and poise and care in the language of these poems, an unobtrusive mastery and ease in their cadences and rhythms." - Vincent O'Sullivan
Who's hiding? Who's crying? Who's backwards? Te Reo edition.
During his years in a Zen monastery, Proteus has discovered an ability to connect, deep in his mind, with a spherical entity he calls Mosquito. When Mosquito disappears, Proteus sets off in search of answers, only to find that wisdom lies far away from sanity.
When a perfect stranger visits the five misfits, will he be able to inspire them to Achieve, or are they happy as they are, leaving him to look like a perfect fool?
A damning indictment of contemporary state security, this well-researched and cogently argued book looks at the mechanisms by which states, notably the UK and the US, deprive presumed radicals of citizenship, identity and human rights, and, in doing so violate the bases of these concepts for all.
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy $35
Following Things I Don't Want to Know, this second installment of Levy's 'living autobiography' reveals a writer in radical flux, grappling with life and letters and re-establishing the positions of de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in a contemporary context.
Building on the work of previous biographers, Liedman creates a definitive portrait of Marx and the depth of his contribution to the way the world understands itself. He shines a light on Marx’s influences, explains his political and intellectual interventions, and builds on the legacy of his thought. Liedman shows how Marx’s Capital illuminates the essential logic of a system that drives dizzying wealth, grinding poverty, and awesome technological innovation to this day.
Recurrent financial crises, growing social inequality, and an increasing sense of the destructiveness of capitalism has fueled new interest in this thinker.
Revered throughout the Francophile world, France’s tradition of public intellectual engagement stems from Voltaire and Zola and runs through Sartre and Foucault to the present day. The intellectual enjoys a status as the ethical lodestar of his nation’s life, but, as Sand shows, the recent history of these esteemed figures shows how often, and how profoundly, they have fallen short of the ideal. Sand examines Sartre and de Beauvoir’s unsettling accommodations during the Nazi occupation and then shows how Muslims have replaced Jews as the nation’s scapegoats for a new generation of public intellectuals.
“Combining rigorous historical investigation and passionate political intervention is rare, yet it is precisely what Shlomo Sand has achieved in this well-informed, insightful book. The recent wave of reactionary, Islamophobic intellectuals in France—and elsewhere—has found one of its fiercest analysts. By re-examining the history of the ‘French intellectual’ in the longue durée, Shlomo Sand offers robust criticism of our present—and also helps us imagine how future forms of political intellectuality could emerge.” – Razmig Keucheyan
Follow the emperor penguin through snow, ice and bitter temperatures; watch as the great white shark swims 10,000 km in search of seals; track huge herds of elephants, on their yearly hunt for water and be amazed at the millions of red crabs, migrating across Christmas Island. Lovely illustrated hardback.
Clear recipes for delicious, healthy food.
A novel sifting the histories and stories of Australia's Great Ocean Road along the southern coast of Victoria, reaching back to the thinking of engineer, historian and philosopher F.B. Herschell, a minor player in the road's construction and deeply rooted in the narrator's experience of place.
"Shashi Tharoor is the most charming and persuasive writer in India. His new book is a brave and characteristically articulate attempt to save a great and wonderfully elusive religion from the certainties of the fundamentalists and the politicisation of the bigots." - William Dalrymple
Tharoor lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. Tharoor is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperilled if Hindu 'fundamentalists', the proponents of 'Hindutva', or politicised Hinduism, prevail.
Neurosis is not an ailment but the dominant functional mechanism of our society. Medicalisation of neurosis has only provisionally put into into abeyance, but is increasingly ineffective. The essays in this book ask what we can learn about society through the modelling of neuroses, and what paths offer themselves to address the suffering entailed by both.
Who better than Questlove, musician and creative dynamo, to synthesise creative philosophies and provide the tools to focus your capacities in the direction you would like them applied?
>> ?estlove drum solo.
As our approach to mental illness has oscillated from biological to psychoanalytical and back again, so have our treatments. With the rise of psychopharmacology, an ever-increasing number of people throughout the globe are taking a psychotropic drug, yet nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, we still don't really know how or why they work - or don't work - on what ails our brains.
Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand by Catherine Knight $40
“We’re on the cusp of significant shifts in our environment and our attitudes towards it – unfortunately we’ve squandered the opportunity to make incremental change in the area of climate change policy, for instance, and it’s now becoming more urgent to make changes that could have more brutal social and economic consequences." Catherine Knight
This book tracks the development of environmental politics from the 1960s, examines the legislation and establishment of institutions to safeguard habitats, and examines issues such as freshwater management, land use, climate change and the strengthening role of iwi and hapū in environmental management. Timely and important.
The history of milk is the history of human civilisation. From the author of Cod and Salt.
How We Desire by Carolin Emcke $38
Do we sometimes ‘slip into norms the way we slip into clothes, putting them on because they’re laid out ready for us’? Is our desire and our sexuality rather constantly in flux, evolving as we mature, and shifting as our interests change? Can our inner lives and our social roles ever be in harmony?
"Delicate and vulnerable, angry, passionate, clever and thoughtful. An amazing work." - Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
A series of essays springing from Chabon's experiences as a father and his attempts to enact meaningful communication with his children, attempts often stymied by his own unexamined generational prejudices and leading, ultimately, to a deep respect for his children.
A novel based on the author's ancestors' attempt to settle on Sunday (now Raoul) Island in the Kermadecs in the 1870s.
"Lord of the Flies as if written by Barbara Kingsolver." - Writers' Review
"A thrilling story of love and courage, brutality and hope all told with equal measures of deep humanity, imagination and elan. Lydia Syson has an amazing gift of bringing history alive through richness of language, dramatic pace and fabulous visual imagery." - Anne Sebba
>> The author on Radio NZ.
 | Garments Against Women by Anne Boyer {Reviewed by THOMAS} “Who eats in a cage? Or with a caged mouth?” There is either writing or not-writing (even though not-writing may be as specific concerning what is not written and writing is concerning what is), and the dividing line between the two is not so much a wall as a cliff, an inequality more effective than a barrier. Anne Boyer’s collection of prose poems, Garments Against Women, is everywhere alert to the ways in which the world as experienced by those who live in it is riven by inequalities. Those who wield a power or who benefit from the wielding of that power have little perceptual overlap with those upon whom that power is wielded or who suffer from the wielding of that power, but, interestingly, the advantaged live in a world of more restricted truth, even though the disadvantaged may feel the effects of this restriction. This asymmetry acts as a constraint upon those to whom falls more heavily the burden of existing, “lives diminished by the arrangement of the world,” their time forced into objects and taken from them by what is termed an ‘economic system’. Boyer’s poems interrogate her relationship with objects, for instance the garments she sews or that she buys from thrift shops: “the fabric still contains the hours of the lives” - can these hours have their value restored? For whose benefit have these hours been put into objects? If “writing is the manufacture of impossible desires,” can we write of or read of objects without involving ourselves in the mechanisms by which time is taken asymmetrically from workers? Is it possible for an object to not exist except as a vicarious object, “an object which exists only as it might exist to another”? Are all objects more vicarious than not? “I am the dog who can never be happy because I am imagining the unhappiness of other dogs,” writes Boyer. How it is possible to write, even to imagine writing, even if one had the time to write, without writing ‘garments’ that are designed by and are to the benefit of those who have confined ‘writing’ in the narrow world of their advantage? Whose roles must be challenged and overhauled? “I will soon write a long, sad book called A Woman Shopping, writes Boyer, an self-described “addict of denial”, in the poem ‘A Woman Shopping’. “It will be a book about what we are required to do and also a book about what we are hated for doing.” Everyone is smothered by their role: “If a woman has no purse we will imagine one for her.” “Everyone tries to figure out how to overcome the embarrassment of existing,” but the real struggle is “not between actor and actor. It’s between actors and the stage.” Boyer’s poems provide subtle and often surprising insights into the relationships between individuals and their roles, desires and scripts, personal and societal misfortunes, struggle and survival, despair and surprising joy. Can writing effect real change? “I thought to have a name was to become an object,” writes Boyer. “I thought I was a charlatan. I was mistaken. I was not a charlatan, I was a search term.” |
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{STELLA}: In the lead up to my interrogation of crime novelists Alan Carter and Paul Cleave, I’ve been delving into the world of nasty criminals, psychopaths, serial killers, crooked (just bad) cops and a whole host of no-gooders - along with shocked bystanders, good, yet compromised, cops, and a few ethically staunch good detectives. There are suspects and victims, crime scenes and murder weapons. The most recent criminal activities on record are Marlborough Man by Alan Carter (you can read my review here) and A Killer Harvest by Paul Cleave. To begin my investigation I went back to the first in Cleave’s Christchurch crime noir series, The Cleaner. The premise sounded good: Joe the Janitor working at the police station - a simple fellow who goes unnoticed in the tense and busy world of criminal investigations and unsolved murders. Yet Joe knows more than he’s letting on: he’s got information the police would love to have about the man who's been labelled ‘The Christchurch Carver’. He knows about his penchant for knives, that he is methodical and thorough. The detectives are slow to see the pattern of victims and, when they do, they are hardly working together to solve the crime. There are dirty cops intent on their own pleasures. The clock is ticking, the media are demanding answers and they are no closer to finding the carver. The Cleaner would have been a very good straight crime story about a serial killer if it hadn’t been for the other factors that blow it out of the mold. These are Cleave’s tight writing, wry, if somewhat startling humour - Joe’s Mum is extremely memorable - and a woman named Melissa. And believe me, you will never look at a pair of pliers in quite the same way again! All Cleave’s books are set in Christchurch - the gritty underbelly of the garden city. Raw, nasty and eerie, it’s the perfect backdrop for serial killers, revenge and the dark internal worlds of both the crims and the cops. A Killer Harvest is aptly named. Blind and robbed of his family, Joshua believes he is cursed - that there is a family curse. When Joshua’s father is killed on the job, an opportunity arises for the teen to see. His father has gifted him his eyes. A successful operation changes the teen’s life - but at what cost? What does Joshua know, and what is he sensing? His dreams are confusing - he sees his father falling but he’s also inside his head looking out. Can cellular memory have anything to do with the images he’s seeing? There are secrets that maybe no one wants to or should know. A darkness is rising - one worse than being blind. Added to this is a man on a rampage. His father’s killer is dead, but Simon Bower’s best mate Vincent has tipped over the edge. And he’s out to set the record straight - to avenge his mate’s killing at the hands of the police. Cleave explores memory, secrets and motivations for good and evil in this taut thriller at the centre of which ordinary lives revolve and innocent people are in jeopardy.
The special public inquisition takes place this Thursday at Elma Turner Library. >> Invite your friends. >> Do some preparatory reading. |
Use our Book of the Week to make new mythical beasts out of pre-existing mythical beasts. The pages of Myth Match: A fantastical flip-book of extraordinary beasts are split, providing endless permutations, both of the pictures and (cleverly) the descriptive text.
>> See how the book works.
>> The book is designed by Good Wives and Warriors.
>> How the book was made.
>> Try it yourself.
NEW RELEASES
Newly released.
In turns funny, angry and insightful, Lockwood's memoir of growing up with a father several times larger than life in a world several sizes too small for them both is not quite like anything else. Lockwood's Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals positioned her as an American approximation of Hera Lindsay Bird.
"Lockwood's prose is cute and dirty and innocent and experienced, Betty Boop in a pas de deux with David Sedaris." - The New York Times
>> "Anything that happens from here is not my fault." (Lockwood in Wellington.)
What is it like to be a hammer, a screw, a file, a sponge? Why do different tools have different 'characters'? If tools are the extension of human capacities and intentions, what do they tell us about ourselves? Both witty and profound.
On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer s Diary with the words "too much and not the mood". She was describing how tired she was of correcting her own writing, of the cramming in and the cutting out to please readers, wondering if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. These issues underlie these essays by Chew-Bose: the contrapuntal forces of her external and internal worlds, the relationship between inner restlessness and creative production, the clash of identity and individuality. The work is informed by the sensibilities of MAggie Nelson, Lydia Davis and Vivian Gornick and quotidian frustration.
"Our generation has no-one else like Durga Chew-Bose: a cultural critic who isn't afraid to get personal, a romantic nostalgic with a lemony twist who applies her brilliance to life as it is currently lived. It's a profound and glorious relief to encounter this book." - Lena Dunham
>> The power of uncertainty.
"She thought that it was precisely when things get uncomfortable or can't be shown that something interesting comes to light. That is the point of no return, the point that must be reached, the point you reach after crossing the border of what has already been said, what has already been seen. It's cold out there." This hybrid novel - part research notes, part fictionalised diary, and part travelogue - uses the stories of polar exploration to make sense of the protagonist's own concerns as she comes of age as an artist, a daughter, and a sister to an autistic brother. “It’s much easier to get to the Arctic than to reach certain areas of one’s self.”
A novel comprised of personal and formal investigations into the possible links between the assassination of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, the man who inspired Garcia Marquez's General Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and of the charismatic Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, the man who might have been Colombia's J.F.K., gunned down on the brink of success in the presidential elections of 1948.
"Absolutely hypnotic, a display of tense, agile, intelligent narrative, it takes conspiracy to a whole other level." - El Cultural
"With utmost skill, Vasquez has us accompany him in his detective work, proposing a reflection on ghosts from the past and the inheritance of blame, doubt and fear." - El Pais
"Juan Gabriel Vasquez has many gifts - intelligence, wit, energy, a deep vein of feeling - but he uses them so naturally that soon enough one forgets one's amazement at his talents, and then the strange, beautiful sorcery of his tale takes hold." - Nicole Krauss
Ada has always been unusual. As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry, as the young Ada becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief. But Ada turns out to be more than just volatile. Born “with one foot on the other side,” she begins to develop separate selves. When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallises the selves into something more powerful. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction.
>> Read an extract.
>> What is an ogbanje?
What is the relationship between a person and their possessions? What extra burden do these possessions bear when the person dies and what extra difficulty or comfort do they extend to those left behind? When her mother died, Walker was left to search through a dilapidated, cluttered house min search of someone she found she had never really known.
A good selection, well illustrated, from Eileen Gray, Lora Lamm and Lella Vignelli, to Kazuyo Sejima, Hella Jongerius and Neri Oxman.
Grove Press, and its house journal The Evergreen Review, revolutionized the publishing industry and radicalized the reading habits of the "paperback generation." Barney Rossett founded the company on a shoestring in 1951 and it became an important conduit through which avant-garde and European literature, and the works of Beckett, Burroughs, Brecht and Malcolm X became available in the US.
>> Rossett obituary (2012).
>> Much discussion in this institution.
From the author of The Rest is Noise, this book collects some of his best writing on classical and popular music - everything from Brahms to Bjork.
>> Ross will be appearing with soprano Bianca Ross and Stroma at the Nelson School of Music on 27 May.
A very nicely done picture book about a girl who became ill from planting seeds in her ears and nose went on to be a designer who would not be limited by tradition or rationality.
Following the death of his mother, Max Friedman comes to believe that he is sharing his brain with a tumour. As Max becomes focused on controlling the malignant tenant, he starts to lose touch with his friends and family, and with reality itself – so Max’s father sends him off to the artsy Baldwin School to regain his footing. Soon, Max has joined a group of theatre misfits in a steam-punk production of Hamlet. He befriends Fish, a gril with pink hair and a troubled past, and The Monk, a boy who refuses to let go of the things he loves. Max starts to feel happy, and the ghosts of his past seem to be gone for ever. But the tumour is always lurking in the wings – until one night it knocks him down, and Max is forced to face the truth.
"Grief becomes something oddly beautiful – and beautifully odd." - Kirkus
"`It must be possible to find a balance,' I say, `between deathly boredom and a too-violent life.' `There isn't a balance,' he says. `It's always all or nothing.'" A novel based on the author's own experience of running away from a humdrum existence in France and finding the intensity she seeks on board a rough fishing boat operating from the Alaskan island of Kodiak.
"An untamed successor to Conrad and Melville." - l'Obs [!]
Not only is this book a thriller that overturns the expectations of a thriller while still achieving the effects upon the reader of a thriller, it is a novel that overturns the expectations of a novel (plot, protagonists, ‘viewpoint’, shape, interiority, &c) while achieving the effects upon the reader of a novel. Written scrupulously in the flat, detached, austere tone of reportage, infinitely patient but with implacable momentum, a slow mill grinding detail out of circumstance, a forensic dossier on English rurality, the novel is comprised of detail after detail of the human, animal and vegetative life in a small rural community over thirteen years. New edition.
>> Read Thomas's review.
In 1817 James Parkinson identified the disease since named after him. He was also a political radical and a fossil-hunter, and worked with Edward Jenner to set up smallpox vaccination clinics across London. He deserves to be better known.
How did the period of Soviet cultural outreach affect the production of children's books in other countries? Apart from the interesting text, which shifts the focus of international children's book production, the book is packed with delightful examples of illustration and book design.
Artists, athletes, pirates, punks, and other revolutionaries.
From the olive trees of Athens to the Eucalyptus trees of Australia, discover the place of trees in history and mythology across the world. Every climate, every nation has its tales of trees, true or legendary, that help us understand ourselves and the natural world around us.
This book describes, both analytically and statistically, the migration of Maori into cities since 1945 and the changes in Maori position and participation in the New Zealand economy.
Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the US criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men. The authors discuss and explain racial profiling, the power and discretion of police and prosecutors, the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court's failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the criminal justice system.
"Somewhere among the anger, mourning and malice that Policing the Black Man documents lies the pursuit of justice. This powerful book demands our fierce attention." - Toni Morrison
Any questions?
Can we live a better and more fulfilling life if we thought of it as a game? Playing is more rewarding than winning. Also available: Psychology for a Better World.
>> Harre talks about the book on Radio NZ National.
Well written, insightful, medically accurate, emotionally helpful. Local author.
What does it mean to be human? Love triangles, office politics, police raids, illegal drugs, academic elites and near-death experiences can offer insights, if Rowland Smith's experiences of these are anything to go by. Can Shakespeare and Freud (and Rowland Smith) help us build new models of psychology? Yes, possibly.
Essays on Israel/Palestine from this outspoken advocate of the two-state solution and opponent of Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories. Oz appeals to the deep tradition of Jewish humanism to seek a way forward from impasse. "No idea has ever been defeated by force. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one."
"He lived alone in his rustic lair, / A toothless wolf with silver hair." Is a wolf-in-human-clothing a threat to nursery rhymes? Yes, on the evidence of this book from "the scratchy cardigan of New Zealand poetry", very likely. Huge fun.
The 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
Winners (+ judges' comments)
THE ACORN FOUNDATION FICTION PRIZE
The New Animals is a strange, confrontational, revelatory novel that holds a mirror up to contemporary New Zealand culture. Adam handles a large ensemble of unrooted characters with skill. She gets beneath the skin of her characters in ways that make the reader blink, double-take, and ultimately reassess their sense of the capabilities of fiction. A transition late in the novel is both wholly unexpected and utterly satisfying. It’s stylistically raw and reveals a good deal in a modest way. The New Animals is so vivid in imagery and imagination that the judges haven’t stopped thinking about it since. In this category in 2018 it’s the book with the most blood on the page. It will give you an electric shock. It will bring readers back from the dead.
POETRY AWARD
The 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Poetry Award is for a book by an esteemed and celebrated poet who contributes greatly to the New Zealand writing community. Night Horse delights in animals, reflects on the well-being and the passing of friends and family, and the minutiae of care, such as the poem about ironing a friend’s shirts in return for hospitality, or the friend whose swollen feet will only fit slippers despite racks and racks of shoes, or the sublime answer of Pope Francis to a child who asked how Jesus walked on water — ‘He walked as we walk’ — or the car lights focused on a horse at night entranced by moonlight, or lovers holding hands. These poems are gentle, uplifting, tender, humorous, well-crafted and luminous.
ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION AWARD
Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds presents an evocative picture of young Māori travelling to England; their encounters with people, illness and industry there, and their return home. Tuai is empathetically written, providing the reader a window into a contested time of meeting, conversion and enterprise. The text and illustrations work in concert, presenting a rounded and rich experience for the reader, enhancing the breadth and depth of the research explored within.Key moments are presented so richly that they envelop and captivate the imagination. The care the authors have given these histories, acknowledging the autonomy that mātauranga Māori has in wider Aotearoa historical narratives, is striking, and we need more of it.
ROYAL SOCIETY TE APĀRANGI AWARD FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION
The toughest task of any book, whatever the form, is to make a sentence so good that you just have to read the next one, and the next one, and then wish it could just about go on forever. So it is with Driving to Treblinka. From the first page, Diana Wichtel’s memoir draws you into a fascinating ancestry: the story of a girl growing up in Canada, her mum a kiwi, her dad a Polish Jew, a man who leapt in desperation from a concentration-camp-bound train, a moment around which everything in this book orbits. Wichtel’s curiosity, alternately upsetting and uplifting, turns invisibly into a kind of mission. At its heart this is a family story, but one which cannot but shine a light on the vestiges of anti-Semitism that linger in Europe today. It is not just a beautifully written book, but an important book, too.
HUBERT CHURCH BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
A novel that shimmers with feverish, fatalistic intensity, Baby is a strange and strangely moving love story built on obsession, narcissism and damage. It is a much deserved recipient of the Best First Book Award for Fiction. Guest international judge, Alan Taylor, says of Baby: ‘Baby is the kind of novel that lingers in the memory long after you put it down. It is raw, bleak, blackly funny, unpredictable and unsentimental, with shafts of sunny lyricism and passages of clean prose that are veined with menace. It is by any standard a remarkable debut novel by a young writer who has set a very high bar for herself. Where Annaleese Jochems goes from here is anyone’s guess but wherever it is, the truly curious will want to follow her.
JESSIE MACKAY BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
Fully Clothed and So Forgetful by Hannah Mettner (Victoria University Press) $25
In Fully Clothed and So Forgetful Hannah Mettner opens doorways into thought and meanings that lie beneath the surface. Adept at ‘making strange’ — dislocating the ordinary and the familiar — she stretches the imagination of both writer and reader. Mettner has something to say beyond massing detailed description and merely reporting back. Fully Clothed and So Forgetful reveals a writer who knows how to turn a poem into something else — the mark of poems of discovery and not mere invention. The collection’s opening poem, 'Higher Ground,' is an example of the mobile possibilities in this poetic approach. It combines the referential list poem with the oomph of slam and the reticent praises of psalms. These poems of poise and deceptive complexity demonstrate Mettner’s considerable talent.
JUDITH BINNEY BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION
Caves: Exploring New Zealand's subterranean wilderness by Marcus Thomas and Neil Silverwood (Whio Publishing) $80
The photographs in Caves are undeniably exquisite. They depict moments of wonder, an otherworldliness that a dedicated few access. Through the marriage of photographs and infographics this book provides a more general readership the privilege of seeing the subterranean parts of New Zealand’s environment that remain comparatively unknown. At times, the images and the narrative can be unnerving as we read of the deaths that come with discovery and view seemingly bottomless caverns, but the overarching feeling is one of awe at the immense beauty of our islands and the courage of the tightknit community of people that traverse them.
The photographs in Caves are undeniably exquisite. They depict moments of wonder, an otherworldliness that a dedicated few access. Through the marriage of photographs and infographics this book provides a more general readership the privilege of seeing the subterranean parts of New Zealand’s environment that remain comparatively unknown. At times, the images and the narrative can be unnerving as we read of the deaths that come with discovery and view seemingly bottomless caverns, but the overarching feeling is one of awe at the immense beauty of our islands and the courage of the tightknit community of people that traverse them.
E.H. MCCORMICK BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION
Powerful, poignant, and not infrequently profound, Driving to Treblinka is an outrageously assured example of a first book. Diana Wichtel’s story goes way beyond the usual family memoir. In search of her father’s history Wichtel travels by memory and aeroplane and time to Poland, to the Jewish ghetto and a miraculous escape from execution at the Nazi death camp in Treblinka to a new life in Canada – and to another heart-wrenching, years-long unexplained family fissure. As uplifting as it is upsetting, Driving to Treblinka delivers an engrossing account of a life, and the indelible legacy of the Holocaust through generations.
The winners will be announced on Tuesday 15th May. How similar will the results be to those generated by our Ockhameter? The VOLUME Ockhameter category winners: Poetry: The Yield by Sue Wootton (Otago University Press); Fiction (Acornometer): Sodden Downstream by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson); Illustrated Non-Fiction: Tuai: A traveller in two worlds by Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins (Bridget Williams Books); General Non-Fiction: Driving to Treblinka: A long search for a lost father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press). Click here for the full Ockhameter results. The winner of the copy of each of the four eventual category winners is Mary Mottram. Many thanks to all entrants, and many thanks to all the publishers for supporting the Ockhameter.
>> Read Stella's review.
>> O'Sullivan reads and talks.
>> "The best New Zealand novel of 2018." (The Spinoff)
>> O'Sullivan has a long and rich career as a poet and writer of short stories.
>> The cover is by Keely O'Shannessy.
>> Focus! (a book trailer for O'Sullivan's poetry collection Us, Then).
>> O'Sullivan will be at the Marlborough Book Festival in July (recommended).
 Review by STELLA | All This by Chance is Vincent O'Sullivan's third novel, over a decade in the making. It follows a family over several generations from post-war England 1947 to Europe mid-2000s. Stephen escapes the full employment, good food and unbearable dullness of rural New Zealand for a grim post-war London. Here he meets Eva, a striking young woman of Eastern European descent. Eva, whose real name eludes her, was sent as a young child from the ever-increasing chaos of Germany to the safety of her adoptive parents, a caring and educated Quaker family. Life is surprising and happy for our young pharmacist, in love with Eva, surrounded by empathetic elders who present positive role models for a young man with a fraught relationship with his father. Yet, on a chilly London day, a letter and news of the past change the nature of the couple’s relationship to each other and the past that they attempt to keep at a distance. Eva’s great-aunt Ruth has arrived in London, a survivor from Poland awash in her own mind - the doors firmly shut to the memories that torment. O’Sullivan writes deftly, introducing us to these characters, engaging us with the joys and sorrows of their respective lives without sentiment, with rich descriptions of place and brief encounters and conversations that allow snippets of information, piquing our curiosity yet never hammering a ‘message’ home. Religion and faith, science and rationality play out across these pages with both ease and tension as the various family members exercise their love, frustrations, confusions and anger. In Stephen and Eva’s children, we glimpse the impact of the Holocaust on the next generation: David, obsessed with his family past and a desire to find his place, his Jewishness, vents against his father and is frustrated by his inability to track down the answers he so desperately craves. His sister Lisa, rational and pragmatic, seems to be untouched by the impact of her family’s past, yet the death of her mother and great aunt and their buried histories have life-changing repercussions: her closest relationships are shaped by the past that she carries with her willingly or not. This generation is unable to capture a past too raw, too close to contemplate the depth of damage: the secrets - lost in burnt papers, buried in denial and swallowed by those who have knowledge but do not wish to burden others - will not reveal themselves. Esther, David’s daughter, wanting to understand the burdens her family carry, is the secret-hunter, never setting out to resolve the mysteries of her family but drawn and compelled to understand, spurred by her father’s unhappiness, her aunt’s life and her own eagerness to bring history out from the closest. On many levels this is a novel about the intergenerational relationships of family - the humour and the drama that binds people together, about the impact of the past on the present, while also presenting a humane and prescient analysis of the world we live in now: its borders, prejudices and ambitions. All This By Chance reminds us that our history is not chance but of our making, even when encounters and actions may seem coincidental. O’Sullivan’s taut writing, compelling settings over time and place, and memorable characters make All This By Chance a compelling and thoughtful novel. |
 | Murmur by Will Eaves {Reviewed by THOMAS} No algorithm can entertain a proposition as being both true and not true at the same time. This necessary computational allergy to contradiction enabled Alan Turing during his time at Bletchley Park in World War 2 to significantly decrease the time it took to break the German codes (“from a contradiction you can deduce everything,” he wrote), thus saving many lives. It would also provide a good test for ‘thought’ as opposed to ‘computation’ in artificial intelligence, and have implications for the eventual ‘personhood’ or otherwise of machines. “Machines do nothing by halves,” writes Will Eaves in Murmur, a beautifully written, sad and thoughtful novel based on Turing. Machines cannot but incline towards explication, whereas it is our inability to access the mind of another that verifies its existence as a mind.* “It isn’t knowing what another person thinks or feels that makes us who we are. It’s the respect for not knowing,” writes Eaves. In 1952 an English court found Alan Turing guilty of ‘Gross Indecency’ for admitted homosexual activity (then a crime in Britain), and he submitted to a year-long regime of chemical castration via weekly injections of Stilboestrol rather than imprisonment. Turing’s chemical reprogramming, speculates Eaves, struck at the core of his identity, his mind at first barricading itself within the changing body and then seemingly inhabiting it once more, but resourceless and compliant. Is personhood always thus imposed from without, or does personhood lie in the resistance to such an imposition? What conformity to expectations must be achieved or eschewed to accomplish personhood? The murmur inMurmur is an insistent voice that rises from Alec Prior’s (i.e. Alan Turing’s) sub-computational mind as it reacts to, and reconfigures itself on the basis of, its chemical reorientation. A narrator in the third person, waiting in ambush in mirrors and other reflective surfaces, Prior’s reflection, assails and supplants Prior’s first-person narrative, breaches the functional boundaries of his identity, describes Prior as “a man in distress, a prisoner of some description?”, unpicking his autonomy, and acting as a catalyst for the emergence of material (memories, voices, impulses) from the deep strata of Prior’s mind, much of it foundational (such as Prior’s formative relationship with a fellow student at high school), atemporal or, increasingly, counterfactual (a series of imagined letters between Prior and his friend and colleague June, with whom he was briefly engaged (parallelling Turing’s relationship with Joan Clarke, June was unconcerned by Prior’s homosexuality but he decided not to go through with the marriage) veers towards a confused and non-existent future in which a child of theirs remarks to Prior, “You’re changing. You’re lots of different people, lots of things, and all at once.”). What is the relationship between memory and fantasy, and what is the pivot or fulcrum between the two? When the first-person narration restabilises it is a new first person, one constructed from without (“There was another me, speaking for me.”). Consciousness is detached from what it contains, but made of it. “I am the body in the bed. I’m what sees him. I am the room.” But it is consciousness’s detachment from its object, its resistance to connection (a machine cannot help but connect), its yearning for what it is not and what is not (“yearning is a sort of proof of liberty”), its inaccessibility, its ability to see itself from the couch of its exclusion (“a shared mind has no self-knowledge,” writes Eaves-as-Prior-as-Turing), its cognisance of the limitations of narrative, its capacity to suspend disbelief in fictions, its ability to use a contradiction as a stimulant to thought rather than a nullification, its fragility and tentativeness that distinguishes thinking from computation. Artificial intelligence will not achieve personhood through mimesis, learning or algorithmic excellence, but only, if ever, through qualities that eschew such virtues: “We won’t know what machines are thinking once they start to think.” * “As soon as one can see cause and effect working themselves out in the brain, one regards it as not being thinking, but a sort of unimaginative donkeywork. From this point of view one might be tempted to define thinking as consisting of ‘those mental processes that we don’t understand’. If this is right, then to make a thinking machine is to make one that does interesting things without our understanding quite how it is done.” - A.M. Turing (‘Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said to Think?’ (1952)) |