>> Read Stella's review.
>> The collection includes 'The Loneliness of Donald Trump.' (And here in audio.)
>> Visit Solnit's website.
>> "I think the revolution is to keep the world safe for poetry."
>> Other excellent books by Solnit at VOLUME.
>> City of Women.
>> 'Hope is an embrace of the unknown.'
>> Interview with Astra Taylor.
>> 'Fuck yeah, Rebecca Solnit.'
>> Follow Rebecca Solnit.
>> Call them by their cellphones.
 | Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin {Reviewed by STELLA} Tamara Shopsin has written a personal and lively memoir about growing up in New York in the 1970s, specifically, about growing up in Greenwich Village in the shadow, or more precisely in the arms, of The Store. The Store was famous in spite of itself, and still is an iconic New York institution. What started solely as a grocer became a restaurant of repute in the 1970s, a place with its very own style and culture and a centre of the conversation, happenings and relationships of a neighbourhood. Tamara’s father Kenny Shopsin was a New York personality running The Store with his partner Eve. The five children grew up on the street and in the restaurant - on the sawdust floor, beside the freezer that gave electric shocks, in the arms of regulars, and under the feet of customers. Each had their shop chores and all chipped in as needed. Tamara Shopsin’s memoir is a homage to New York City, a New York that she sees as under threat from developers, increased housing prices and homogenised culture. It’s a homage to her eccentric father who had his own style, constantly changing the vast menu (especially if a dish became too popular) and making crazy customer rules - rules that made his place even more attractive to some and completely repellent to others: no phones, parties of no more than four people (don’t even try to sneak in with a three and a two and then pretend it is a coincidence), and no copying what someone else has just ordered. You could be a friend for life or blacklisted by putting a foot wrong with Kenny. The book is a homage to friends, family, and the importance of neighbourhood. Shopsin recalls the famous and the ordinary, drawing out the stories of those closest to her, particularly her father’s friend Willy, who in his unusual way sees them all through some sticky situations. There is a fascinating account of the development of the crossword puzzle and Margaret Petherbridge’s role in this at the New York Times. Kenny sometimes submitted puzzles and kept up a correspondence with Margaret over numerous years. There are numerous asides and insights making reading this memoir a delight. Arbitrary Stupid Goal is arranged as small pieces loosely connected, pieces that scoot from present day to a Tamara of age five and back, into times before her birth and retold stories. Over the course of the book she shapes a conversation that gives you an insight to her and her siblings’ childhood, the bohemian nature of The Village, the quirks of her father's cooking practices and temperament, the significance of the seemingly ordinary, and the importance of place. The Store was a meeting place that attracted celebrities, eccentrics and local, a place that accepted people for who they were but brokered no quarter for fakes or demanding clientele. In fact, Kenny feared success (and having to work too hard) and shrugged off reviewers and interviews, even going as far as to tell guidebook publishers that the restaurant had closed or that The Store was now a shoe shop. Tamara Shopsin’s writing style is quirky and idiosyncratic. She writes from the point of view a middle child, a keen observer with an agile mind, the point of view of a woman still very much connected to the place that made such an impact on her. Tamara Shopsin cooks weekends at The Store and is passionate about its legacy and the New York City she believes in. Touchingly personal and endlessly fascinating, this is a memoir which moves from hilarious to tragic and back again in a half a breath. |
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The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza {Reviewed by THOMAS}
“Disappearance is contagious. Everyone knows this.” The underlying, or overarching, crisis in Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest is one of authenticity. What is known, what is written, what is uttered, what is achieved immediately begins to be eroded through that onslaught of words, thoughts and experiences that constitutes what we think of as the passage of time. To hold on to one’s identity is, in such circumstances, a neurotic tendency, the invocation of a threat. “We are always prepared for the appearance of fear. We lie in wait for it. We invoke it and reject it with equal stubbornness.” The narrator in The Iliac Crest is a doctor in a hospital, situated on the border of land and sea as it is on the border of life and death, which expedites the deaths of incurables, completing, as thoroughly as possible, their disappearances as individuals. Disappearance is here both a medical and a political condition. After working at the hospital for 25 years, the doctor’s home is effectively colonised, almost simultaneously, by an ex-lover, who immediately falls ill and becomes effectively inaccessible to the doctor for the rest of the novel, and by a woman claiming to be the (actual) Mexican author Amparo Dávila, who is writing 'the story of her disappearance' in a notebook. From the evening of their intrusion upon his previous routine, from the intrusion upon his habitual life of both memory and imagination, the doctor’s world begins to become destabilised, ultimately threatening his identity and sanity. Language is the way in which borders and distinctions are maintained, but language is also the way in which borders may be destabilised and subverted. The book displays constant tension between language and bodies, between the conceptual and the physical, between construction and erosion. There is an emphasis on borders and distinctions, especially spurious borders and distinctions, and on the subversion of these borders and distinctions. On a conceptual field there is more distance within a category than between one category and another, but the distance within categories is invisible to those intent upon borders between them. But all borders are arbitrary and therefore spurious: male/female, reality/fiction, desire/fear, fascination/repulsion, eros/abjection - these pairings are not dichotomies but overlays, more similar than they are different. Maintaining these distinctions is a compulsive act that reveals the neurotic bases of language. Rivera Garza has a lot of fun undermining distinctions, dragging the contents of her novel over them in one direction or another, or, especially, leaving them suspended on the polyvalent point of maximum ambiguity, “this threshold where one state ended and the next is unable to begin.” The characters show themselves to be, and discover themselves to be, copies, false copies, copies separated from their originals by time or by the meanings attributed to them by others. Amparo Dávila, transgressing the border between fiction and actuality, is forced to defend her authenticity and authorship when made aware of another, older, ‘truer’ Amparo Dávila (who eventually reveals herself to be dead, to be Disappearance itself). The narrator is told by the women who are staying in his house that they know his secret: that he too is a woman. He strenuously denies this but is compelled to keep checking his genitals to reassure himself, increasingly unconvincingly he tries and fails to defend his masculinity, and eventually ceases to deny her femaleness. The narrator is pushed by the events of the novel into an ambiguous zone in which distinctions do not apply, a zone which is both hazardous and liberating. “We live on terrain that bore only a very remote resemblance to life. Our irreality and our lack of evidence not only constituted a prison but also a radical form of freedom.”
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NEW RELEASES
A blush is a gulp, a glitch, a stammer, a flutter, a flinch. A blush is hot. A blush is an index of confusion. A blush, according to Darwin, is "the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions". This essay by Jack Robinson, exploring the cultural and social history of the blush from the 18th century to the present, is illustrated with witty and often unsettling images by Natalia Zagórska-Thomas.
>> See some of Zagórska-Thomas's work.
"Everyone lives a messy, unusual life. There is no normal. The sooner our politics understands this, the better off we will all be." Morgan Godfrey's incisive thinking and eschewing of easy label-based thinking has brought him to the forefront of rethinking our social and political paradigms. This book brings together some of the sharpest and best of his writing.
Smith's revered account of living in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe as the 1960s pushed itself into the 1970s is here presented in a beautiful hardback edition, full of fascinating photographs and illustrations.
The greatest success stories of the modern environmental movement in New Zealand were the public campaigns to save our native forests, beginning in the 1960s with the battle to stop Lake Manapouri being drowned. By 2000, all the significant lowland forest in South Westland had become part of a World Heritage Area, the beech forests of the West Coast had largely been protected, Paparoa National Park had been established, the magnificent podocarp forests of Pureora and Whirinaki in the central North Island had been saved from the chainsaw, and many other smaller areas of forest had been included into the conservation estate. Fight for the Forest tells how a group of young activists became aware of government plans to mill vast areas of West Coast beech forest, and began campaigning to halt this. From small beginnings, a much larger movement grew, mainly centred around the work of the Native Forests Action Council, who drew public support and changed the course of environmental history.
Emmett and Caleb and different creatures and they like to do things in different ways, but they live next door to each other and they are the best sort of friends. This book is about the experiences they share in just one year. "Emmett slid a single sheet of blank paper under Caleb's door. He whispered through the keyhole: 'My poem is invisible to the eye!' Caleb read Emmett's invisible poem. There were no crossings out, no spelling mistakes."
Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: Conrad's portrayal of these forces the dawn of the twentieth century make him, in this new interpretation, a prophet of globalisation.
"An extraordinary and profoundly ambitious book, little short of a masterpiece." - Guardian
A very enjoyable survey of the ongoing life of Dante's masterpiece and its influence on literature, art, film, &c. Well illustrated, too.
>>Inferno (1911).
Results and winning essay from the Landfall Essay Competition 2018; Results from Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2018; ARTISTS: John Z Robinson, Justin Spiers, Susan Te Kahurangi King; WRITERS Philip Armstrong, Jane Arthur, Tusiata Avia, Antonia Bale, Tony Beyer, Victor Billot, Madeleine Child, Thom Conroy, Jodie Dalgleish, Doc Drumheller, Breton Dukes, Ciaran Fox, David Gregory, Michael Hall, René Harrison, Siobhan Harvey, Trevor Hayes, Kerry Hines, Joy Holley, Elizabeth Kirkby-McLeod, Megan Kitching, Jessica Le Bas, Therese Lloyd, Jess MacKenzie, Frankie McMillan, Alice Miller, Michael Mintrom, Lissa Moore, James Norcliffe, Heidi North, Jilly O’Brien, Vincent O’Sullivan, Aiwa Pooamorn, John Prins, Lindsay Rabbitt, essa may ranapiri, Sudha Rao, Richard Reeve, Harry Ricketts, Alan Roddick, Derek Schulz, Di Starrenburg, Jillian Sullivan, John Summers, Jasmine Taylor, Angela Trolove, Iain Twiddy, Bryan Walpert, Susan Wardell, Rose Whitau, C.A.J. Williams, Briar Wood, Helen Yong; reviews.
Ghosts: the ghosts of our past selves, the shadows of past injuries, the ghosts of history, the ghosts in the machine. André Aciman remembers Rome. Ahmet Altan writes from prison in Turkey. Bernard Cooper on Ambien and sleep-eating. Maggie O’Farrell on living with chronic back pain. Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad, a companion to his epic Life and Fate. Amos Oz in conversation with Shira Hadad. Inigo Thomas on the fall of Singapore. PLUS NEW FICTION from Anne Carson, Steven Dunn, Sheila Heti, Eugene Lim, Sandra Newman, Maria Reva and Jess Row; POETRY from Cortney Lamar Charleston and Jana Prikryl; PHOTOGRAPHY from Monika Bulaj, with an introduction by Janine di Giovanni.
A fascinating, surprising account of Japan's culture, from the 'opening up' of the country in the mid 19th century to the present, through the eyes of people who always had their doubts about modernity, who greeted it not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's familiar modernisers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress.
Instead of viewing insomnia as a disorder, Benjamin sees it as an existential state, a state with experiences and accomplishments and possibilities that could not otherwise be reached.
>>How she learned to stop worrying and love insomnia.
>> Siding with the dark.
When Brick was just a baby, tall buildings amazed her. Her mother said, "Great things begin with small bricks. Look around and you'll see." Brick sets off to visit famous brick buildings around the world. Where will she find her place?
Since 1946 the Penguin Classics series have provided affordable access to 4000 years of world literature in accessible but authoritative editions. This book is a sumptuous guide to the range, its contributors and the designs.
In seven dream-like episodes, Ma Jian, the 'Chinese Solzhenitsyn', charts the psychological disintegration of a Chinese provincial leader who is haunted by nightmares of his violent past.
The discovery of photographs in an album - of her Spanish grandfather who joined Hitler's Wehrmacht and her father in the uniform of Franco's army - led Caterina Pascual Söderbaum to explore her family's links to - and involvement in - some of the most abhorrent passages of twentieth-century history. What was the extent of her family's involvement, and what what the extent to which this involvement was hidden after the fact? Why do the threads she follows lead to the Austrian Schloss Hartheim extermination 'clinic'.
>> A dark Nazi past.
The book suggests that unregulated capitalism is bad for women, and that, if we adopt some ideas from socialism, women will have better lives. If done properly, socialism leads to economic independence, better labour conditions, better work/family balance, and, yes, even better sex. If you like the idea of such outcomes, this book will show how we might change things. If you are dubious because you don't understand why capitalism as an economic system is uniquely bad for women, and if you doubt that there could ever be anything good about socialism, this book will provide some illumination.
Little Wise Wolf is so busy learning from books that he hasn't time for others. When the king falls ill and Little Wise Wolf is called to his bedside, he will need not only his book learning but the help of others if he is to travel to the capital and provide a cure.
On the edge of Fort de France, the capital of Martinique, squats a shanty town. It goes by the name of Texaco. One dawn, a stranger arrives - an urban planner, bearing news. Texaco is to be razed to the ground. And so he is lead to Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the ancient keeper of Texaco's history, who invites her guest to take a seat and begins the true story of all that is to be lost.
"One of the major fictional achievements of our century." - The Times
A sharp, bittersweet novel set in the Midlands in the approaches to Brexit.
"Fascinating." - Simon Winchester
Representation of defining events in New Zealand's history have changed in parallel with other cultural and political developments.
A young woman at an elite American university is drawn into a cult's acts of terrorism.
"A dark, absorbing story of how first love can be as intoxicating and dangerous as religious fundamentalism." - New York Times Book Review
"Religion, politics, and love collide in this powerful novel reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, with menace and mystery lurking in every corner." - People Magazine
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, adapted and illustrated by Fred Fordham $40
Now a graphic novel!
Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro's Cuba by Sarah Rainsford $43
Sixty years ago, Graham Greene watched as the Cuban revolution unfolded and Batista's regime collapsed. Now, as the Castro era comes to a close, Sarah Rainsford, formerly the BBC's 'woman in Havana', reports on the lives shaped by Fidel's giant social experiment and the feelings of a nation as his brother Raul steps down.
In the Restaurant by Christoph Ribbat $25
The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant, from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli. What does eating out tell us about who we are?
The Crimes of Grindelwald: The original screenplay by J.K. Rowling $40
Fantastic.
Now a graphic novel!
Sixty years ago, Graham Greene watched as the Cuban revolution unfolded and Batista's regime collapsed. Now, as the Castro era comes to a close, Sarah Rainsford, formerly the BBC's 'woman in Havana', reports on the lives shaped by Fidel's giant social experiment and the feelings of a nation as his brother Raul steps down.
The deliciously cosmopolitan story of the restaurant, from eighteenth-century Paris to El Bulli. What does eating out tell us about who we are?
Fantastic.
A New Way of Seeing: The history of art in 57 works by Kelly Grovier $65
How can small details 'open' works of art for the viewer?
Rage Becomes Her: The power of women's anger by Soraya Chemaly $38
Why repress it?
Nothing is Real: 'The Beatles were underrated' and other sweeping statements about pop by David Hepworth $40
Why repress it?
Why do we like pop music? Just what is our relationship with it? Can we take pop seriously without draining the life out of it? Of all unimportant things, is pop music the most important?
Underwater puzzles! Underwater mazes! Shipwrecks! Submarines! Giant squid! A huge amount of fun (even on dry land).
BOOKS @ VOLUME #102 (17.11.18)
Find out what we've been reading and recommending.
Subscribe to our newsletter at right>>>
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Judges' chair Adam Mars Jones on why The Long Take was (just last week) awarded the 2018 Goldsmith's Prize for innovative fiction.
>> Part of The Long Take set against documentary footage.
>> Robin Robertson speaks with Kim Hill.
>> Robertson's 'At Roane Head' won the 2009 Forward Prize.
>> Find out about the other books short-listed for the Goldsmith's Prize.
 | Scythe by Neal Shusterman {Reviewed by STELLA} Living in a world where immortality is a reality may seem utopian to some. In Neal Shusterman’s latest teen novel, human society has advanced to this state thanks to great advances in medicine and technology. It’s an ideal society where threat is obsolete, where everyone has everything they need (and more), conflict and competition for resources are redundant issues, and life carries on interrupted only by ‘turning the corner’ (rejuvenation - yes, you can become younger again - as young as 21 if you wish). There are no longer governments or state-controlled organisations - the mainframe is now something called the Thunderhead - an all-knowing data-based system that has consciousness: artificial intelligence at its zenith. Yet despite the utopian dream, population growth is still an issue and the Thunderhead’s analysis decrees the human/resource ratio, and this must be adhered to. Enter the Scythedom - a group of officials whose role is to determine who should die. Arbitrary death bringers! The Scythes act outside the jurisdiction of Thunderhead and have their own rules and charter. Quotas are expected to be reached, yet not exceeded, but the means of killing, called gleaning (merciful or otherwise), are at the behest of the individual scythe - and who they choose is completely their choice. The novel opens with a Scythe knocking on the door of teen Citra Terranova’s home. Thinking that he is there to glean a family member, the family try to protect the youngest, Ben, and offer the Scythe food. However, Scythe Faraday is there to glean the neighbour who hasn’t got home from work yet, but he is hungry so a meal is gratefully accepted. This is our first introduction to the Scythedom, and to the fear and wariness that the rest of humanity feel towards these cloaked and elite individuals who hold the power of life (they can grant immunity - a year’s grace from gleaning) and death in their hands. When Citra gets an invitation to a show at the opera house she heads along and meets the Rowan Damisch, a fellow teen, who has also received an anonymous invite. They have been invited by Scythe Faraday, who offers them apprenticeships to the Scythedom. Tempted by the offer (family members of Scythes have complete immunity) but also repulsed by it, both Rowan and Citra rise to the challenge and begin their training in weapons, poisons, philosophy and compassion. Yet not all is honourable and well with the Scythedom, and soon both Citra and Damisch are placed in impossible situations and become pawns in a sinister game of corruption, ego and the conflict of ideas. Shusterman’s novel is brimming with ideas, action and dark intrigue. There’s the necessary romance to add spice, the depth of long-lasting loyalties as well as the bristling of enemies to feed the narrative, the good/evil duality and all the questions that come with that, as well as plenty of challenges to keep our teens on their toes. Add to this some great wordplay, humorous interludes, compelling central characters, and some tight, pacey writing, and you have an appealing and thought-provoking young adult's novel. The ending is made for a sequel, with its dramatic encounter between our two heroes and enough threads left hanging to pull you to the next instalment, Thunderhead. The 'Arc of a Scythe' series is perfect for dystopia fans and readers of the 'Hunger Games' and 'Chaos Walking' series. |
 | Limbo by Dan Fox {Reviewed by THOMAS} “Being in limbo is involuntary," writes Dan Fox in this discursive book on the importance of writer’s block to the creative process (so to call it). "It’s a state slipped into accidentally, or a condition into which you’ve been forced.” Joan Acocella, in her essay 'Blocked', points out that "the term 'writer's block' is so grandiose, with its implication that writers contain within them great wells of creativity to which their access is merely impeded.” (This fixation on liquidity and flow, this representation of the creative process as a form of plumbing, quips Geoff Dyer, is tellingly “lavatorial.”) To be in limbo, demonstrates Fox with many examples, whether it be creative, social, political or religious limbo, is to be in a holding place, or, rather, a holding state, for those to whom categories do not apply, or, rather, for those for whom categorisation has been suspended. Development is stopped, edges, borders and identities cannot be reached, agency is removed, exit cannot be achieved. Limbo is a temporal (rather than an atemporal) state: it will come to an end but that end is indefinitely postponed (plausibly beyond the lifespan of the subject in some cases). Limbo is a liminal state of indefinite duration, a place of transformation that seems like non-existence. But, says Fox, “there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal.” Writer’s block “generates energy through obstruction, just as a hydroelectric dam blocks water to create power.” Fixity leads to suppression, which leads to sublimation, which leads, eventually, to creative resurgence. By this model, though, creativity is entirely a pathological state, a symptom of suppression or repression, of the disjunction between inner life and external reality that it tries and necessarily fails to bridge. Would there be literature in a happy world? Creative production is not necessarily desirable anyway: Kafka wrote of the torment of writing and “seeing pages being endlessly covered with things one hates, that fill one with loathing, or at any rate with dull indifference.” No redemption either way. |
NEW RELEASES
In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, Limbo is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded, and trapped. Fusing family memoir with a meditation on creative block, depression, solitude, class, place and the intractable politics of our present moment, Fox considers the role that fallow periods and states of impasse play in art and life. Limbo employs a cast of artists, exiles, ghosts, hermits and sailors to reflect on the creative, emotional and political consequences of being stuck, and how these are also crucial to our understanding of inspiration, flow and productivity. Limbo argues that there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal.
>> Read an extract.
A stunning book featuring 20 of Andrew Patterson's recent houses, demonstrating the architect's sensitivity both to the landscape and to the personalities of his clients. This volume includes sections on Patterson's influences, such as the culture and lifestyles of New Zealand, and Maori architecture, art, and mythology. Spare and beautiful.
The essayist, according to Franzen, is like "a firefighter, whose job, when everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them." These essays address Franzen's great loves, literature and birds, and much else beyond and thereby. Where the new media tend to confirm one's prejudices, he writes, literature "invites you to ask whether you might be wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you." The cumulative effect of the essays is strangely hopeful, however. Includes a meditation on New Zealand seabirds.
Lissaman designed, threw, decorated, fired and sold her first significant collection of pots in 1927 and potted continuously until 1990, spanning New Zealand’s studio pottery movements. Her life, work and importance is explored in this superb new book.
>> Come and meet Jane Vial and Steve Austin, and find out more about the potter and the book. Monday 3 December, 5:30 PM at VOLUME.
"I've begun to think of short poems as being the literary equivalent of the small house movement. Small houses contain the same essential spaces as large houses do. Both have places in which to eat, sleep, bathe and sit; they're the same, except small houses are, well, smaller." -Jenny Bornholdt
A beautifully presented and thoughtful selection of short verse from well-known poets, new voices and rediscovered poets.
“Autobiography crept up on me like a wolf.” A new translation of Ginzburg's superb autobiographical novel, telling the story of a Jewish family in Italy from the 1920s to the 1950s, of surviving the fascist years, and of the importance of language to surviving change.
"Ginzburg gives us a new template for the female voice and an idea of what it might sound like." - Rachel Cusk
"I am utterly entranced by Ginzburg's style - her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear." - Maggie Nelson
>>Hiding in plain sight.
Follow rivers around the world (including the Waikato!) and learn about the people and history that belong along their banks. This large-format picture book is packed with information that will suggest further exploration.
>> Goes at work.
>> Other wonderful books by Peter Goes.
When Norwegian photographer Peter Lukas visited Nelson, he was so impressed with the photographic collections at the Nelson Provincial Museum that he set out to photograph the same street views as they appear today. The result is this wonderful book: historical photographs paired with their modern equivalents.
A beautifully illustrated book for children, showing how East and West have been tied together by people, trade, disease, war, religion, adventure, science and technology, along the trade routes of the Silk Roads. Frankopan's The Silk Roads (the adult history) is a remarkable book, showing that much often overlooked history should be central to our view of the past. This book does the same, for children.
'I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to write, I am having a go at it. Good luck to me.'
"Morris is one of Britain's greatest living writers." - The Times
"Fascinating. Valuable and rare. This book is a writer's constitutional." - Kate Kellaway, Observer
"A bountiful cornucopia of insightful essays that display the wide range of his interests and tastes. McPhee delights in cracking open subjects, both ordinary and esoteric, and making them accessible to the layperson in works that testify to his virtuosity as one of the greatest living American essayists." - Publishers Weekly
Whaling in the Marlborough Sounds from the 1830s. Sealing and whaling in the Southern Ocean, sailing from New South Wales to New Zealand, Te Rauparaha’s battles with Ngāi Tahu, Jacky Guard and his Port Underwood and Kaikoura whaling stations. Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Toa, Ngāi Tahu and Rangitane history, the seige of Ngāmotu, New Zealand Company settlements, the naming of Pelorus Sound and Tory Channel, Picton fish factories and the Perano whalers, family life at Te Awaiti, Campbell Island whalers, Queen Charlotte Sound and early Marlborough history.
A lyrical epic based the author's experiences in World War One, culminating at the Somme.
"The holy book of twentieth-century visionary modernism. Ancient and brand-new, In Parenthesis is Britain's book of all books, an incomparable and ever-intensifying masterpiece. It is radical, beautiful, humane and mysterious. It is a book about war that has the power to defeat death. It is a living breathing mythic miracle of a book." - Max Porter
It's autumn in the hidden valley. Yula has painted a farewell picture for her friend Ticky, who is flying away for the winter, but a big wind tears it from her hands, starting an eccentric adventure that will find new friends (and unexpected art). Delightful.
A beautifully drawn history, from prehistoric times(!) to the latest special effects.
Explores the story behind the promotion of New Zealand's mountains through posters, advertisements, hand-coloured photographs and more.
When Nora falls in love with Javo, she is caught in the web of his addiction; and as he moves between loving her and leaving, between his need for her and promises broken, Nora's life becomes an intense dance of loving and trying to let go. A very nice new hardcover edition of this important novel, first published in 1977, a novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs, and sex.
>> Also available in this hardback series: The Children's Bach, Stories, True Stories.
As a lecturer in physiology from 1923 to 1927, Bell had been one of the first women academics at Otago Medical School. In 1937 she became a foundation member of the Medical Research Council, serving for two decades, and was appointed New Zealand's first state nutritionist in 1940, a position she held for almost a quarter of a century. Muriel Bell was behind ground-breaking public health schemes such as milk in schools, iodised salt and water fluoridation. Why haven't we heard of her?
Fifteen years after legislation passed in 2003 decriminalising the sex industry, this book, largely assembled from the accounts of interviewees representing the breadth and diversity of the sex workers, gives real insight into the experiences of women, men and transgender people involved in the industry.
Ethiopia contains some of the most fertile land in Africa, the produce that is grown here, and the cultural and historical backgrounds of the people who live here, have given rise to a distinctive cuisine.
A bomb is born, lives and dies in a demented rural school; Ireland experiences a rain of corpses falling from the sky; a strange tribal matriarchy on the banks of the River Boyne is threatened with extermination. In these five long stories the world breaks down in an endless cycle of hunger, desperation, violence and domination.
"The best new young writer in Ireland." - Colin Barrett
"Think Flann O'Brien on rocket fuel." - Joseph O'Connor
Throughout the history of film, cinema has been considered a cause as much as an industry.
Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom (from which no elf has returned alive in more than a hundred years). Brangwain's host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses, blunders, and cultural misunderstandings throws these two bumbling scholars into the middle of an international crisis that may spell death for them - and war for their nations. A beautifully illustrated hardback.
Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day. We are in the midst of a global climate crisis and extreme challenges of urbanisation. At the same time it is difficult to ignore the deaths of thousands of migrants at sea or in deserts, the xenophobic treatment of foreign-born populations, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the persistence of racist violence and ethnic exclusions. This, in turn, is connected to other kinds of uneven mobility-relations between people, access to transport, urban infrastructures and global resources such as food, water, and energy.
A charming book. "Never ever put your hand through a ghost. It can cause a serious tummy ache."
Greychild is abandoned in the woods. Mistaken for a wolf, he is taken to Brunt Boggart, a village steeped in legend and folklore, a village in which stories happen.
A card game stimulating thought exercises that are not only fun but release your creative energy. Recommended.
Milkman by Anna Burns (published by Faber & Faber), apparently set in Belfast during the Troubles, is a sharp portrait of structures of conformity within a divided and traumatised society - and a remarkably enjoyable book to read.
>> Read Thomas's review.
>> "Incredibly original."
>>Trading blows: on the populist assault on Milkman.
>> "Completely stonked."
>> [Confused.]
>> The Man Booker judges' citation: "The language of Anna Burns’ Milkman is simply marvellous; beginning with the distinctive and consistently realised voice of the funny, resilient, astute, plain-spoken, first-person protagonist. From the opening page her words pull us into the daily violence of her world — threats of murder, people killed by state hit squads — while responding to the everyday realities of her life as a young woman, negotiating a way between the demands of family, friends and lovers in an unsettled time. The novel delineates brilliantly the power of gossip and social pressure in a tight-knit community, and shows how both rumour and political loyalties can be put in the service of a relentless campaign of individual sexual harassment. Burns draws on the experience of Northern Ireland during the Troubles to portray a world that allows individuals to abuse the power granted by a community to those who resist the state on their behalf. Yet this is never a novel about just one place or time. The local is in service to an exploration of the universal experience of societies in crisis."
 | Milkman by Anna Burns {Reviewed by THOMAS} The reason this book has a sunset on the cover - a cover that postponed my considering reading it until I was challenged to pick a winner from this year’s Booker short list* (intolerant as I am of pictorial schmaltz) - becomes apparent in the third chapter, when the narrator’s French language evening class collectively denies that the sky can be any colour other than blue (or, at night, black), despite the evidence presented to them through the window by their teacher. It is the second time in a week that the narrator has been astonished at a coloured sky: her maybe-boyfriend had taken her to ‘watch the sunset’, an unheard-of and somewhat suspect activity for someone raised in a community in which every behaviour and opinion has been determined by convention, and in which, consequently, all behaviours and opinions immediately classify a person within the strict codes of those conventions. Although no particulars are given names, the book is apparently set in Belfast in the late 1970s, in the hopeless depths of the Troubles. The eighteen-year-old narrator has learned, as have all in her community except for those ‘beyond the pale’, to present only her “topmost mental level to those who were reading it,” to hide herself within the conventions of a divided society in which norms are structured, reinforced and policed by gossip, in which “not mentioning was my way to keep safe.” In her community, in which the ‘renouncers of the state’ [IRA] are both the instigators and the manifestation of the shared political and religious position, life, and to an even greater extent, death, only makes sense in terms of the conflict. From all families, active participants in the violence, innocent victims of the state’s responses and suicides (sufferers of what the narrator’s mother calls ‘the psychologicals are everywhere) all end up in ‘the usual place’ - the cemetery. Shame is a mechanism by which partisan orthodoxy is maintained. “Given that shame was such a complex, involved, very advanced feeling, most people here did all kinds of permutations in order not to have it: killing people, doing verbal damage to people and, not least, also not infrequently, doing those things to oneself.” The narrator is not as successful at hiding herself beneath convention as she would like, her habit of reading ‘great novels’ when walking, for instance, draws the attention of, and comment from, various quarters, most significantly from the character referred to as the milkman, seemingly a renouncer specialist in “shadowing and trailing and profiling” who has been responsible for numerous killings and has high standing in the community. “I didn’t know whose milkman he was. He wasn’t our milkman. I don’t think he was anybody’s. He didn’t take milk orders. There was no milk about him.” He does, however, have a white van (though he is opposite in every way from the 'real milkman'). No amount of not responding by the narrator can prevent him from ‘taking an interest’ in her, oppressing her and grooming her as a future mistress. “I’m going to curtail you and isolate you so that soon you’ll do nothing,” he says, persuading her to stop visiting her maybe-boyfriend by intimating that he, as a mechanic, would be vulnerable to a car-bomb. The ‘relationship’ between the narrator and her stalker proceeds faster in the gossip of the community than in reality, gossip that pre-forms and iterates the story and gives it a sort of inevitability. The milkman could be read as a manifestation of the community’s inherent sexism and gendered power imbalance (the personally political and the collectively political can never be entirely disentangled), but also as a manifestation of the narrator’s own psyche, deformed by the society in which she lives: the milkman seems to know everything about her, “picking up on my secret desires and dreams”. The fact that the end-point of a memory is known before the memory is recounted intimates the inevitability of any account in the past tense. Everything that happens in this novel is revealed in its first sentence, and both the awful tension of the book and its considerable enjoyability and humour (it is by no means a difficult book to read) arise from the fact that, although the novel is tightly plotted, the narrative works always against the plot, resisting it, incapable of averting the inevitable crises but attempting at least to postpone them, to ‘buy time’, by inserting more and more thoughts, speculations, and recollections into moments of urgency. The more urgent the moment - the closer the milkman - the more extensive or the more complex or the more pedantic the loops of narrative the narrator inserts, as if narrative could slow or postpone the plot’s inevitable slide towards crisis. It is the control of the speed of experience that is the narrator’s (and the author’s) primary mode of contention with ‘the facts’. Burns, in her wonderfully looping riffs of ever-increasing pedantry, uses precision to cumulatively humorous effect (if precision in itself is not a humorous effect). The pursuit of logic to the point of illogic mocks a community operating on spurious rationality, and the mix of high and low registers underscores the narrator’s ambiguous conformity with that community, a community in which the ‘logic’ of resistance to oppression creates a ‘logic’ of oppression, in which personal ends are only achieved through political means, subjecting the personal to the political rather than making the political a means by which the personal may find expression. As the novel ends, though, it is intimated that it is power’s derogation of women (and its other victims) that shows power’s vulnerability, and that provides opportunities to assert the personal in its political mode.
|
 | The Long Take by Robin Robertson {Reviewed by STELLA} A beautifully crafted novel, The Long Take is an epic narrative poem by renowned Scottish poet Robin Robertson. Kicking off in New York, 1946, it follows the life of Walker, a recently returned soldier. A survivor of D-Day, Walker is displaced by trauma, unable to return to his family, his life, his love in Nova Scotia. His life, like that of many others he encounters, has been turned inside out, and he carries a burden, a guilt he can not discharge. Unemployed, a friend suggests fronting up to a local newspaper,The Press, who are looking for reporters. Walker joins the city news desk, reporting on crime and street politics. Walker’s affinity with the streets, living on the edge, and contact with skid row leads to an assignment to document the lives of the poor and homeless: an investigative piece of work that takes him to LA and San Francisco. As we travel across America with Walker and along these cities’ streets over a decade, we are given an insight into the lives of the disenfranchised and into the impact of war trauma on a nation and an individual. Add to this the politics of the 40s and 50s - the era of cronyism, McCarthyism and mob rule, organised crime and state corruption - the novel is a cutting indictment of the ‘American Dream’, the rise of the automobile and the impact this had on communities (highways and parking lots that killed communities), the falsity of war as a democratic tool, and the injustice to those who fight for freedom yet become victims of power. It’s also a hymn to the film industry of this period - to film noir; the images and language of these films cleverly interweave with the tone of the streetscape and the atmosphere of the novel. Walker is a compelling man, a man who carries a history that he feels can only be understood by his comrades in arms, by those who have experienced similar trauma. He dulls his building emotional disintegration with liquor and by keeping his distance - never becoming entangled in relationships. His work colleagues find him unreadable, and those he has the most affinity live on skid row, particularly Billy Idaho - a well-read street philosopher who helps those he can survive the streets. Walker, like Idaho, is kind and has a compassion for his fellow humans: he is an anti-hero that we empathise with - an outsider who will get under your skin. Through the keenly observant Walker, we experience the city, its people and its neighbourhoods. We see desperation, violence and the strength of community. For Walker, burying his trauma is never going to be a solution. Violence simmers at his edges and guilt plays on his conscience, and as the decade progresses his past haunts him. Robertson’s writing is wonderful: evocative, enchanting, raw and affecting. From narrative verse -descriptions of the cityscape and dialogue between characters - to hard, almost unbearable, staccato-like images of war, to lyrical memories of Walker’s childhood and life in Nova Scotia, the poetry has clarity and visibility yet never removes the reader from the story. The Long Take is a novel about us now just as much as it is a filmic exposé of post-war America, exploring issues of poverty, racism, fascism and freedom. Powerful, inventive and uncompromising. |
NEW RELEASES
Written when Revueltas, a life-long political dissident, was himself a prisoner in the infamous Palacio de Lecomberri prison in Mexico City in 1969, this novella, written in a single, torrential paragraph, concerns three prison inmates who plan to have heroin smuggled in to the prison. The book, now available in English for the first time, is an indictment of the deforming impact of institutions upon individuals.
"A whirlwind: one of the greatest pieces of twentieth-century writing." - Álvaro Enrigue
"It is impossible to understand contemporary Latin American literature without Revuelta's masterpiece The Hole. Its current invisibility in the English language places works like Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and César Aira's political novellas in a bibliographic vacuum." - Valeria Luiselli
>> Read an extract.
Who better to explore the uneasy relationship between the Renaissance Italy and the Muslim world than Mathias Enard, who won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for Compass, a work calibrating experience across Europe and the Middle East? Constructed from real historical fragments, Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants pivots on Michelangelo's invitation to visit Constantinople at the behest of the Sultan, who wishes to commission a bridge. It is a novel about why stories are told, why bridges are built, and how seemingly unmatched pieces, seen from the opposite sides of civilization, can mirror one another.
"Necessary – no one writes like Mathias Enard." — Francine Prose
"All of Enard’s books share the hope of transposing prose into the empyrean of pure sound, where words can never correspond to stable meanings. He’s the composer of a discomposing age." — Joshua Cohen, New York Times
>> Read an extract.
Bill Manhire interviewed by Anna Smaill, plus six poems; ‘My Ten Guitars’, a comic by Barry Linton, with a note by Tim Bollinger; Essays by Pip Adam, Geoff Cochrane, Lynn Davidson, Lynn Jenner, Dean Parker, Giovanni Tiso, Rose Lu; Fiction by Antonia Bale, Airini Beautrais, Zoë Higgins, Anthony Lapwood, Eamonn Marra, Hannah Mettner, Clare Moleta, Rachel O’Neill, Ursula Robinson-Shaw, Maria Samuela, Michelle Tayler; Poetry by Jane Arthur, Morgan Bach, Sarah Jane Barnett, Nikki-Lee Birdsey, Jenny Bornholdt, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, Ruth Corkill, Uther Dean, Lynley Edmeades, Rata Gordon, Rebecca Hawkes, Andrew Johnston, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Eleanor Rose King Merton, Emma Neale, Gregory O’Brien, Claire Orchard, Justin Paton, essa may ranapiri, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Frances Samuel, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Steven Toussaint, Oscar Upperton, Louise Wallace, Sugar Magnolia Wilson, Ashleigh Young; Cover by Elliot Elam.
>>This Sporting Life.
Thoughtful interviews with Patricia Grace, Tessa Duder, Owen Marshall, Philip Temple, David Hill, Joy Cowley, Vincent O'Sullivan, Albert Wendt, Marilyn Duckworth, Chris Else, Fiona Kidman and Witi Ihimaera, and excellent portraits and (even better) photographs of writing spaces by John McDermott.
Knausgaard writes "to erode his own notions of the world," but also, by exhausting his preconceptions through writing them, to allow himself stumble inadvertently upon knowledge that they had been concealing.
As a group of islands in the far south-west Pacific Ocean, New Zealand has a history that is steeped in the sea. Its people have encountered the sea in many different ways: along the coast, in port, on ships, beneath the waves, behind a camera, and in the realm of the imagination. While New Zealanders have continually altered their marine environments, the ocean, too, has influenced their lives. A multi-disciplinary work encompassing history, marine science, archaeology and visual culture, New Zealand and the Sea explores New Zealand's varied relationship with the sea, challenging the conventional view that history unfolds on land. Atholl Anderson; Damon Salesa; Ben Maddison; Angela McCarthy; Tony Ballantyne; Peter Gilderdale; Alison MacDiarmid; Michael Stevens; David Haines; Jonathan West; Grace Millar; Chris Brickell; Douglas Booth; Susann Liebich; Julie Benjamin; Jonathan Scott. Well presented.
Len Howard, the daughter of a poet, and a successful concert violinist, was forty years old when she decided to devote the rest of her life to her true love: birds. She bought a small cottage in Sussex, where she wrote two international bestsellers, astonishing the world with her observations on the tits, robins, sparrows and other birds that lived in and around her house, and would even perch on her shoulder as she typed. This novel is based on her life.
What work is referred to in a work of art? How can art explore the meaning of work, both economically and in a wider social context?
We shape ourselves, and are shaped in return, by the walls that contain us. Buildings affect how we sleep, work, socialise and even breathe. They can isolate and endanger us but they can also heal us. We project our hopes and fears onto buildings, while they absorb our histories. Iain Sinclair embarks on a series of expeditions - through London, Marseille, Mexico and the Outer Hebrides. He explores the relationship between sickness and structure, and between art, architecture, social planning and health, taking plenty of detours along the way.
"A remarkable book; surprisingly gripping and often very moving. Stories weave and unweave over the book's course, patterning thought into a complex built environment, at once disorientating and illuminating." - Robert Macfarlane
An insightful account of the life and importance of the émigré artist who, from his arrival in New Zealand in 1939, became an aperture through which international and indigenous heritages entered art discourse and practice.
A boy finds that with some help from his nana and a costume that gives him the confidence to be himself, he is at last able to make the perfect bomb into the water.
The same in te Reo.
The state of New Zealand's fresh water has become a pressing public issue in recent years. From across the political spectrum, concern is growing about the pollution of New Zealand's rivers and streams.
Mr Kinfolk introduces us to the unseen shapers of visual culture: Dries van Noten, Kris Van Assche, Spike Jonze, Melina Matsoukas, Grace Coddington, Linda Rodin and many more. Excellent photography and production inside.
>>Look inside.
Lees began this book with the intention of swimming in natural outdoor water in New Zealand every day for a year. Around her account of this she has written what amounts to a history of wild swimming in New Zealand and the social history surrounding it.
>>Immersive reading.
A new edition with new women, in a pleasing smaller format. 200 women from around the world, famous or unknown, answer the same five questions, such as “What really matters to you?” and “What would you change in the world if you could?” New Zealand interviewees include, Jacinda Ardern, Louise Nicholas, Marilyn Waring, Damaris Coulter, Kimbra Johnson, Lydia Ko, Marama Fox, Eva McGauley and Karen Walker.
Chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, the myth of recovery. Is this everyone's story?
“Porochista Khakpour’s powerful memoir, Sick, reads like a mystery and a reckoning with a love song at its core. Humane, searching, and unapologetic, Sick is about the thin lines and vast distances between illness and wellness, healing and suffering, the body and the self. Khakpour takes us all the way in on her struggle toward health with an intelligence and intimacy that moved, informed, and astonished me.” — Cheryl Strayed
Can the upwelling of dissenting energy be shaped into a collective political force or party? Can politics come to be seen as an expression of the people rather than a disempowering force?
Seminal works of psycho-geography, first published at the turn of the twentieth century (but only now in English), from a pioneer of urban sociology and precursor the the Frankfurt School.
When an American pilot crashes in the desert he must seek refuge in the very camp it had been his mission to bomb.
"Red Birds is an incisive, unsparing critique of war and of America’s role in the destruction of the Middle East. It combines modern and ancient farcical traditions in thrilling ways." - Guardian
A rejection of received norms and practices and the creation of new forms of connection and creation reach a quantum intensity in New York during the 1960s and early 1970s.
A sharply satirical and fantastical collection of stories revealing the depth and breadth of racism in contemporary US.
"An excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny." -George Saunders
Koirala has that knack of creating depth with a simple few lines — she creates images that seem to arise without effort, ideas that quietly lift off the page to settle in the mind of the reader. A new collection from the poet of Tear Water Tea.
In 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London's call for maids 'young and uncorrupt' to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia. The English had settled there just fourteen years previously and the company hoped to root its unruly menfolk to the land with ties of family and children. While the women travelled of their own accord, the company was in effect selling them at a profit for a bride price of 150 lbs of tobacco for each woman sold. The rewards would flow to investors in the near-bankrupt company. But what did the women want from the enterprise? Why did they agree to make the dangerous crossing to a wild and dangerous land, where six out of seven European settlers died within their first few years - from dysentery, typhoid, salt water poisoning and periodic skirmishes with the native population? What happened to them in the end?
When the Rift opens, death follows. For generations, the Rangers of Black Water Island have guarded the Old Herd against horrors released by the Rift. Cal West, an apprentice Ranger with a rare scar and even rarer gifts, fights daily to prove he belongs within their ranks. After nine years away, Meg Archer returns to her childhood home only to find the Island is facing a new threat that not even the Rangers are prepared for. Meg and Cal can't ignore their attraction, but can they face their darkest fears to save the Island from disaster?
>> Read Stella's review.
>> Come to the launch of The Rift on Tuesday 6 November at 6:30 at the Elma Turner Library in Halifax Street. There will be a Q&A, book signing and refreshments.
>> 5 reasons to read The Rift.
>> The rift between writing and making ends meet (Rachael talks to The Sapling)
>>What's Actaeon got to do with it?
>> (Gosh)
>>The Rift is published by Walker Books.
>> Rachael's 'Spark' trilogy is also superb.
>>Order a copy of The Rift (we can send it to you anywhere).
 | The Rift by Rachael Craw {Reviewed by STELLA} If you're going to read one new young adults' novel this year, make it this one! You will be saying “aha” and “yes... hmm…. sure...” - i.e. not really listening or taking notice of the world around you at all as you fall into the setting of Black Water Island, the Rift, and the lives of Cal and Meg. Rachael Craw, the author of the award-winning 'Spark' series, brings us a new intriguing and captivating novel, The Rift. Like her earlier series, The Rift has elements of science and fantasy, richly spiced with action, mystery and romance. Add to this a mythological element and you have unputdownable teen read. Black Water Island, remote and isolated, is a mysterious place - affected by ley lines and electromagnetic interference. Digital and mechanical devices are things for the mainland. It is the homeland of an ancient deer herd that holds a precious and wanted commodity - a medicinal property, Actaeon's Bane, marketed as a cure for all ills. The company who owns the rights and access to the deer’s special property is Nutris Pharmaceuticals - a corporation who don’t always 'play nice'. The Old Herd is protected by the Rangers, a group of talented trackers - one could say eco-warriors - who preserve the herd and keep it safe. Rangers are special - their talents handed down through hereditary lines. They have close relationships with birds, and each ranger usually has their own bird scout. Cal, an apprentice Ranger, is different - a fisherman’s son, he received his position via experience rather than inheritance. Meg, the daughter of the Head Ranger Sargent, left the island when she was nine after a horrific accident. Living on the mainland with her mother Dora, they decide it is time to return so that Meg can claim her inheritance. Planning to stay for only a few days, things go awry when the unexpected happens. It’s the time for the cull and the full moon is due - fortune hunters are beginning to descend on the island, and crossing the water with Meg and Dora is the sinister Jack Spear - an employee of Nutris. The island and the herd have been unsettled for days, and Cal senses that something is amiss. The Rift feels uneasy. And this is where the story really starts to hum. The whole concept of the Rift and the Rift Hounds is fascinating, darkly strange and edgy. Meg and Cal are now almost eighteen and hold a key to something they cannot begin to understand - and will remain mysterious to the reader also (I sense a sequel is on the horizon!) - but, drawn together and attracted to each other, they create a strong and important bond - a bond that helps them to face their fears and pushes them to act courageously when danger and death threaten. There are many layers to this novel: a romance - it will satisfy your desire to champion a love match for these two young people; a fantasy - it will intrigue you with the endlessly complex world of Black Water Island and its mysterious Rift; an action-packed adventure - there’s enough hand-to-hand combat, kick-ass athletics and human prowess for anyone; it is a fantasy which draws on myth and ancient tales will pique your curiosity; and a social commentary on ecological systems, medicine and power - it will kick off ideas and discussion that will give it depth and meaning. Add to that Craw’s adept language, brilliant story arc and great descriptive talent and you’ll be hooked. I’m looking forward to interviewing Rachael on Tuesday at the launch of The Rift. She is a YA superstar and a local author! |
 | House Mother Normal by B.S. Johnson {Reviewed by THOMAS} Eight residents and then their 'house mother' each deliver a 21-page interior monologue (with snippets of direct speech) revealing their thoughts during the same evening of activities at their rest home. Johnson has cleverly structured the novel so that the narratives can be compared page-to-page and a sequence of events can be constructed by cross-reference. Each character is introduced with a table rating the degree of incapacity of their various faculties, which is then reflected in the monologues (these become less coherent as the book progresses through decreasingly compos mentis residents). By providing internal access to each person present, Johnson provides a multidimensional concurrent narrative, a sort of compound claustrophobia, in which he explores the relationship between memory and identity, the gradual reduction of mental life to the desperate subjective affirmation of banality that underlies all utterances (he is democratic enough, though, to grant all meaning equivalent status), the persistence or otherwise of personhood through increasing incapacity, and the shaky concept of ‘the normal’ (at one point the house mother says, “I disgust them in order that they may not be disgusted with themselves”). House Mother Normal is a remarkably approachable experiment, in turns excoriating, compassionate and uncomfortably funny. |
NEW RELEASES
New books for a new month.
"A father is a necessary evil." - Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. William Butler Yeats's father was an impoverished artist, an inveterate letter writer, and a man crippled by his inability to ever finish a painting. Oscar Wilde's father was a doctor, a statistician and amateur archaeologist who was taken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange foreshadowing of events that would later befall his son. The father of James Joyce was a garrulous, hard-drinking man with a violent temper, unable or unwilling to provide for his large family, who eventually drove his son from Ireland. What do these men tell us about Ireland, about literary creation, even about fatherhood?
Lucia Berlin burst, posthumously, out of obscurity in 2015 with the publication of a selection of her stories entitled A Manual for Cleaning Women. Here was an authentic voice, a cleanness of style, a depiction of disadvantage, vulnerability and strength without sentimentality of condescension, a mordant but sympathetic humour, and an ability to pivot the largest observations on the smallest of details. Evening in Paradise is a further selection from Berlin's work.
>> Click through to find out more about our Books of the Week.
When Berlin died in 2004 she was working on a set of autobiographical sketches. These are now published for the first time.
>> Click through to find out more about our Books of the Week.
The worlds in Marcus's stories are bizarre but at the same time instantly recognisable. Every new ill or illness, however, is met with an equally new virtue or cure. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.
>>"Writer's block happens when I'm boring."
>>A connoisseur of anxiety.
>>'Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life As We Know It: A correction.'
>> Visit the Ben Marcus website.
A novel exploring the complicated ways in which a translator can complicate the already complicated relationship between an author and a reader. What happens when a translator starts to take control of the text they are supposedly translating? The novel concerns a translator translating a novel from French into English, but, in translating this actual novel from French into English, the actual translator Emma Ramadan begins to insert herself into the text and make commentary, very much as does the translator in the novel (albeit in an opposite way).
>>Uncommon translations.
New New Zealand writing. This issue features work by: John Adams, Nick Ascroft, Iain Britton, Nicholas Butler, Brent Cantwell, Jill Chan, Stephanie Christie, Makyla Curtis, John Downie, Doc Drumheller, Norman Franke, Jasmine Gallagher, Michael Giacon, Joy Holley, Mark Houlahan, Erik Kennedy, Rhiannon Leddra, Bronwyn Lloyd, Caoimhe McKeogh, Piet Nieuwland, Keith Nunes, Sarah Penwarden, Chris Pigott, Sugu Pillay, essa may ranapiri, Vaughan Rapatahana, Sahanika Ratnayake, Jack Ross, Lisa Samuels, Erena Shingade, Carin Smeaton, Fiona Stevens, Chris Stewart, David Taylor, Richard Taylor, Loren Thomas, Richard von Sturmer, and Mark Young.
The exciting new book from the Nelson author of the 'Spark' trilogy.
When the Rift opens, death follows. For generations, the Rangers of Black Water Island have guarded the Old Herd against horrors released by the Rift. Cal West, an apprentice Ranger with a rare scar and even rarer gifts, fights daily to prove he belongs within their ranks. After nine years away, Meg Archer returns to her childhood home only to find the Island is facing a new threat that not even the Rangers are prepared for. Meg and Cal can't ignore their attraction, but can they face their darkest fears to save the Island from disaster?
>> Five reasons to read The Rift.
>> Come and meet Rachael at the launch of The Rift on Tuesday 6 November at 6:30 at the Elma Turner Library!
"I am not a man, I am dynamite," said Nietzsche. Over a century after his death, his assaults upon philosophy and society are still unassimilated and subject to often contradictory interpretations, though we live subject to concepts and anticoncepts heralded by him: the death of God, the Übermensch, slave morality, the will to power. Prideaux's book gets closer to the man behind both the words and the silence.
>>"What does not kill me makes me stronger."
Why do we have such a fascination for imitations of things that are much much smaller than the originals? What does this tell us about ourselves, and about our relationship with the full-sized world?
For thousands of years, humans have built walls and assaulted them, admired walls and reviled them. Great Walls have appeared on nearly every continent, the handiwork of people from Persia, Rome, China, Central America, and beyond. They have accompanied the rise of cities, nations, and empires. How does history look like when represented by its walls?
The Maloufs' books are always beautiful and a pleasure to cook from. Fruit; Dairy; Frozen; Cakes; Cookies; Pastries; Doughnuts, Fritters & Pancakes; Halvas & Confectionery; Preserves; and Drinks.
What we call sanity is easily upended by emotions and experiences experienced by all of us.
An exhaustive and superbly documented catalogue of and guide to all of the architectural works.
An American academic specialising in prison architecture visits Buenos Aries at the request of a colleague and sometime lover. When he fails to locate her he becomes increasingly disoriented and his conception of reality is increasingly dominated by dogs. With absurdist tendencies, this novel is also a critique of authoritarian nationalism.
How the World Thinks: A global history of philosophy by Julian Baggini $37
"An engaging, urbane and humane global survey." - Guardian
A history of contrary positioning through history told in 180 objects, from papyrus to pussy hats.
When an open-water distance swimmer returns to New Zealand after a call from his sick, estranged mother, he finds the provincial town claustrophobic and becomes compelled to swim towards an island off the coast.
Winner of the 2018 Viva la Novella Prize.
"The true writer has nothing to say." - Robbe-Grillet. A 'special agent' begins to investigate a crime, finds he cannot disentangle himself from the 'evidence' and ends up committing the crime (the murder of his father). Robbe-Grillet's first published book (Les Gommes) was first published in 1953.
Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar that is the site of an eerie possession, children who lock their perverse mothers in a room and burn it, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman.
"I don't know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us." - Italo Calvino
Say what you really think with this feminist card game featuring 20 'nasty' women.
Not so much a story of kings and conquests as the story of freedom fighters, suffragettes, the workers of Red Clydesdale who fought for their rights, and the contemporary struggle for independence.
An unflinching account of life in Suffolk between the wars, this novel blends fine nature writing with an examination of the dangers of nostalgia in a changing world.
"A masterpiece." - Jon McGregor (author of Reservoir 13)
“A deeply unusual, psychologically astute novel about technology and survival, sex and love. If the late Philip K. Dick and Ann Patchett had managed to team up and write a collaborative novel, it might look something like this. Beguiling, irreverent, and full of heart.” - Kirkus
A sumptuous survey of a career dating back to 1964.
Are Morrigan's dreams of escaping her curses existence over as soon as they have begun? Why does the Wundrous Society seem so intent on suppressing her mysterious ability? How has Nevermoor turned from a place of safety into a place of danger? Can the ominous Ezra Squall be resisted? Find out in this riveting sequel to Nevermoor.
He is __ appreciated. From the band's formation in 1976 (with Martin Bramah on "the world's cheapest guitar") until Smith's death this year, The Fall carved a jagged swathe through the pampered flesh of musical taste. Smith's verbal inventiveness and acidic irony earned him a special place in a generation of independent minds.
>> 'Hip Priest' (live, 1981).
"The problem is not police training, police diversity of police methods. The problem is the unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift of the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself."
A fascinating anecdotal history of a way of life now almost forgotten.
"I paint with my back to the world." Martin's increasing withdrawal from the world, her obsessively geometric approaches, her overwhelming serenity made her an exemplar of Minimalism for five decades.
Between 1967 and 1972 Colin and Phyllis Wheeler visited 60 isolated sheep stations throughout the country, drawing, painting and writing. This beautifully produced book is the ultimate record of high country life.