 | This Tilting World by Colette Fellous {Reviewed by THOMAS} “Tomorrow, yes, I will leave this house. I’ll abandon the village and the life here, all the faces that I love I will leave.” Following the death of a friend at sea and the murder of 38 people on her local beach at Sousse in 2015, Fellous determines that she will leave her native Tunisia, this time for good. “Even if leaving tears me apart, even if leaving destroys me, I cannot do anything else.” For those, like Fellous, whose business is words, exile, the preparation for exile, and whatever is carried into exile must consist primarily of words, and Fellous determines to write “this book that I mean to finish before daybreak, as a farewell gesture to the country.” She has found herself inseparable from Tunisia, but she has “come back to see, in order more easily to disengage.” Handling object after object, she stows her memories ready for departure, not only her own memories of growing up in Tunisia’s ancient but shrinking Jewish community, of leaving to further her (formal and informal) education in France as a teenager, of repeatedly returning to the country of her birth, but also those of her parents, especially those of her father, who left Tunisia for Paris in his sixties and never returned nor spoke of the life he had left behind, and who has recently died of a heart attack. In preparation for leaving the past behind, Fellous sets out to heal, through words, through memory, her parents’ “deep wordless wound of having left their country so brutally, as if it were a natural step: this they kept in silence, folded deep inside, like so may others, not daring to touch on or venture near it; and this I meant to feel in my turn. This they had passed down to me, it had become my wound. And perhaps, after all, it was this I had sought to treat by returning, by trying to recover their childhood.” Using a method that owes something to Proust and a style that owes something to Rimbaud (exquisitely translated into English by Sophie Lewis), Fellous’s beautiful prose moves delicately, like the most tentative and searching thought, around and between entities in her memory that are either too fragile or too awful to be approached directly. In this way she achieves what she calls, after Barthes, her “struggle for softness,” her overcoming of violence by rejecting the language of violence. “It was Barthes, there’s no question, more than my parents, who taught me to read the world, to leave nothing in limbo. All things observed, all words spoken, every silence between two words, every link between two sentences.” Fellous’s approach to draw together all elements: times, people, objects, memories, sensations; to pack her book with the great cluster of experiences that comprise what it is to be herself, to show with words how a mind can approach and encompass these experiences, all the while knowing that the past is being squeezed out of the present, excluded from a world that is changing. “Could all of us, perhaps, without knowing it, the French, the Italians, the Maltese, the Jews, the Greeks, the Muslims of this country, we who watch and play together in this cafe, in this small nowhere-town, yes, could all of us already be refugees, already hostages or prisoners, or even disappeared?” Human well-being is a precious, fragile, evanescent thing, easily destroyed, she knows. “What to make of this violence, all those dead on the beach, all the dead everywhere, they are in me, haunting my lips and my eyes.” Those expelled from their own lives have only memories as their possessions: “This is the story of so many exiles, of all those who today cross the Medierranean and die at sea, in their thousands they go, are lost in their thousands, their story is ours too, it tugs at our hearts.” Fellous knows that she must leave Tunisia, in order to prevent her memories from being overwritten by an unaccommodating world: “I know that only by leaving will I save everything that lies before me now.” She completes her book, her memory-luggage, and departs. But, in the end, even this last leaving is uncertain: “I knew I could not do it — I couldn’t help it, I would always be returning.” |
NEW RELEASES
Reading. Writing. Parenting. Angsting. A wonderful — quirkily funny and poignant — graphic memoir from the superb Sarah Laing, drawn between 2010 and 2019.
"Let Me Be Frank is a brilliant collection of anecdotes and observations. Sarah's stories of navigating daily life in all its absurdity and mundanity are told with alarming honesty and humour." —Art Sang
"Full of incidental and profound pleasure. Audaciously, addictively honest." —Anna Smaill
>>Let Me Be Frank continues.
>>Mansfield and Me.
A novel told entirely as footnotes to an unwritten book, Armand V conveys the life of a diplomat nearing the end of his career, inclining to withdraw from life, and his relationship with his son, who, against the father's advice, chooses to participate, with disastrous consequences. Interesting, radically unconventional and well-written.
“Without question, Norway’s bravest, most intelligent novelist.” —Per Petterson
>>Read Adam Mars-Jones's insightful review in the LRB.
When Jim Sams woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed (from a cockroach) into the most powerful man in Britain. Once reviled by all, he now sets off to enact the will of the people. Nothing — legality, decency, common sense or the rules of parliamentary democracy — will stand in his way. Does this sound somehow familiar?
>>Read the first section.
>>Or listen to Bill Nighy read the first section for (or to) you.
Lispector's third novel, at last translated into English. As a young woman is 'tamed' by marriage and her frontier town aspires towards 'civilisation', the constraints entailed by both leave her identifying with the porcelain knickknacks in her mother's cabinet.
"Lispector made her own rules, free of the world’s constraints, and here, in her third novel, an ordinary story and apparently shallow protagonist are no impediments to formidable experiment…Having read her, one feels different, elated." —Booklist
"Lispector’s prose lilts and sways, its rhythm shakes at once with closeness and distance. The sensory power Lispector is able to draw from her sentences is here given free rein and the descriptive character of the text is wild with excess, seeking to imbue everything simultaneously with solidity, material presence, and transience, fluidity." —Music & Literature
"Underneath Lispector’s inventive, modernist style is a poignant and radical depiction of a young woman navigating a patriarchal society." —The Paris Review
In a radically changed Aotearoa New Zealand, Van's life in the swamp is hazardous. Sheltered by Rau and Matewai, he mines plastic and trades to survive. When a young visitor summons him to the fenced settlement on the hill, he is offered a new and frightening responsibility: a perilous inland journey that leads to a tense confrontation and the prospect of a rebuilt world.
First published in Polish in 1961 as Pamiętnik antybohatera, Filipowicz's novel now appears in English for the first time. As the Second World War engulfs Poland, the narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but careful; reflective but determined. As he becomes increasingly and chillingly alienated from other people, the reader is drawn into complicit acquiescence.
Garments Against Women by Anne Boyer $28
“I am the dog who can never be happy because I am imagining the unhappiness of other dogs.” Anne Boyer’s collection of prose poems is everywhere alert to the ways in which the world as experienced by those who live in it is riven by inequalities. 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.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Reading by Anne Boyer.
Gray's approach is both idiosyncratic and faithful, as well as being a pleasure to read. Follows Hell.
>>Visit Gray.
Smith's first short story collection showcases her restless intellect, eclectic interests and verbal prowess, ranging through forms from Chekhovian neatness to autofiction to speculative delimitation.
>>Smith's experiments.
Olafur Eliasson in Real Life by Mark Godfrey $45
Provides unique insight into the work and the artistic, social and environmental contexts of this exceptional artist.
>>Visit Eliasson's 'studio'.
Beautiful and sad, Palacio's graphic novel explores the story of Sara Blum, who was hidden from the Nazis in a French village during World War 2 (and is the grandmother of Julian the bully in Palacio's Wonder). Genuinely moving.
When Ettie the Rabbi's daughter conjures a golem named Ava to protect Lea from the Nazis, can the three of them do more good than just survive? Can they even survive?
"Hoffman's exploration of the world of good and evil, and the constant contest between them, is unflinching. The book builds and builds, as she weaves together, seamlessly, the stories of people in the most desperate of circumstances - and then it delivers with a tremendous punch." —Elizabeth Strout
An unparalleled collection of kiwiana has been assembled in Fernyhough's extensive bach (where better?).
Outlines concrete and achievable steps of policy reform to address the climate crisis.
A space bounty hunter tracks down a frog princess, a woman finds a condom where it shouldn't be, and a spoiled art student works his first freelance job. A collection of short dark-to-very-dark, strange-to-very-strange, excellent-to-superb comic strips from this outstanding graphic novelist.
In London in 1958 a play by a 19-year-old redefined women's writing in Britain. It also began a movement that would change women's lives forever. The play was A Taste of Honey and the author, Shelagh Delaney, was the first of a succession of very young women who wrote about their lives with an honesty that dazzled the world. They rebelled against sexism, inequality and prejudice and in doing so rejected masculine definitions of what writing and a writer should be. After Delaney came Edna O'Brien, Lynne Reid Banks, Virginia Ironside, Charlotte Bingham, Margaret Forster and Nell Dunn, each challenging traditional concepts of womanhood in novels, films, television,essays and journalism.
Gros takes a historical approach to the concept of security, looking at its evolution from the Stoics to the social network. With lucidity and rigour, Gros’s approach is fourfold, looking at security as a mental state, as developed by the Greeks; as an objective situation and absence of all danger, as prevailed in the Middle Ages; as guaranteed by the nation-state and its trio of judiciary, police, and military; and finally biosecurity, control, regulation, and protection in the flux of contemporary society.
A bonkers novel of real estate.
"One of the funniest, most finely achieved comic novels, even by her own standard. I think it's a masterpiece." —Ali Smith
"I think Nicola Barker is incapable of a dull page. Her work is unified by its spirit of adventure." —Kevin Barry
Badiou anatomises the 'antiphilosophy' of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, addressing the crucial moment where Wittgenstein argues that much has to be passed over in silence, showing what cannot be said, after accepting the limits of language and meaning. Badiou argues that this mystical act reduces logic to rhetoric, truth to an effect of language games, and philosophy to a series of esoteric aphorisms.
In a 14th century England a group of quite various individuals set off for France and into the oncoming disaster of the Black Death.
"One of the many deep and destabilising pleasures Meek’s rich and strange new novel offers comes from trying to work out precisely what kind of a book – and what kind of a world – you are in at any particular moment. At the centre of this beautiful novel is an exploration of the difference between romance and true love, allegory and reality, history and the present. It plays out in unexpected and delightful ways." —Guardian
The definitive book for the flour aficionado.
Astounding survey of 500 Mid-Century Modern house around the world.
Stig and Tilde are to spend time without adult supervision on a deserted island in accordance with local tradition — but what happens if they land on the wrong island? They learn a lot about themselves and about each other in the process.
Contributors: Crispin Anderlini, Vivienne Bailey, Manu Berry, Madeleine Child, Wendy Clarke, Jenny Clay, Anne Curran, Hannah Davison, Alexandra Fraser, Katie Furze, Michael Giacon, Peter Graham, J.A. Grierson, Claire Hagan, Jacob Hagan, Sandi Hall, Trisha Hanifin, Kayleen Hazlehurst, Edna Heled, Paul Hewlett, Feby Idrus, Lincoln Jaques, Anna Knox, Clare Marcie, Lorraine Marson, Helen McNeil, Elizabeth McRae, Jacquie McRae, Dave Moore, Denise O’Hagan, Christina O’Reilly, Maris O’Rourke, Nataliya Oryshchuk, Janet Pates, Karen Phillips, Edith Poor, Garth Powell, Kirsty Powell, Vaughan Rapatahana, Gillian Roach, Emma Robinson, Henrica Schieving, Tina Shaw, Olivia Spooner, Andrew Stiggers, Ellie Stiggers, Jessica Thomas, Lee Tupuola-Madsen, Kathryn van Beek, Suzie Watt, Sally Wilkins, M.A. Wilkins, Lisa Williams, Briana Woolliams, and Johnathan Worrall.
At last! The fourth volume superbly illustrated by Jim Kay.
Fully illustrated edition of Smith's revered memoir of her coming of age in New York's arts/music/literature scene , and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe.
>>Also new from Patti Smith: Year of the Monkey.
A collection of well-observed photographs taken around the world, with an eye for pattern and form. Channon is a former design tutor at NMIT.
>>See some images here.
An Underground Guide to Sewers, Or: Down, through and out in Paris, London, New York, &c by Stephen Halliday $45
Cities could be mapped by their underground networks of sewers, and the history revealed by what a city gets rid of is every bit as fascinating as the history of its inputs. Superbly illustrated with photographs, plans, maps, &c.
>>The story of a 'fatberg'.
All cultures are defined by their food, but for Danes the two are almost indistinguishable.
At school, Selina is teased for her big, frizzy hair. Kids call her ‘mophead’. She ties her hair up this way and that way and tries to fit in. Until one day, after Sam Hunt visits her school, Selina gives up the game. She decides to let her hair out, to embrace her difference, to be WILD!
>>Five minutes with Selina Tusitala Marsh.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>> Read the title essay.
>> On Driving as Metaphor.
>> Aftermath.
>> On Rudeness.
>>Making Home.
>>Lions on Leashes.
>>Shakespeare's Sisters.
>>How to Get There.
>>On rereading The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence.
>>On Never Let Me Go.
>>On Natalia Ginzburg.
>>Is Rachel Cusk "through with autiobiography"?
>>Read Thomas's reviews of the outstanding 'Faye Project': >Outline, >Transit, and >Kudos.
>>Cusk on Faye.
>>"I don't think characters exist any more."
>>Read Thomas's review of Aftermath.
 |
Coventry by Rachel Cusk {Reviewed by THOMAS}
How does the reviewer even attempt to begin to write his review of a collection of essays treating diverse personal and literary subjects and first published in various media over a range of ten years? Does he point out that, during this ten years, the author of the essays wrote a remarkable set of three novels that were not only hugely enjoyable to read but also tested and redefined the ways in which fiction could be written, and also tested and redefined the relationship between ‘fiction’ and ‘real life’? If he does, is this the point at which he might attempt to divert attention from the quality or otherwise of his current review by directing, perhaps via useful hyperlinks, the reader of the said review to read instead his previous reviews of the three remarkable novels of what he and no-one else calls the ‘Faye Project’: Outline, Transit and Kudos (or, in the perverse order in which he read them, Kudos, Transit and Outline), which reviews are probably more than one reader could tolerate of his reviewing in one sitting, thus relieving him of the pressure to review the essay collection at all, but also, unfortunately, defeating the purpose of reviewing the essay collection, which is to bring to the attention of this possibly actual reader of his review something of the pleasures, qualities and benefits of the essay collection? Would it be a good idea to proceed from a mention of the ‘Faye Project’, so to call it, to emphasise the unifying consideration of the essays in Coventry in their capacities to provide insights into the astringent, rigorous, restless mind of the writer behind these novels (though perhaps not very far behind), or would this approach relegate the essays to a secondary and supportive tier to the appreciation of the so-called ‘Faye Project’? Would this relegation be appropriate or inappropriate for the reviewer’s and the reviewer’s reader’s (supposing there is one) appreciation of the essay collection? Would it do the essay collection a disservice or a service (or whatever the opposite of a disservice is)? Is it relevant or irrelevant to an appreciation of what the reviewer and no-one else calls the ‘Faye Project’ to gain from the essays collected in Coventry further and possibly (but only possibly) more direct insights into the concerns, both literary and personal, of the author Rachel Cusk, or should the value of such insights be independent of the ‘Faye Project’, in which case this should be the last time the reviewer mentions it? Does a collection as diverse in subject and dispersed in time as Coventry even need to be treated in a unified fashion? Should the individual essays be perhaps treated individually? Should the reviewer perhaps point out that, although there is much to be gained from the reading of almost all of these essays, there is nothing in particular further to be gained from reading them together, or in any particular order, or in any particular relationship between any of them? Although it is true that the essays are arranged in three groups, which seem to be, firstly, essays that arise from the experiences the author has in what we are meant to think of as her ‘actual life’ (what the reviewer might think someone might call ‘memoir), largely dealing with the ambivalences of parenthood, the deflationary potentials of relationships, both between adults and between adults and children, on rudeness, driving, and on domestic space as a zone of contention between its inhabitant’s internal and external worlds and between her individual and communal worlds; secondly, a few essays on the phenomenon or pseudophenomenon of so-called ‘women’s writing’, on the benefits or pseudobenefits of so-called ‘creative writing’ courses, and on St. Francis of Assisi’s ‘father problems’ (that led him to postulate, according to Cusk, a God as a “projection of himself, a kind of universal victim ravaged by the world’s misunderstanding and neglect. Perhaps his spirit had been crushed after all, for like a child his sympathies ever after lay with dumb creatures.”); and thirdly, a set or pseudoset of reviews or rereadings (how, the reviewer will have to determine, do reviews and rereadings differ from views and readings?) of various novels and authors, from D.H. Lawrence to Olivia Manning to Kazuo Ishiguro to Natalia Ginzburg, providing a degree of insight into Cusk’s own approach to the writing of fiction (or whatever) by sympathetic resonance and observation (for instance, in what also exists as an introduction to Natalia Ginzburg’s collection Little Virtues, Cusk writes of Ginzburg's "unusual objectivity, achieved by a careful use of distance that is never allowed to become detachment," and observes that Ginzburg "separates the concept of storytelling from the concept of the self and in doing so takes a great stride towards a more truthful representation of reality,” which observations might well also be made of Cusk’s work); should the reviewer point out that this tripartite grouping is in itself no more unifying than the compartments of a cutlery drawer are unifying of knives that will be used at various times and for various purposes and never all at once? If the essays are to be treated severally, does it make sense for the reviewer to review them collectively, or even to address them separately in one review (the cutlery drawer metaphor notwithstanding)? If the reviewer were to proclaim that the first essay in the collection, ‘Driving as Metaphor’, is his favourite, that it has a clarity, detachment and lucidity that at times reminds him of Calvino in applying to the minutiae of quotidian life the depth of anthropological or psychological or philosophical or anthropopsychophilosophical consideration that is usually squandered on the unfamiliar, the aberrant and the rare, and if the reviewer were to pad out his review with extensive quotes, or with a large number of inextensive quotes, from the essay (which would not be difficult to do, prime candidates being such observations as, when observing a traffic jam, that of “the sight of rows of human faces trapped behind and frames by their windscreens can be especially striking, as though a portrait-painter had drawn them,” or that “the difference between a car and a person is not entirely clear. Moments earlier the car was the disguise for and the enlargement of, the driver’s will. Shortly, when the traffic stops, it will become his burden and his prison,” and, most frighteningly, that “the true danger of driving might be in its capacity for subjectivity, and in the weapons it puts at subjectivity’s disposal”), would the reviewer run the risk that, if a reader of his review (or view), if there was one, happened to read this first essay and did not like it, though the reviewer cannot see why they would not, would the fact that he had told them that he thought it the best of the essays prevent them from carrying on to read essays in the collection that they may well find, personally, better? Will he attempt to convey in his review that Cusk’s rigour and restlessness and astringency, when applied to common generalisations such as those of gender roles, or of the phenomenon or pseudophenomenon of ‘women’s writing’, destabilise those generalisations to a larger extent than they acknowledge them, regardless, perhaps, of Cusk’s intentions, but in a way entirely appropriate to her privileging of honesty over acceptability or ease? Will he have space to explore some of Cusk’s sometimes dubious but nevertheless fascinating and therefore valuable assertions, such as the suggestion that “war might almost be said to embody the narrative principle itself. In war, there is no point of view; war is the end of point of view, where violence is welcomed as the final means of arriving at a common version of events,” pointing out that “the generation of narrative entails a lot of waste”? Will the reviewer succeed in conveying something of Coventry in such a way that a possible reader of his review might like to read Coventry themselves, without the intervening presence of said reviewer? Is this to be desired? Or are there too many unanswerable questions interposing themselves between the reviewer and his task for him to have any hope at all of approaching its fulfilment?
|
 | The Divers' Game by Jesse Ball {Reviewed by STELLA} Lethe and Lois burst off the page in the first part of Jesse Ball’s The Divers’ Game. Such frenetic energy can’t be contained. Lethe and Lois are Pads — school girls that are part of the community of privilege. They have no fears, carry gas masks with them and know the creed. One day their teacher, the depressive alcoholic Mandred, offers to take them to the zoo. The zoo is a fair distance from the city. On the train the girls, who are fast friends, sit close together with their intense and seemingly secret language of glances and touches. They feel inseparable. However, when they get to the zoo only one student can be the teacher’s assistant. Lois accompanies Mandred into the zoo of stuffed animals — in this world no creatures live, apart from a lone hare near the end of its life. What does the hare symbolise — a last hope? The final gasp of the old world? A world before Quads. Or the suffering of all living creatures? While Lois is entranced by the zoo, Lethe is left outside and left to her own devices. She lies on the grass in the park until it is dark and when her companions do not return, she decides to return to the city. On the train back she is startled by a man and gets off at an unknown station. In her panic, she finds herself at a large clearing on the edge of a Quad territory. In this world, there are two distinct groups, the Pads and the Quads — the Quads are the aliens, the refugees, allowed to stay, but disenfranchised, physically — branded on their checks and a thumb removed (replaced by a prosthetic) — and economically — they live in the worse neighbourhoods in caged communities — guarded by Pad security, and are the workers at the lowest end of society. At any time a Pad can end the life of a Quad if they feel under threat. A gas canister can be released for an immediate or painful or slow death. This is a world of black and white, unequal, full of tension and threat. The novel arches over a day or so. When Lethe and Lois are on the train they are contemplating the coming of Ogia’s Day — a ceremony that rarely occurs, a day in which all debts (financial and emotion) are wiped. There is high anticipation and the girls are discussing their outfits. In another part of the city the Quads are rehearsing for their own ceremony — a macabre parade with a young child — the Infanta — at its centre, a child jollied into deciding wrong-doers’ fate. Are they guilty? Wave the red-sleeved arm. Not guilty — let them go. We join the crowd and are swept forward in the horror. Lethe flows like a river along her path — a journey which lands her on the outskirts of a group of Quads gathered around a bonfire. The young Infanta is borne along in a frenzy, unaware of the power of her position. As the reader, you know the inevitable is just around the corner. Will she be treated mercifully if the crowds are happy or thrown to the lions if not? Her papier-mache look-alike awaits. And then there are the children playing out the adult world of jealously and hierarchy through 'the divers' game' — a game which pushes contestants to their limits. Jesse Ball’s writing, as in Census, is sparse and compelling, There is intrigue, confusion and pre-ordained destiny. You are up close, alongside the characters, but then suddenly pulled out to a god’s eye view — witnessing and looking around the corners to where Lethe, Lois and the other children can not see. The world feels dystopic and yet all too real — an allegory of crisis, prejudice and confusion, a world that feels out of control. The final section of the book, a letter from Mandred’s wife pulls, us out of this confusion and fear or hate. Her words, even in despair, are compassionate and remind us of what humanity can be. |
NEW RELEASES
"New Zealand's foremost artist Colin McCahon is many things to many people: modernist, visionary, environmentalist, shaman, preacher, rustic provincialist, bicultural trailblazer, painter-poet, graffiti artist, teacher, maverick. Peter Simpson's account interrogates as well as accommodates all of these possibilities. Guiding us year by year through the artist's career, he offers a ground-breaking overview of the life's work of a tenacious, brilliant and endlessly fascinating figure." —Gregory O'Brien
"With a generous regard towards his subject, a magisterial command of the material, and scrupulous attention to detail, Peter Simpson has crafted an indispensable work of art-historical scholarship. Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction draws upon diaries, letters and other contemporary sources to document the artist's life from 1919 until 1959, alongside a magnificent selection of his works, many of which have not been reproduced before. It is a remarkable achievement." —Martin Edmond
>>Come to an illustrated lecture by Peter Simspon: Colin McCahon in Nelson, 1938-1948: The Breakthrough years. The Suter Art Gallery theatre, Wednesday 13 November, 6 PM. Book at The Suter. $10 Friends of The Suter, members of NSAS; $15 general public.
A strange, elegant and compelling new novel from the author of the Census (one of our favourite books of 2018). What happens when a society renounces the pretence of equality, when small acts of kindness are practically unknown, when what we would see as cruelty is sanctioned? This book is a subtle, spare and affecting meditation on violence, longing and beauty.
>>"We labour under tyrants."
>>"An unnerving parable of a country that feigns innocence."
>>Read our reviews of Census.
Gavin Bishop's beautiful large-format book features the various animals (birds! fish! insects! mammals! reptiles!), both native and introduced, that live on land and in the waters and air of the cluster of islands that we share with them. Both browsable and readable, the book is an excellent source of information for a wide age-range, a guide to environmental concerns, and a handsome companion volume to the splendid Aotearoa: The New Zealand story.
Essays from one of today's sharpest writers on 'Driving as Metaphor', 'On Rudeness', on parenting, disintegrating relationships and the concept of 'home',on 'women's writing', on the insights that can be gained from a range of artists and writers, and on being sent to Coventry. We highly recommend Cusk's novels Outline, Transit and Kudos.
>> Read the title essay.
>>On Driving as Metaphor.
>>Aftermath.
>>On Rudeness.
>>Read Thomas's reviews of Outline, Transit and Kudos.
Spend a year inside the head of this inspired and idiosyncratic thinker, writer and musician as she moves from performances towards the solitary places both outside and inside her head.
>>2016 BTW.
Bill Cunningham was a contributor to the New York Times for many decades. He was also an incurable and eccentric chronicler of fashion, tirelessly snapping photos of and writing about interestingly attired celebrities and ordinary New Yorkers he spots on the street. This thoughtfully assembled book is the perfect record of an unparalleled eye.
An outstanding collection of photographs of Bourgeois and her Brooklyn Studio and Chelsea house in New York.
>>Now, Now, Louisson.
This wonderful book will reconfigure your thinking about the country you live in. Each map shows data, from economic inequality to the movement of cats at night, in a completely absorbing way. Very impressive and endlessly fascinating. Interesting essays, too.
"An astonishing portrait of an innocent on the verge of discovering the cruelties of love. There are whispers here of the future work of Elena Ferrante." —Elizabeth Strout
"Pavese, to me, is a constant source of inspiration." —Jhumpa Lahiri
"One of the few essential novelists of the mid-twentieth century."—Susan Sontag
"Pavese writes books of extraordinary depth where one never stops finding new levels, new meaning." —Italo Calvino
In La Belle Sauvage, Lyra Belaqua, who featured in Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' series was a baby. In The Secret Commonwealth she is 20 years old and, with her daemon Pantalaimon, she is struggling to find a way through an increasingly complicated world, a world in which her loyalties and judgements are called constantly into question. Can Lyra keep her feet as her horizons expand at dizzying speed?
A beautifully written account of Ditlevsen's childhood in a working-class neighbourhood of Copenhagen. She went on to become one of Denmark's outstanding poets.
An insightful look at a range of small houses around New Zealand, clearly showing design and construction considerations, and floorplans. From the author of Small House Living and several other superb books on New Zealand domestic architecture.
Coetzee completes the trilogy that began with The Childhood of Jesus and continued with The Schooldays of Jesus with this evocation of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions. The trilogy has the intensity and clarity of an allegory without ever committing to what it might be an allegory of, which awakens and expands the reader's faculties.
>>Read Thomas's review of The Childhood of Jesus.
"Would you still call me a diva if I were a man?" —Zaha Hadid
150 outstanding architects from the last 100 years.
An astounding book-length poem from this excellent poet, collaging water-stories from the Odyssey with Oswalds own observations on the mutability that water embodies and to which all life tends.
>>Read Thomas's review of Falling Awake.
Thoroughly delicious (no deep-fried battered Mars Bars).
A lively essay on the importance of children's literature.
>>Which are Rundell's favourite books written for children?
BOOKS @ VOLUME #146 (28.9.19)
Read our newsletter and find out what we've been reading and recommending.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Read an extract.
>> Lucy Ellmann does not care about what male reviewers think about having to read such a long book written about a woman.
>>"I wooed my husband with Thomas Bernhard's Concrete."
>>"I don’t like overpopulation, but I have infinite respect for motherhood."
>>"All art that's any good is political."
>>"I WROTE MY OWN DAMN BOOK!"
>>Ellmann's Irish connection.
>>Ducks, Newburyport has been short-listed for the 2019 Booker Prize. Find out about the other books on the short list.
>>Click and collect.
 | Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann {Reviewed by THOMAS} The fact that the wind is now making the branches scrape against the wall of the house as he sits down to write, though at least they only scrape when the wind blows, he thinks, and even when the wind blows it blows in gusts, so the scraping is not constant, not that it’s any less irritating, he thinks, the fact that this irritation is preventing him from starting to write, the fact that here he is, starting to write his review at the end of the day, despite what he just said, at what is almost the end of the day, at the end of the week, and such a week, the fact there is therefore a deadline of sorts to the completion of his review, the fact that he has not even started to write his review, despite what he just said, the fact that he would prefer to finish reading his book than write his review of the book, the fact that he is enjoying the book, very much, while he is reading it, but if he enjoys reviewing the book the enjoyment will only come when the writing is completed, which seems hardly fair, the fact that the book he is reading and enjoying is over one thousand pages long and is floppy and unwieldy like a paperback dictionary, which seems somehow appropriate, both in that it is floppy and unwieldy, in that it is about the floppiness and unwieldiness of being alive, as a human, in the twenty-first century, conscious and at the mercy of thought, and also in that the book is, in a way, similar to a dictionary in that it could make a fairly good claim to being an exhaustive catalogue of the miseries of consciousness, which is a sort of language, or a field in any case defined by language, the fact that the book is very funny, funny and painful, he thinks, just like consciousness, the fact that nobody should ever publish a paperback dictionary, unless it is a dictionary for incurious people, and there could be a market for that, he thinks, otherwise paperback dictionaries are insufficiently robust to be used more than a very few times, the fact that the floppiness and the unwieldiness of Ducks, Newburyport, the novel by Lucy Ellmann that he is going to review, seem somehow appropriate qualities for this novel of over one thousand pages, being slightly irritating but also in a way comedic and intriguing, just like life in the twenty-first century, the book’s ostensible subject, the fact that Ellmann is “the Proust of modern afflictions”, which quote he made up himself and disposed in speech marks to give it authority, perhaps that should have a capital M, he thinks, that fact that Modernism is a project to undo, or outdo, the strictures of form in order to make literature more resemble thought, the fact that Lucy Ellmann has made her novel resemble thought to the extent that it is both terrifying and compulsive, the fact that thought pops up all over the place, the fact that thought resurges, that is not a good word, he thinks, the fact that we are besieged at all times by thought, the fact that we are submerged in thought at all times, thought from outside our heads, both absolutely us and not us really at all, the fact that we are trying to keep our heads up, above the thoughts, but we can’t, the fact that we think to avoid thinking, the fact that wherever we look there’s a thought, the fact that, if he has to compare Ducks, Newburyport with something, it would be with an itch, as in when you ask yourself, Do I have an itch, then, invariably, you have an itch somewhere, perhaps on your elbow, or at the back of your neck, or an itch on your back, and, if you ask yourself, Do I have another itch, then you have another, and soon, as you know, you will have an itch anywhere you think about, you have itches everywhere, you are one great itch, well Ducks, Newburyport is like that, he thinks, a woman is assailed by her thoughts, she is at the mercy of her thoughts, the thoughts she produces, or, rather, the thoughts that assail her, for, he thinks, obsession is the state of being at the mercy of your own proclivities, the fact that Ducks, Newburyport is written as an endless stream of everything that annoys, or itches, or stimulates, or pains, same thing, a mind in this world, it is, he thinks, a catalogue of thoughts and the thoughts that get in the way of thought, for, he thinks, we all think to avoid thought, we’ve been there before, but, he thinks, not really a catalogue, the opposite of a catalogue, whatever the word for that is, a mishmash perhaps, now there’s a good Yiddish word, a mishmash of thought, linearly recorded, how else, the fact that Ducks, Newburyport is largely a one-thousand-page sentence, no, more than a one-thousand-page sentence, Ducks, Newburyport is a one-thousand-page list, the fact that he had always liked lists, in literature at least, the fact that he had at one time made a list of his favourite lists in literature, though he has lost this, the fact that the one-thousand-page list in Ducks, Newburyport, the one-thousand-page list that is Ducks, Newburyport, except for a short intercut story, told in sentences, about a mountain lion searching for her cubs, told from the mountain lion’s point of view, from a point of bafflement and disgust at humans and their world, which is pretty much an appropriate conclusion, judging from the rest of the text, which is told from a human’s point of view, the fact that the one-thousand-page list that comprises (most of) Ducks Newburyport, uses the phrase “the fact that” to separate its entries, or, rather, to introduce its entries, or, shall we say, to structure its entries, the fact that he finds the fact that the author uses “the fact that” to structure a novel, or a list, if the two forms can be separated, who cares, to structure a novel about living, about striving to live, rather, in a so-called post-factual world, the fact that this post-factual world is overwhelmed with information but short on truth, whatever that is, he thinks, this is the world in which we are all immersed, you’re soaking in it, a meme predating memes, it’s all memes, way back to the beginning of time, that fact that he decided he could write like this, too, in fact it became, as he read Ducks, Newburyport, more and more difficult not to write this way, in a list, like thought, he thinks, the fact that the more he writes in this way, the easier it becomes, and soon, he thinks, the difficulty will not be in writing but in stopping writing, the fact that he might not be able to stop, at least until he has written at least one thousand pages, which would be a remarkable application of method, apart from the fact that Lucy Ellmann has already written one thousand pages in this way, at whatever cost to herself, and to her family, and to her sanity, she had done it, so his achievement in writing his one thousand pages would be a fairly useless and unimpressive achievement, unimpressive on the literary front even if it might remain impressive on the insanity front, the fact that it would still be impressive for its cost to himself, and to his family, and to his sanity, impressive in a negative sense but not impressive in a positive sense, the fact that Lucy Ellmann has already, rightly, appropriated all the benefit from such an enterprise, the fact that she has been short-listed for the Booker Prize, whereas he would have achieved nothing but the limits of his sanity, the fact that Lucy Ellmann may have achieved the limits of her sanity, though she has nerves of steel, he thinks, and may not even have neared the limits of her sanity, although the book might not have been so good if she had not, the fact that he does not have nerves of steel, he has nerves of tin, the fact that he would soon achieve the limits of his sanity, if he has not already achieved them, the fact that a one-thousand-page review of a one-thousand-page novel would not get him shortlisted for the Booker Prize, or even short-listed for even one person’s attention, the fact that he did not deserve even one person’s attention, the fact that Lucy Ellmann has already appropriated all the available attention for writing in this way, even if this is less attention than she deserves for writing in this way, the fact that she has written an outstanding one-thousand-page novel about human consciousness in the twenty-first century, but that, if he completes his one-thousand-page review of this novel he will be acclaimed as nothing more than a nuisance, if he is acclaimed anything at all, which is unlikely, the fact that benefit is finite but, it seems, detriment is infinite, the fact that negative consequences are inexhaustible, whereas positive consequences are soon exhausted, the fact that Lucy Ellmann’s project is forensic, though forensic about a crime that is infinitely dispersed in both its origins and consequences, the fact that this novel is not only about a woman's life, it is a woman’s life, but not her life only, the fact that a mountain lion’s life has clarity whereas a human life is without clarity, or so it seems, there are too many thoughts, and where do they come from, he thinks, the fact that reading Ducks Newburyport has made him aware of his thoughts, all his thoughts, including the thoughts he represses because they get in the way of his thinking, the fact that, now that he is aware of the mishmash of his thoughts, to use the technical term, his brain will just keep coming up with thoughts, make it stop, a list of thoughts, like in Ducks, Newburyport, structured by the phrase “the fact that”, even at times, such as when he is in the shower, or driving, when it is impossible to record these thoughts, the fact that these thoughts are lost but that the thoughts that arise from these thoughts keep arising, the fact that they show no sign of abating, the fact that this frightens him, at least a little, the fact that there will always be more thoughts is a thought that he finds horrible, the fact that all these thoughts are pushing at him, crowded at the edge of his awareness, waiting their turn, this is a horrible thought, he thinks, the fact that he needs to stop writing before it becomes impossible to stop writing, which has occurred to him before, the fact that he has, in any case, run out of time, there's a deadline after all, and whatever he's written must pass for a review, he'll call it a review, the fact that, if it was up to him, Ducks, Newburyport would win the Booker Prize but of course such things are seldom up to him. |
 | 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak {Reviewed by STELLA} Elif Shafak’s novel is a powerful and unflinching exploration of women’s rights in Turkey, and of their control over their bodies and sexuality. The novel opens with Leila, recently murdered and dumped in a rubbish skip. As her mind closes down (in 10 minutes and 38 seconds) each moment triggers a memory giving the reader a window into her past experiences that shaped her life and that of her five closest friends. Taking us to her childhood in Van — a childhood of secrets and deceits, we are not surprised by her decision to flee to Istanbul as a teen. Her childhood is coloured by neglect and abuse. With an ignorant and suspicious family that will do anything to save face in a small community, Leila is left with little choice. Unprepared for a city and completely out of her depth she ends up in a brothel under the charge of Bitter Ma. While the madam is better than some and finally does grant Leila her freedom, the privations of being a prostitute with few rights and no financial autonomy weigh heavily on Leila and her colleagues — there are few choices available for women in her position in a strikingly patriarchal society, a society that is also dominated by political unrest and dictatorial behaviour. Yet life is also culturally rich and intriguing in the relationships that Leila has with her five friends. Shafak is a damning of Turkish society and the roles that women have been, and continue to be, expected to play in this modern country. She deftly explores west/east and secular/religious tensions and the hypocrisies as well as the personal crises that are inflicted by these conflicts. What does it mean to be transsexual in this world, to be an independent widow, to be educated or a prostitute in this world? While the novel shines a light on these issues, at the same time light is being shone on the author, Elif Shfak (and other female authors) — harassed on social media and investigated by prosecutors after complaints that by writing fictional works that tackle challenging issues she is condoning child abuse and sexual violence! 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a novel about tough issues, but it also hopeful — Leila is a survivor and she and her friends are resourceful and loyal, and have depths of humanity that one could argue come from confronting the status quo and marking out their own territory and beliefs, living without compromise of thought even when choices are limited. With its interesting premise and structure, the novel is compelling and Leila is an incredible character who is the still point at the centre, strong and resilient, of a turbulent and damaging vortex. |
NEW RELEASES
Diane Williams’s short, energetic, hugely disorienting short stories pass as sal volatile through the fug of relationships, defamiliarising the ordinary elements of everyday lives to expose the sad, ludicrous, hopeless topographies of what passes for existence. This is not a nihilistic enterprise, however, for Williams has immense sympathies and her stories themselves demonstrate the possibility of connection through the very act of delineating its impossibility. With the finest of needles, the most ordinary of details, Williams picks out the unacknowledged, unacknowledgeable but familiar hopeless longing that underlies our unreasoned and unreasonable striving for human relations, a longing that makes us more isolated the harder we strive for connection. So much is left unsaid in these stories that they act as foci for the immense unseen weight of their contexts, precisely activating pressure-points on the reader’s sensibilities. These are some of the finest stories you will read.
Ernaux's remarkable text evokes her mother's attrition of memory and personality through Alzheimer's disease, and her experience of the slow, terrible loss of her mother.
"Acute and immediate, I Remain in Darkness is an unforgettable exploration of love, memory and the journey to loss." —Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas's review of The Years.
A unique, restless and wide-ranging intellect, unassimilable in her own time or since, Sontag continues to reward both close and not-so-close study. Moser is best known for his outstanding biography of Clarice Lispector.
>>Lauren Elkin, Lisa Appignanesi and Benjamin Moser debate Sontag.
"With this novel I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book—Satantango, Melancholy, War and War, and Baron. This is my one book." —László Krasznahorkai
"Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is not a conclusion to Krasznahorkai’s quartet, but it is a completion. It is his longest book by some measure, his funniest, and probably his darkest. It draws together and illuminates its predecessors. The vision is complete, even as its constituent pieces fall apart." —David Auerbach
>>The spider web and the abyss.
>>Obsessive fictions.
>>"I thought that real life, true life was elsewhere."
A subtle exploration of loss, displacement and translation, drawing on the author's roots in the Jewish community of Tunisia.
"Colette Fellous' beautiful book, humming and dancing with sensual intelligence, newly vivid in Sophie Lewis's deft, delicate, agile version, takes change and translation as its very themes. It asks us to imagine leaving home, searching for a new home. That home may simply be language itself, a web of knotted meanings. However, if that web serves as a rope bridge slung between places and people, and the bridge is cut and falls, survival is put at stake. This Tilting World explores how, after such a rupture, one woman tries to re-compose the meanings of her life and thereby go on living." —Michele Roberts
'Murray's Special Day' by Tracey Andersen, 'Tunnelling' by Cassandra Barnett, 'Botched' by Marino-Moana Begmen, 'Para Pounamu' by Pine Campbell, 'Tangaroa Pūkanohi Nui' by Hineteahurangi Merenape Durie Ngata, 'Storked' by Paipa Edmonds, 'Tiakina! Tiakina!' by Tiahomarama Fairhall, 'Mumsy' by Olivia Aroha Giles, 'Rocket Ship Pyjamas and Plum Jam' by Olivia Aroha Giles, 'Kokiri ki mua - Charge forward!' by K M Harris, 'My Three Friends at School' by Josh Hema, 'The Pledge' by Nadine Hura, 'Dust' by Kelly Joseph, 'The School of Life' by Lauren Keenan, 'Tina's Coming on Tuesday' by Lauren Keenan, 'Ko te Ao tō Marae' by Hēmi Kelly, 'Just Holden Together' by Colleen Maria Lenihan, 'One of the Good Ones' by Moira Lomas, 'Aunty's Teeth' by Annette Morehu, 'Te Kai a te Rangatira, he Mahi' by Zeb Nicklin, 'Te Kurī Hīroki o te Āporo Nui' by Zeb Nicklin, 'The Guises of Death Kahuru Pumipi The Bartender' by Michelle Rahurahu Scott, 'White Sheep' by Penny Smits, 'Whakaurupā Taku Aroha' by Amiria Stirling, 'No te uku - From the Clay' by Bronwyn Te Koeti.
In a working-class neighbourhood in 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother's memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy.
"A startling novel of ferocious psychological acumen, which, to my mind, deserves a large, international readership. Very much a book for our times." —Siri Hustvedt
When Cornelia goes out to play from her parents' new house, she meets a boy in a strange tree house, a boy with a "jungle machine"!
The much-anticipated new novel from the author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto: a story of love, family, sacrifice, and the power of place.
""Irresistable. As always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." —Guardian
From Kaitaia in Northland to Oban on Stewart Island, New Zealands nineteenth-century towns were full of entrepreneurial women. Contrary to what we might expect, colonial women were not only wives and mothers or domestic servants. A surprising number ran their own businesses, supporting themselves and their families, sometimes in productive partnership with husbands, but in other cases compensating for a spouse's incompetence, intemperance, absence or all three. The pages of this book overflow with the stories of hard-working milliners and dressmakers, teachers, boarding-house keepers and laundresses, colourful publicans, brothelkeepers and travelling performers, along with the odd taxidermist, bootmaker and butcher and Australasia's first woman chemist (Nelson's Clara Macshane).
>>Come and hear Catherine Bishop talk about the book, and about the Nelson women featured in it: Nelson Provincial Museum, Tuesday 8 October, 5:30. See you there!
In the 19th century aesthetic, economic, technological and legal changes created, for the first time, a genuinely pan-European culture. Figes's astounding and timely book is the story of a singer, Pauline Viardot, a writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a connoisseur, Pauline's husband Louis. Through their lives he refreshes our understanding of forces that gave rise to the concept of 'Europe'.
Take an inspiring walk with photographer Daido Moriyama while he explains his approach to street photography. For over half a century, Moriyama has provided a distinct vision of Japan and its people. Here he offers a unique opportunity to learn about his methods, the cameras he uses, and the journeys he takes with a camera.
A reclusive novelist in her 70s, after decades of silence, hires an amanuensis and begins an exploration of the relationship between fiction and 'real life'.
"An understated triumph." —Guardian
A beautifully and sensitively illustrated story about a girl coming to terms with the loss of her mother.
In the early twentieth century, a group of pioneering anthropologists, most of them women, made intrepid journeys that overturned our assumptions about race, sexuality, gender and the nature of human diversity. From the Arctic to the South Pacific, from Haiti to Japan, they immersed themselves in distant or isolated communities, where they observed and documented radically different approaches to love and child-rearing, family structure and the relationship between women and men. With this evidence they were able to challenge the era's scientific consensus — and deep-rooted Western belief — that intelligence, ability and character are determined by a person's race or sex, and show that the roles people play in society are shaped in fact according to the immense variety of human cultures.
In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.
There was once a man who believed he owned everything and set out to survey what was his. "You are mine," Fausto said to the flower, the sheep, and the mountain, and they all bowed before him. But they were not enough for Fausto, so he conquered a boat and set out to sea...
>>On the making of Fausto.
A beautifully presented large-format guide to the human body and its wonders.
>>Read Stella's review.
>>" I am afraid I have to tell you, Nell, you have no subconscious mind."
>> " Post-sensitive is not a bad description of Zink’s Weltanschauung."
>> “He started playing ukulele soon after his mother died.”
>> Podcasting!
>>Turning her back on the publishing world.
>>A "middle-aged enfant terrible."
>> How to become a novelist in ten easy steps.
>>Click and collect.
>>Other books by Nell Zink.
>>Zink reads the first four pages of The Wallcreeper.
 | The Loser by Thomas Bernhard Of the three friends who had studied piano together under Horowitz at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the narrator, Wertheimer and a fictionalised Glenn Gould, only Gould continued playing, for the others, though piano prodigies, were unable to continue their careers after having overheard Gould’s interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and been ‘destroyed’ by his genius. Twenty-eight years later, Gould, having withdrawn from the world into his ‘isolation cage’ in the Canadian wilds, dies of a stroke while playing the Variations, and, soon after, the highly neurotic Wertheimer, who had been labelled ‘The Loser’ by Gould on their first meeting and who had been most deeply devastated by the unapproachability of Gould’s genius, for he, unlike the narrator, had set his heart on being a virtuoso, and who had withdrawn to his ‘isolation cage’ in the Austrian wilds after his sister, who he had obsessively dominated and controlled, had ‘escaped’ and married a Swiss industrialist, commits suicide by hanging himself near his sister’s new home. The book, in one relentless paragraph with the same sublime unpegged looping structures as Bach’s music and the wicked barbs, subversions and reflexive humour of an interpretation of Bach by Glenn Gould, represents the thoughts of the narrator as they loop over and over the relationship between the three characters, who can be seen as three aspects of Bernhard himself, his characters being blanks upon which he projects his own neuroses, invective, frustrated abilities, lung disease, impulses for self-destruction and, above all, stultifying ambivalence. A revulsion by everything, a precise analysis of the inescapable destructive cacophony of human relationships, a delineation of the self-annihilating effects of the ‘isolation cages’ that are the refuge from humanity, no thought is sooner expressed than it begins to appear ludicrous, the further developed it becomes, the more ludicrous, until it is left exploded, empty, food for its opposite, no less ludicrous. It takes well over half the book for the narrator to walk into the inn at which he will stay after visiting Wertheimer’s ‘isolation cage’ in Traich to search for the work Wertheimer had been writing, almost the entire content of the book taking place at at least the second if not the third or fourth remove, in a subjective hole so deep that the characters leach characteristics into each other as the narrator hysterically overdoes every analysis and statement to the extent that we come to believe that any statement is an overstatement and a false statement, or at least a statement within which truth and falsity cannot be disentangled. In this rereading I noticed that Wertheimer is briefly mentioned as having been writing something called The Loser (otherwise the narrator dismisses his writing as aphorisms “destined for the walls of dentists’ waiting rooms”), and I couldn’t get out of my mind that Bernhard identified strongly with his Wertheimer character, who has written this book as if narrated by his unnamed friend who would have found this work after Wertheimer’s suicide (Bernhard’s proxy suicide) had not he arrived at Traich to be told by the gamekeeper that Wertheimer had been seen to burn all his papers before his fatal trip. |
 | The Mapmakers' Race by Eirlys Hunter Meet the Santander family - explorers and mapmakers. When Ma misses the train, Sal, the twins Joe and Francie, along with young Humphrey, are on their own, making their way to Grand Prospect as entrants in the Great Mapmakers' Race, a competition to map a railway route through the uncharted wilderness from Grand Prospect to the port at New Coalhaven. The fastest team wins the prize, and the best map, the grand prize, will become the new railway. And all this needs to be done in 28 days! Arriving in Grand Prospect, the children are scoffed at and almost not allowed to race. No one has much faith in them, despite their parents’ reputation as fine explorers and excellent mapmakers. The children have to go on - it’s their only hope of raising the funds to track down their father, who has been missing for months on an expedition. Surely Ma will find a horse, get another train, catch up with them somewhere. Four children stranded in Grand Prospect with no money, a minimum of supplies, a four-year-old in tow, no horses to carry their load of supplies, and competing with several adult teams who have brawn, wonders or money at their fingertips: teams like Cody Cole and his Cowboys - tough men with fine horses - their symbol a rifle and a telescope crossed over a map; the Solemn Team - scientific and logical; and Sir Montague Basingstoke-Black and his mountaineers - pipes firmly tucked in mouths, astride their mechanical horses that will never tire. But the real stars of this book are the inventive and brilliant Santander children. Setting out on the road, they meet Beckett - a local lad - who gives them a helping hand. Resourceful and savvy, Beckett procures donkeys and food and has a few tricks up his sleeve. Enticed by the idea of the railway, he joins the Santanders - luckily for them, as neither cooking nor rationing the food supplies are part of the children's skill set. Amazing talents they do have, though: Joe is the surveyor, cutting ahead, often through prickly thorns and thick undergrowth, to find and make the best path; Sal is the mathematician, working the altimeter, calculating the inclines and declines and solving the technical problems; Francie is the map-maker - a brilliant artist - who can fly, take herself above the landscape and see it from a bird’s eye view; and Humphrey notices - the keen observer - things that the others miss. The Mapmakers' Race is an exciting, well-paced adventure from New Zealand author Eirlys Hunter. There are illustrations by Kirsten Slade throughout, and each chapter starts with a map marking out the journey and giving the reader teasers as to what might happen in the next few pages. Chapter eleven’s drawing includes the Impenetrable Cliffs of Doom, Camp Comeuppance and Camp Exhaustion. There will be bears, bats, tricks and treats, wild rivers, endless climbs, snow and storms. There are scary stories, magical tales and funny episodes around the campfire to cheer the spirits and keep the children travelling onward. This is an enjoyable read-aloud or keep-to-yourself and will have some children reaching for ink and paper to become wondrous mapmakers, and others out in the wilderness, exploring and making tracks. Charming, exciting and just a little dangerous. |
NEW RELEASES
Can a person's life and identity by captured or constructed by the careful creation of a signature perfume? What would a novel be like if it was constructed according to the sense of smell? A new novel from the author of The Hut Builder, Edwin and Matilda and The Quiet Spectacular.
Singer, a thirty-four-year-old recently trained librarian, arrives by train in the small town of Notodden to begin a new and anonymous life. He falls in love with Merete, a ceramicist, and moves in with her and her young daughter. After a few years together, the relationship starts to falter, and as the couple is on the verge of separating a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer's life. T Singer is a novel about self-erasure, indomitable loneliness and other such existential questions.
"An utterly hypnotic writer." —James Wood
"Mad, sad and funny. Thrilling." —Geiff Dyer
"The drama exists in his voice." —Lydia Davis
Three aspiring concert pianists — Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator — have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. New edition, with an afterwords and cover art by Leanne Shapton.
>>Read Thomas's review.
One of Bernhard's finest and most incisive books, featuring the narrator's streams of internal invective against everyone at an artistic gathering, but, ultimately, exposing the narrator to the scrutiny of the reader. As always in Bernhard, all loathing is primarily self-loathing and only secondarily loathing of the world as it is distilled in the loather. New edition, with an afterword by Anne Enright and cover by Leanne Shapton.
>>Read Thomas's review.
It is 1967. Two men lie bedridden in separate wings of a Viennese hospital. The narrator, Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their friendship quickens, the two men discover in each other an antidote to their feelings of despair on the unexpected strength of what they share — a symmetry forged by their love of music, black humour, disgust for bourgeois Vienna, and fear of mortality. New edition, with an afterwords by Ben Lerner and cover by Leanne Shapton.
"'Furious, obsessive, scathing, absolutely hilarious and oddly beautiful." —Claire Messud
Of all Maori personal adornments, the human figure pendants known as hei tiki are the most highly prized and culturally iconic. This book showcases photographs of a large selection of hei tiki, most from the taonga Maori collection at Te Papa.
One of the best-known historians of British India turns his attentions to the corporation that defeated the Mughal emperor with a private army in 1765 and installed a new regime in which the company transformed itself into an aggressive colonial power, levying taxes and by the early nineteenth century controlling most of the Indian subcontinent and parts of South East Asia with a private army twice the size of the British Army.
A collection of Kureishi's most insightful essays and stories, on everything from David Bowie to Georges Simenon to Keith Jarrett.
"No one else casts such a shrewd and gimlet eye on contemporary life." —William Boyd
When Priestley visited Antarctica in 2011, it fulfilled a life's dream but also brought her anxieties to the fore. She has visited twice since, spending time with Antarctic scientists including paleo-climatologists, biologists, geologists, glaciologists exploring the landscape, marvelling at wildlife from orca to tardigrades, and occasionally getting very cold. Her anxiety has been her constant companion, anxiety both for herself and for the future of the continent and the planet.
In this outstanding graphic novel, surfer and illustrator A.J. Dungo remembers his late partner, her battle with cancer, and their shared love of surfing that brought them strength throughout their time together.
Exemplary social and natural history, and well illustrated.
Renia Spiegel was shot dead by the Nazi's after escaping the Warsaw ghetto and hiding in an attic. For seventy years, her diary has lain in a bank vault. It has now been published.
Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he set out to profile him for The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published Awakenings but the book had hardly been an immediate success, and the rumpled clinician was still largely unknown. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile, a request to which Weschler acceded. The two remained close friends, however, across the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again.
Texts in the original languages and in English translation.
Charmingly illustrated and informative.
Quick, wholesome, easy-to-make Italian recipes.
Darkly comic, surreal and full of explorations of human vulnerability and eccentricity.
Dawkins marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and explain to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator, how evolution works and how our world came into being.
Clear, practical and hopeful, with plenty of things to do.
Examines the link between farming animals and the climate crisis.
A history of political advertising and the sorts of subtle or clumsy ways in which political parties have attempted to influence public opinion.
>>Those were the days.
>>"Like the result of a collision between Waiting for Godot and Lincoln in the Bardo." —Read Thomas's review.
>>"I want to get that thread of menace."
>>"The blank spaces seem to signify accumulated pain." —Nicole Flattery in the LRB
>>"Fascinating hybrid of poetry, drama and ferocious prose."
>>"The old weird Ireland is still out there."
>>Dark lies the island.
>>Read Thomas's review of Beatlebone.
>>Other books by Kevin Barry.
>>Click and collect.