 | The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox {Reviewed by STELLA} There are many adjectives one could use to describe The Absolute Book. Compelling, compulsive, confusing, considered, crafty and crafted, sublime, beautiful, tragic, awesome (in all the senses of that word), clever, theatrical, hysterical and hilarious, complex, lucid, layered and rich. And these are just some of the words worth attaching to this very, very good novel. It is an immense book — 650 pages of fascination and revelation. Taryn Cornick’s sister Beatrice has been killed — murder or accident? There is no question in Taryn’s mind. Seven years on, she thinks she has moved on but a chance meeting with a hunter, the Muleskinner, who is beguiled by her and her sadness, leads to a chain of unimaginable events that will open gateways to other worlds, states of mind, story-telling and soul-searching. Cornick’s book about libraries and fires has garnered some notice, and she is due on the tour circuit when a police officer, Jacob Berger, starts getting interested in a cold case — the death of Tim Webber, the driver of the car that ran her sister down. Berger suspects foul play and starts to dig. His connection with Taryn will reveal a lot more than he bargained for. Jump back to Taryn and Bea’s childhood visits to their grandparents’ estate, Princess Gate, and a strange encounter with a young scholar, Battle, who is obsessed with finding a book known as the Firestarter. The girls playing in the library witness from behind the curtains Battle’s attempt to start a fire to reveal the mysterious object, and so begins the first glimpse of our encounters with demons, enchantments and story-telling. The Absolute Book moves seamlessly from reality to fantasy. Unlike many books that move between worlds, there is no obvious change in writing style or tone — you are just there — through the gate in the other world with nothing to jar your reading, pushed along by the action. There is much going on at all times on many levels! Knox makes the world within, beside or outside, parallel (whichever it is) believable by taking us with her characters. We are curious and fearless despite demons, the sometimes cold appraisal of the Sidhe, the changes in the landscape, the power and mystery of Shift. In previous Knox books, we have encountered mythical and magical creatures and The Absolute Book is no exception. Blending Norse mythology (the ravens play a mighty role), faerie folklore, popular culture and ancient ritual, history and religion (yes, there are angels), this book has a plethora of layers, which should sink it into a pit of confusion, but it doesn’t — it soars. The brilliance is in the craft — in the language and pace — and in the absolute beauty of the description of the lands and all that live on them (whether on Earth or in the Sidh). It’s a book with a fascinating story — you will want to read on and be taken by Taryn, Jacob and Shift to the places they (and we) must go. It’s story-telling at its best and Elizabeth Knox at her best... so far. |
| >> Read all Thomas's reviews. | |
  | Motherhood by Sheila Heti {Reviewed by THOMAS} Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to guide your life? no Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a book? no But isn’t this book, Motherhood, which has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins, in this case Sheila Heti, the author of the book, a good book? yes Is Motherhood a good book, then, because it was written by Sheila Heti rather than because it was written by flipping coins? yes When Sheila—the Sheila who is a character in the book, which the reader is permitted to assume is the same person (whatever that means) as Sheila Heti the author of the book— says, “I don’t think I have a heart—a heart I can consult. Instead, I have these coins,” is that a good way for either the character in the book or the author of the book to proceed? no Is flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a review of a book that has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the author? no If I wrote a review in such a way, would I be able to do it without cheating, in other words, without only pretending that I had flipped coins when I had not actually flipped coins at all, or flipping the coins but then overriding the outcomes of those coins if they did not suit me? no Would it be better if I didn’t waste time looking for coins to flip, then? yes And Sheila Heti, can I be sure that she didn’t cheat when writing a book by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions she posed? no Does this matter? no In fact, might this not be a good way to compose a novel or somesuch, or find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, or determine a way out of any predicament, at least any fictional predicament, given that predicaments usually arise from the presence of binaries—either A or not-A, for example—and so seem to clamour for a resolution that can be expressed in a binary way? yes Just as writing conversation can be a good way to find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, even writer’s block visited upon the writing of a book review? yes Even if one side of the conversation says only either yes or no? yes Are the results I might achieve this way satisfactory? no Would the results be satisfactory with a different approach? no Is any of this useful in so-called real life? no But doesn’t Sheila Heti apply this approach to the real-life question—if we accept that the Sheila of the book corresponds to the real-life Sheila, the book’s author—of whether or not she wants to or should have a child, or become a mother, which may or may not imply having a child, depending on how subtly the concept of motherhood is understood or defined? yes So this approach is not useful? no You mean it is useful? yes Can you explain that? no Can Sheila Heti explain that? yes Does she do so in this passage, when she consults her coins? “Is any of the above true? no Is there any use in any of this, if none of it is true? no Even if you said yes, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t mean anything to me. You don’t know the future, and you don’t know anything about my life, or what I should be doing. You are complete randomness, without meaning. [However] you have shown me some good things, but that is just me picking up the good in all the nothing you have shown me.” yes As Sheila approaches forty she suffers from ambivalence about whether or not to have a child before it is ‘too late’. She can’t seem to disentangle what might be the expectations of her by others because she is a woman from what might be her biological inclinations as a woman, not that this concept necessarily has any validity, and from her own expectations and inclinations. Is it even possible to disentangle these things? no Would it be true to say that the more you think about things in these terms the less sense these terms make? yes Is there any point in thinking about things in these terms? no Unless, perhaps, it is useful to get to the point at which these terms make no sense? yes Does Sheila obsess over the question of whether or not to have a child as a way of relieving herself of the question of whether or not to have a child? yes A way of avoiding having a child, even? yes Saying yes to having a child would remove the uncertainty of whether or not to have a child and the uncertainty could not be regained, at least not in that form, but saying no merely provides the opportunity for the uncertainty to resurge at the next possible moment for it to be considered. Prevarication is, therefore, such a tiring prophylactic. Is the book to some extent somehow about the deep problems of decision-making, in whatever sphere of life, about whether we can disentangle the force of what we might call ‘will’ from the force of what we might, for want of a better word, call ‘fate’ (‘determinism’ is probably a better word)? yes When Sheila says, “Sometimes I am convinced that a child will add depth to all things—just bring a background of depth and meaning to whatever it is I do. I also think I might have brain cancer. There’s something I can feel in my brain, like a finger pressing down,” is her problem really about depth and meaning rather than about having a child? yes Sheila says, “This will be a book to prevent future tears.” Is this book, Motherhood, perhaps more about depression—Sheila’s, her mother’s, perhaps the reader’s—than it is about motherhood per se? no Sheila says, “I am a blight on my own life.” She says, “Nothing harms the earth more than another person—and nothing harms a person more than being born.” She says, thinking of her decision to be a writer and all the time she has consequently spent arranging commas, “When I was younger, writing felt like more than enough, but now I feel like a drug addict, like I’m missing out on life.” Is there a sense in which writing and ‘living’ are incompatible modes of existence? yes When Sheila states that resisting urges has previously led her to more interesting places, is it useful for her to think about resisting the urge to have a child—wherever that urge originates—as a way of bringing depth and meaning to her life? yes Does she in fact find more depth and meaning by resisting the urge to have a child? yes Does this depth and meaning, or at least the finding of more depth and meaning if not the depth and meaning themselves, have some sort of tangible expression? yes This book? yes Early in the book, Heti identifies her struggles with the mythic struggles of Jacob wrestling with and withstanding the unknown being “until the breaking of the day,” and she concludes the book an altered quote from the Torah: “Then I named this wrestling-place Motherhood, for here is where I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.” Is that a satisfactory way to end the book? yes Is that a satisfactory way to end my review? no Should I go on? no |
>>How is this book a commentary on the "childishness" of Brexit?
>>Do not google Samuel Jean Pozzi.
>>Talking in the library.
>>Some other books by Julian Barnes.
>>On The Noise of Time.
>>Click and collect.
Lydia Davis's writing is a masterclass in control — wry, lucid, penetrating, every word placed deliberately. Here she presents a dazzling collection of literary essays, each one as beautifully formed, thought-provoking, playful and illuminating as her critically acclaimed short fiction.
>>"There's no such thing as no style."
What can change in a single night? Everything.
In this beautifully illustrated modern re-telling of a classic European folktale, a young boy is visited by an enigmatic creature with a beautiful secret. Together they explore the playfulness, mystery, and danger of nature, before the visitor reveals their true self. A story of joy and loss, that yearns for the endless freedom of childhood.
>>Visit Esther Remnant's website.
A bumper crop of new art and writing: a 24-page full-color comic, a letters section, a fair-sized collection of stories, a graphic nonfiction experiment called American Pie Graph, and a booklet of cliffhanger tales—all packaged in an elaborate three-fold case. Featuring Oyinkan Braithwaite, Claudia Rankine, Julio Torres, Elena Passarello, Bob Odenkirk, Brian Evenson, Adrienne Celt, Lorrie Moore, Alison Bechdel, Jeff Tweedy, Jerry Saltz, Avery Trufleman, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ken Burns, and other authors, artists, musicians, podcasters, journalists, comedians, young children, lawyers, scholars, and former presidential candidates.
>>Like this!
Will Self's adolescence and early adulthood were spent largely under the influence of or on the quest for drugs of some sort or other. It is also the period of his life in which his future directions in literature took form. This third-person memoir is self-excoriating and enjoyable to read.
>>Will Self in Conversation.
Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a ruined concrete structure known as The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a black mass with terrible intent. But something is coming to stop him. Five more-than-human forms are traversing land, sea and time towards The Green Chapel, moving towards the point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness has lichen skin and willow-bones. Ness is made of tidal drift, green moss and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back.
"Ness goes beyond what we expect books to do. Beyond poetry, beyond the word, beyond the bomb — it is an aftertime song. It is dark, ever so dark, nimble and lethal. It is a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age. Ness is something else, and feels like it always has been." —Max Porter
An exploration of the depths of longing and obsession from the author of The Empathy Exams. Always mindful of why and how we tell stories, this book takes us into lives on the fringes — from a woman healed by the song of 'the loneliest whale in the world' to a family convinced their child is a reincarnation of a lost pilot — and asks how we can bear witness to the changing truths of others' lives while striving to find a deeper understanding of the complexities of our own.
"Intelligent, compassionate, and fiercely, prodigiously brave." —Eleanor Catton
>>Reading and answering.
Gisele is a transparent girl. Not only can she be seen through, her feeling show for anyone to see. How will she learn to live in the world? Wonderful illustrations.
Paleontology meets neurology in this reassessment of our evolutionary history. Humans now live longer than ever before, and we are the most populous big animal on earth. Meanwhile, our closest living relatives, the now-endangered chimpanzees, continue to live as they have for millions of years. We are not like the other animals, yet we evolved through the same process. What are we then? And now we have remade the world, what are we becoming?
Not only do we need to alleviate our current serious social problems, but we also need to meet the challenges of the future in a way that enhances intergenerational fairness and wellbeing. The answer, Boston argues, lies in a comprehensive package of reforms covering the benefit system, family assistance, child support, housing, and health care.
Spanning the history of quantum discoveries, from Einstein and Bohr to the present day, Carroll debunks myths that have grown up around quantum physics, reinstates the Many-Worlds Interpretation, and presents a new path to solving the apparent conflict between quantum mechanics and gravity.
How the film industry made America ready for the real-life supervillains of right-wing extremism.
"A bold, witty, and brilliantly argued analysis of the role pop culture has played in the rise of American extremism." —Ruth Reichl
"You'll never look at your favorite movies and TV shows the same way again. And you shouldn't." —Steven Soderbergh
>>President Trump or Red Skull?
Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest, and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape. The Temporary paints a merciless portrait of the cut and thrust of modern romance, work and life.
A devastatingly perceptive account of travelling in Italy with her husband and two young children. Their journey leads them to both the expected — the Piero della Francesca trail and queues at the Vatican — and the surprising — an amorous Scottish ex-pat and a longing for home. The book explores the desire to travel and to escape, art and its inspirations, beauty and ugliness, and the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity.
The Hanburys of Egypt Hill are the last word in bohemian living — or so they like to think. Their parties are famous, their relationships confusing, their bravado immense. To Michael, a young student arriving at the house on the hill for Caris Hanbury's eighteenth birthday party, they represent the prospect of relief from the strictures of conformity, and of an enfolding exuberance to which he feels irresistibly attracted. As an adult, Michael finds his own version of the Hanburys. The Alexanders are a wealthy, artistic family for whom moral abandon is almost a point of honour, and their fractious daughter Rebecca is now Michael's wife. While Rebecca struggles with questions of identity and self-expression, Michael becomes increasingly preoccupied with the idea of virtue. Why is his life with Rebecca and their son Hamish so destructive and tumultuous? How has his existence become so tarnished, so without principle? When Michael is invited to spend a week with the Hanburys on Egypt Hill his illusions are startlingly confounded. The hill is being spoiled by development; the family are riven by jealousy and deceit; and as the days pass the rotten core of the Hanbury myth is gradually disclosed.
Since leaving his job to look after Alexa, his eight-year-old daughter, Thomas Bradshaw has found the structure of his daily piano practice and the study of musical form brings a nourishment to these difficult middle years. His pursuit of a more artistic way of life shocks and irritates his parents and his in-laws. Why has he swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife who has accepted a demanding full-time University job? How can this be good for Alexa and for the family as a whole? Meanwhile Tonie tunes herself out of domestic life, into the harder, headier world of work where long-since forgotten memories of herself are awakened. She soon finds herself outside their tight family circle and alive to previously unimaginable possibilities.
>>Other books by Rachel Cusk!
A vivid account of early European experience in these islands, through material evidence offered by the archaeological record. As European exploration in the 1770s gave way to sealing, whaling and timber-felling, Pākehā visitors first became sojourners in small, remote camps, then settlers scattered around the coast. Over time, mission stations were established, alongside farms, businesses and industries, and eventually towns and government centres. Through these decades a small but growing Pākehā population lived within and alongside a Māori world, often interacting closely. This phase drew to a close in the 1850s, as the numbers of Pākehā began to exceed the Māori population, and the wars of the 1860s brought brutal transformation to the emerging society and its economy.
>>Smith speaks.
"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." —Hannah Arendt
A study of the psychology of some of the least visible perpetrators of crimes against humanity, the 'desk killers' who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the last two hundred years. It is also an exploration of corporate responsibility and personal culpability today, connecting the bureaucratic blindness that created desk killing to the same moral myopia that exists now in the calm, clean offices of global capitalism.
The German House by Annette Hess $35
A young woman working as an interpreter at a 1963 Nazi war crimes trial finds out rather more than she expected about her own family's complicity in those crimes.
Travels with a Writing Brush: Classical Japanese travel writing from Manyoshu to Basho edited by Meredith McKinney $30
Most of Plath's extensive correspondence has never before been published, and it is here presented unabridged. 2426 pp in total.
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino $30
A beautiful new hardback edition of Calvino's early novel in which Cosimo, after a quarrel with his father, climbs a tree and swears never to set foot on the earth again.
The story of four young Piedmontese women who joined the Resistance against the German occupation of the north of Italy in 1943. Well written and interesting.
 | Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi {Reviewed by STELLA} Having a conversation over coffee may be an everyday occurrence, but what if that conversation is a pivotal moment in time or in the relationship between two people? How often have we found ourselves in trivial chatter when what we really what to discuss is something a little bit difficult or something embarrassing or a situation that might make us vulnerable? Before the Coffee Gets Cold is not a self-help book for communication! It’s a charming novel from Japanese playwright Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Funiculi Funicula is a basement cafe in Tokyo — unassuming, small and altogether unremarkable except for a bit of urban folklore. It’s rumoured that in this cafe, one has the ability to travel back in time. But… there are rules! You must sit in a particular seat. You cannot change the future. You can only meet people who have also visited the cafe. And there is a time limit — you need to come back before the coffee gets cold. Dividing the book into four distinct stories, ‘The Lovers’, ‘Husband and Wife’, ‘The Sisters’ and ‘Mother and Child’, Kawaguchi touches on abandonment, illness, death and love. These emotional moments are played out with humour and lightness — a charm — that keeps the stories from being bogged down in tragedy. Yet the lives of these cafe visitors are not frivolous, and their conversations are sometimes feisty, confronting or upsetting. The meeting that Fumiko replays with her boyfriend Goro is revealing; that Kohtake has with her husband Fusagi, surprising; that Hirai insists on with her sister Kumi, dramatic; and Kei with her child, intense. In a 100-year-old cafe a specially brewed coffee served in a particular cup from a white kettle, if you sit in a specific seat at this table only, may take you where you need to be, through time, to reveal a deeper understanding of yourself or a loved one. It’s not surprising that this book was a best-seller in Japan, and it originated as a stage play. Add to this the lives, quirks and relationships of the cafe owners, the manager — the enigmatic Kazu — and the regulars who pass through, you have an enchanting, approachable novel with a quirky sensibility. |
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Our Book of the Week this week is another jaw-dropping novel from the author of The Lie Tree and A Skinful of Shadows: Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. The gods are dead. Decades ago, they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why. But are they really gone forever? When 15-year-old Hark finds the still-beating heart of a terrifying deity, he risks everything to keep it out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists, and a secret fanatical cult so that he can use it to save the life of his best friend, Jelt. But with the heart, Jelt gradually and eerily transforms. How long should Hark stay loyal to his friend when he's becoming a monster — and what is Hark willing to sacrifice to save him? >>Read Stella's review.
>>Stella reviews the book on the radio.
>>Hardinge discusses Deeplight with her readers.
>> Hardinge talks with The Sapling.
>>Visit Frances Hardinge's Twisted City.
>>"I enjoy the challenge of taking a particularly absurd premise, and then thinking through as many of the mundane implications as possible."
>>The Lie Tree won the Costa Book of the Year award in 2016.
>>Other books by Frances Hardinge.
>>We have a signed copy of the beautiful hardback edition of Deeplight to give away, courtesy of Macmillan Publishing. To go in the draw, e-mail us and tell us the name of your favourite mythological denizen of the deep.
NEW RELEASES
In these intimate and entertaining essays, Rose Lu takes us through personal history a shopping trip with her Shanghai-born grandparents, her career in the Wellington tech industry, an epic hike through the Himalayas to explore friendship, the weight of stories told and not told about diverse cultures, and the reverberations of our parents' and grandparents' choices. Frank and compassionate, Rose Lu's stories illuminate the cultural and linguistic questions that migrants face, as well as what it is to be a young person living in 21st-century Aotearoa New Zealand.
>>Read the title essay.
Neon Daze is a verse journal of the first four months of motherhood. As these poems trace the dramatic reconfiguring of one's world, they also upend genre and notions of linear time. Amy Brown's third poetry collection searches restlessly for a way to map a self that is now "part large and old, part new and small".
The story of a young woman who finds herself subject to the gravitational field of a charismatic older man, The Boyfriend is a cautionary tale about blindly accepting traditional love narratives. This is a clear-eyed, dismaying and often hilarious examination of sexual desire, trauma and growth.
Winner of the 2018 Adam Foundation Prize.
“This is a scalp-prickling dazzler of a novel, fizzing with quotable lines and remarkable characters—an astute comedy of manners combined with wrenching events that charts a new path through one of humanity’s oldest stories. Laura is an enormously exciting new writer.” —Emily Perkins
Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction.
WRITERS: John Allison, Ruth Arnison, Emma Barnes, Pera Barrett, Nikki-Lee Birdsey, Anna Kate Blair, Corrina Bland, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Mark Broatch, Tobias Buck, Paolo Caccioppoli, Marisa Cappetta, Janet Charman, Whitney Cox, Mary Cresswell, Jeni Curtis, Jodie Dalgleish, Breton Dukes, David Eggleton, Johanna Emeney, Cerys Fletcher, David Geary, Miriama Gemmell, Susanna Gendall, Gail Ingram, Sam Keenan, Kerry Lane, Peter Le Baige, Helen Lehndorf, Kay McKenzie Cooke, Kirstie McKinnon, Zoe Meager, Lissa Moore, Margaret Moores, Janet Newman, Rachel O'Neill, Claire Orchard, Bob Orr, Jenny Powell, Nina Mingya Powles, Lindsay Rabbitt, Nicholas Reid, Jade Riordan, Gillian Roach, Paul Schimmel, Derek Schulz, Michael Steven, Chris Stewart, Robert Sullivan, Stacey Teague, Annie Villiers, Janet Wainscott, Louise Wallace, Albert Wendt, Iona Winter. ARTISTS: Nigel Brown, Holly Craig, Emil McAvoy.
Excellent essays from 21 established or emerging writers. Includes Nelson's Justine Whitfield and Becky Manawatu.
What if you...
encountered another perspective?
Discovered another world?
Met another you?
What might you do?
A wonderfully imaginative wordless picture book.
Thirty years of essays, speeches and writing on palaeontology, mammology, environmental science and history, including the science of climate change and the challenges and opportunities we face in addressing this issue.
Are we reluctant to recognise animals as persons, to acknowledge the complexities of their interactions and emotional lives, because we would then have to grant them legal rights? How would this change our lives?
>>Of course animals speak. The thing is, we don't listen."
“I’ll not be writing about death, but an altered condition of life.” Riley's astonishing, unflinching essay on grief, and on its effect upon our perception of time, springs from her experiences after her son's death, and it full of insight. Introduction by Max Porter.
Thirty-five stories from seven collections published over forty years.
"For here is the artist, who, through the wide play and finish of his art, lit as it is by the bright loveliness of the world and its humours and warmth, its pleasures of the body and the mind, and by compassion and grace, can only give – of his wisdom, erudition, sensibility – in the utter, utter precision and delicacy of every sentence." —Kirsty Gunn
>>Read Kirsty Gunn' s perceptive assessment of O'Sullivan.
"Thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less." Eight sharp essays on media, power, beauty, money, &c.
"Transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women." —Los Angeles Review of Books
“Transgressive, provocative, and brilliant.” —Roxane Gay
>>On thinking 'thick'.
From the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village in Alaska to its hunter-gatherer past to the shifting sand dunes revealing the impressively preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland, Jamie explores how the changing natural world can alter our sense of time. Beautifully written.
>>Other books by Jamie.
We are either racist of antiracist — there is nothing in between.
Feaver begins by conjuring Freud's early childhood: Sigmund Freud's grandson, born into a middle-class Jewish family in Weimar Berlin, escaping Nazi Germany in 1934 before being dropped into successive English public schools. Following Freud through art school, his time in the Navy during the war, his post-war adventures in Paris and Greece, and his return to Soho—consorting with duchesses and violent criminals, out on the town with Greta Garbo and Princess Margaret—Feaver traces a brilliant, difficult young man's coming of age. The first of two volumes, this is an account of a century told through one of its most important artists.
>>The only footage of Freud painting.
Max and Moritz is perhaps the defining classic of German children's literature. In this darkly hilarious story, two young boys exercise their talent for ingenious mischief in a variety of dazzling tricks. Whether stealing a widow's chickens through her chimney or filling their teacher's pipe with gunpowder, Max and Moritz bring chaos wherever they go.
>>1941 animation.
BOOKS @ VOLUME #152 (9.11.19)
Read our latest newsletter and find out what we've been reading and recommending, and about new books and book news.
| >> Read all Stella's reviews. | |
 | Deeplight by Frances Hardinge {Reviewed by STELLA} Dive into the world of scavenger pirates, deep-sea mythologies, powerful gods and a people who trade for profit and intrigue in found godware. The latest book from the brilliant children's writer Frances Hardinge starts, in the best story-telling tradition, with a tale of wide-eyed wonder and unbelievable strangeness — poetic and mesmerising. Welcome to the world and fierce ocean mysteries of the Myriad. Hardinge poises us perfectly in the prologue to make the perfect dive headfirst, with curiosity and no regrets. The opening chapters, like a tumbling wave, tip over into the everyday world of Lady Crave Island, a rowdy and crowded port town where traders pass through, dealing in godware and seeking treasures, where those who are ‘marked’ carry their heads high — their daring of deep diving a source of pride, and where street urchins may eke out an existence. Here we encounter our hero Hark and his best friend (protector and profiteer) Jelt, playing tricks and turning a coin. It’s swagger and play-acting for two 14-year-olds needing an income and skating trouble. Not that Jelt shies away from trouble or making deals, and he’s not too concerned if Hark is dragged in as well — anything for a bit of godware, money or advantage. When Jelt agrees to a risky job for Captain Rigg — she rules the fiercest of the pirate gangs in Lady Crave — not everything goes to plan. And guess who is taking the rap! Hark is caught and ends up on the wrong side of the law and facing The Appraisal — he’s about to be auctioned. Only his silver tongue might save him from a surefire early death in the bowels of a hulking ship or submarine. He’ll never survive as a galley minion rowing endlessly in pursuit of godware. And a story he does spin, landing him a three-year indenture to the mysterious Dr Vyne, scientist — not as an assistant, but as her spy. He’s sent to the Sanctuary — a home for aged priests — to tease out their stories and their knowledge of the watery depths of the Myriad. The priests hold secrets that could unlock the power of the gods. As the stories of the old world unfold — tales of monstrous beasts in the Undersea, of the Cataclysm, of the mysteries of the Undersea godware — secrets creep to the surface. Driven by fascination, fear and the desire to harness the power of the Undersea gods, the League and the Governors are dabbling in ‘science’ and magic, yet they are not the only ones that are on a reckless journey. Jelt tracks Hark to his new home on the far-flung island of Nest to convince him that their fortunes can be made with a quick dip in a stolen Bathysphere. But the sea is unpredictable and unforgiving, and Jelt finds himself a treasure which is both pleasure and hindrance. What starts as a wild adventure, and what Jelt sees as the best of his deals so far, may just sink him further in the mysteries of the Undersea than he bargained for — and Hark along with him. Crossing Rigg wasn’t the greatest idea, but crossing her stubborn and ferocious daughter, Selphin, will take them all on a dangerous journey to the Undersea, a journey that will test their friendship, bravery and ethics. Will they make the right decision? Will they have any choice? Hardinge is an excellent story-teller. Her worlds are vivid and beautiful, her characters complex and engaging, and the plot is fascinatingly satisfying. Author of the Costa prize-winning The Lie Tree and the equally absorbing A Skinful of Shadows, Like Pullman and Ness she leaves you with plenty to think about and the desire to dive right back in. |
| >> Read all Thomas's reviews. | |
 | We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner {Reviewed by THOMAS} “Where’s reality, I want to change it.” Up against it in the Isle of Wight, a fender shoved between Britain and Europe, an island with more than its share, if there can be such a thing as a share of such things, of fortifications and prisons, if a distinction can be made between fortifications and prisons, and, according to the Trip Advisor reviews that, appropriately, comprise the final chapter of this remarkable book, home, if home is not the wrong word, of surely Britain’s saddest zoo, the narrator and Shae, their companion or alter-ego, if a distinction can be made between a companion and an alter-ego, work, or at least spend time in what might be loosely termed employment, at a zero-star hotel, or boarding house, as the narrator awaits the results of their application for resident status in a Britain seemingly bent on becoming more stridently a fortress, otherwise known as a prison (a bad sentence for no good reason). Britishness cannot be separated from imperialism, according to the current British Prime Minister [I advise you not to click that link], who, in the context of this book, and in any other context you might like, we can refer to as B...S... Johnson so as to distinguish him from his in-some-ways opposite Johnson, the working-class experimental author B.S. Johnson, whose novel House Mother Normal (of which, >read my review here<) lends its eponymous antiheroine to be the proprietor of the said no-star hotel or boarding house (I should be using nested brackets instead of nested commas) in Waidner’s novel (of their previous novel, Gaudy Bauble, >read my review here< (but why mention that here)), the difference between Empire 1.0 and what Waidner calls Empire 2.0, or Brexit, is that the thinking, if you can call it that, of the new empire, unable to reach beyond its shores, is turned in upon itself, it is an empire of exclusion not one of inclusion, it is an empire, how long can I keep calling it an empire with a straight face, frustrated in its incapacity to do anything other than tread down difference, both by the organs of state, not that organs usually tread, unless a foot is some sort of organ of treading, and by the acts of the mob, the least accountable organ of the state (considerations of treading and so forth notwithstanding), it is an empire of suffocation. The iniquities of class, race, gender, queerness, employment, poverty, migrancy (if that is a word) are weaponised by Brexit, and the narrator and Shae are well positioned to be at the non-handle end of most of those weapons: “They use words as weapons, they use weapons as weapons, and sometimes both come together like in the Boeing CH-47 Chinook.” But, says the narrator, “I have talents, I’ll use them.” Diamond Stuff is a point of infinite mutability, a shrugging off of forms, both literary and social, a word-gurdy, an uncontainable core exuding a shiny slipperiness, or a slippery shine, that repels both boredom and Boris (if a distinction can be made between them). Where all forms are performative, which is etymologically sensible, everything is both a metaphor and at the same time only itself, the banal assumes the trappings of the mythological, this is Britain after all, and probably vice-versa, if we can conceive of such a thing, descriptions, metaphors, clothes, even, and shoes, peel off and become something equivalent of persons, participating independently in the narrative-as-non-narrative and play assumes the place vacated by sensible activity. The Isle of Wight is also the locale of Britain’s one-time rocket programme, connected with both the military and the nuclear industries: “British nature is so interconnected with military and empire, I say. No beach without Sellafield. No garden without Dungeness. … My sense of beauty is brutal, I’m already British like that,” says the narrator. But is there hope? Can there be freedom within increasingly constraining structures? “The scaffolding is a permanent fixture, this is England, the scaffolding will outstand us all,” observes the narrator, but “at best, your resistance defines you.” This novel, short-listed for the Goldsmiths Prize, is a pin-sharp, very enjoyable piece of literary resistance. |
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read an extract.
>>Preview the book.
>>"We labour under tyrants."
>>"Formal mysteriousness and neon moral clarity."
>>"Empathy eroded at every level."
>>Click and collect.
>>Read our reviews of Ball's previous book, Census.
>>Other books by Jesse Ball.
NEW RELEASES
A linguistically and formally inventive novel taking issue with constraining concepts of Britishness, class, power and genderisation.
Short-listed for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Read Thomas's review of Isabel Waidner's Gaudy Bauble.
"Penman summons the lives and times of several extravagantly damaged musical geniuses and near-geniuses in (mainly) the brutal context of mid-century America – its racial atrocities, its venality, its murderous conformities. Penman writes an exact, evocative prose as surprising as improvised jazz in its fluid progress from music criticism to social commentary to biography and back. He’s found a way to be erudite without pedantry, entertaining without pandering. His ear for mesmerizing nuance is unmatched by any music critic alive." —Gary Indiana
"Ian Penman is popular music’s Hazlitt – its chief stylist – and his sound is often equal to what he writes about. Each of his essays is an event, so this book is indispensable." —Andrew O’Hagan
"Written with love and joy and squirt gunner’s accuracy with the adjective." —Nicholson Baker
>>Read an extract.
Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of colour, non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men and particularly white men are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality.
A Wānanga with Patricia Grace and Anahera Gildea; new fiction, poetry and essays by Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, Hana Pera Aoake, Tusiata Avia, Airini Beautrais, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, Vanessa Crofskey, Alayne Dick, Sam Duckor Jones, Anahera Gildea, Eliana Gray, Isabel Haarhaus, Jordan Hamel, Rebecca Hawkes, Nicole Titihuia Hawkins, Emma Hislop, Joy Holley, Patrick Hunn, Nadine Anne Hura, Ash Davida Jane, Claudia Jardine, Erik Kennedy, Catarina de Peters Leitão, Talia Marshall, Anna McAllister, Eleanor Rose King Merton, Fardowsa Mohamed, Mikaela Nyman, Rebecca Tobo Olul, Rachel O’Neill, Sinead Overbye, Aiwa Pooamorn, Meg Prasad, Michelle Rahurahu Scott, essa may ranapiri, Amanda Jane Robinson, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Charlotte Simmonds, Carin Smeaton, Ruby Solly, Michelle Tayler, Anne Marie Te Whiu, Chris Tse, Oscar Upperton, Faith Wilson, Eefa Yasir Jauhary; cover by Miriama Grace-Smith.
Barnes brings his novelist's perspicacity and his deep interest in French history to the fore in this rich and rewarding portrait of Belle Epoque, its artists, libertines and narcissists, focused on the life of pioneering surgeon and free-thinker Samuel Pozzi.
Four stories exemplary of Bernhard's literary approaches: the undermining of all statements (including the narrators' own), the resentment of traditional and reactionary powers, the ultimately harmful tendency of human thought and all other endeavour — and (not least) wonderful sentences.
>>Read Thomas's review.
Following the death of her son, Mieko Toganō takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko. Devastated by her loss, she skillfully manipulates the relationships between Yasuko and the two men who are in love with her, encouraging a dalliance that will have terrible consequences. Meanwhile, hidden in the shadows, is Mieko’s mentally-handicapped daughter, who has her own role to play in her mother’s bizarre schemes. The novel is split into three sections, each named for a particular noh mask: Ryō no Onna, Masugami and Fukai, and the whole draws on elements of The Tale of Genji.
Curator Justin Paton talks us through over 200 works from the full span of McCahon's production, explaining the development of both his themes and his techniques.
>>Come to Peter Simpson's illustrated lecture on Colin McCahon's Nelson years at The Suter: Wednesday 13 November, 6 PM. >>Find out more.
After finishing The Return, Matar, seeking solace, travelled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. Complete with full-colour reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in Matar's life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure.
>>"Writing is both the easiest and the most difficult thing."
Noma away from homa. Feeling stuck in his work and home life, writer Jeff Gordinier happened into a fateful meeting with Danish chef René Redzepi, whose restaurant, Noma, has been called the best in the world. A restless perfectionist, Redzepi was at the top of his game but was looking to tear it all down, to shutter his restaurant and set out for new places, flavours, and recipes. This is the story of the subsequent four years of globe-trotting culinary adventure, with Gordinier joining Redzepi as his Sancho Panza.
"Gordinier takes us into the fabulously obsessive realm of the world's most fascinating chef—and he does it with the voice of a poet." —Ruth Reichl
A superbly illustrated history of 250 years of resistance and persistence in New Zealand as told through artefacts created to further a variety of causes.
>>Look inside!
The te reo Māori edition of The Noisy Book is even more fun than the English-language version!
Every evening Lampie the lighthouse keeper’s daughter must light a lantern to warn ships away from the rocks. But one stormy night disaster strikes. The lantern goes out, a ship is wrecked and an adventure begins. In disgrace, Lampie is sent to work as a maid at the Admiral’s Black House, where rumour has it that a monster lurks in the tower. But what she finds there is stranger and more beautiful than any monster. Soon Lampie is drawn into a fairytale adventure in a world of mermaids and pirates, where she must fight with all her might for friendship, freedom and the right to be different.
From the author of The History of Bees comes another remarkable novel dealing with environmental catastrophe, this time a global shortage of water. Parallel narratives in 2019 and 2041 chart depths of human resilience, and reveal a love story, too.
The story of the body of Bwana Daudi, 'the Doctor', the explorer David Livingstone — and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country. In Petina Gappah's novel, it is those in the shadows of history — those who saved a white man's bones; his faithful retinue on an epic funeral march — whose voices are conjured.
"Engrossing, beautiful and deeply imaginative." —Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing
Unbelieveably, this is the first time that the work of Urzidil, a friend of Kafka's whose work has been long acclaimed in Czechoslovakia, has appeared in English. These stories chart the insurmountable ethical upheavals resulting from unexpected events or the forces of history.
>>Immortalised in an asteroid.
An unflinching depiction of contemporary Traveller culture from the Gordon Burn Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole.
"His poetic vitality brims with that quality most sadly lost — humanity." —Guardian
Records the craft practices of Maori, Pakeha and the peoples of the Pacific.
Mesmerising, morbid and melancholy short stories: a young girl receives letters from her lost doll; a cat falls madly in love with her human neighbour; a bored office worker escapes his monotonous life by travelling on his grandfather's model train; a man gives all of himself to the woman he loves, piece by piece.
Come on a journey and visit the dark forest, the deep ocean, and the shadows of the city, and discover everything that glows, glitters, and shines in the night.
Shusterman brings his gripping and thoughtful YA series to a stunning conclusion. It’s been three years since Rowan and Citra disappeared, since Scythe Goddard came into power, since the Thunderhead closed itself off to everyone but Grayson Tolliver. Will the algorithm that governs society be subverted? Will this be a good or a bad thing?
>>Read the whole series!
In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.
"The most original explanation I've read of the self-destruction of the liberal West as universal utopia. Its analysis is rooted in an unparalleled understanding of the resentment fuelled revolt (and revolting resentment) of political elites who sought to ape the West, and ended up loathing it for that very reason. Scathing but fair." —Peter Pomerantsev
"We don't need your whataboutery and moral prevarication. It's time to stand up and own your own culpability, complicity and . . . but I joke. Sit thee down. Hoist up that unethical hamburger and deploy your face into it. Some people are part of the solution and the rest of us find the people who are part of the solution to be annoying. We are the problem. We will not be moved. We will be moved if you shout at us, but we're not going to like it. These poems whistle while Rome burns. They whistle with words in a language plump with shoulds and oughts and sorries and shouldn't'ves. They whistle Beethoven so badly the old man's bones are transformed into a sustainable turbine. They only stop whistling to consider whether cheap comic cynicism is the kind of wry and arch whimsy no one needs, least of all this doomed world of human apologists. The poems lift their chins with pride. The poems remain unapologetic. No. I am mistaken. They are desperate, sickening, in their apology."
A strange old book in the library stacks sends its finder on a perplexing quest, including to a subterranean library. From the author of The Night Circus.
Strout's new novel follows the lovably blunt Olive Kitteridge through the second half of her life, as she responds to changes both in her own life and in the wider community of Crosby, Maine.
"Writing of this quality comes from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue." —Hilary Mantel
A sampler of New Zealand cultural life and opinion from the NZ Website of the Year. Also features a few non-Tobies.
BOOKS @ VOLUME # 151 (2.11.19)
Read our latest newsletter and find out what we've been reading and recommending.
 | Jellyfish by Janice Galloway {Reviewed by STELLA} Short story collections are appealing for many reasons. I am always surprised by some readers’ resistance to the short story form. What I like about a short story is the bite-size clarity that comes with a small moment that often has a profound or deeper layer; the sharpness of language as every sentence is and should be taut — necessary; and when it is a cohesive collection, how the characters and themes overlay each other, building resonance and subtle interlinked play that often surprisingly and suddenly take your breath away. It’s also a great way to be introduced to a new author without the commitment of a novel. At the conclusion of Janice Galloway’s collection Jellyfish, I realised I had been struck by all these elements. And I am pleased to note there are more fictions as well as memoir and art collaborations to investigate. The stories in Jellyfish deal with relationships: romantic — sex, love and commitment and discovery; parental — motherhood in particular; and internal — psychological machinations and mental health. The opening story, 'Jellyfish', is an ironic ode to motherhood on the eve of a young boy’s first day at school. It has all the tenderness and contradictions that parents feel when a child reaches a ‘milestone’. Galloway cleverly reveals the menace of change through the mother’s view of a day trip to the beach, a menace that is all to do with the parent’s internal world rather than any real external threat — other than change and abandonment of past structures and controls. These tensions between a mother and a child surface throughout the collection, either directly between child and parent or played out between parents. Most affecting in this regard is 'Distance' — a mother, to cope with her own paranoia, separates herself from her partner and child and over the years the distance between mother and child widens. When a health crisis emerges she must put her house in order and here her own past childhood comes to catch her — and the underbelly of her inability to cope is revealed, the curtain is pulled away. Several of Galloway’s stories deal with the need for women to hold back, to protect themselves from their own past parental histories, their interactions with their children and with their partners. There is a quiet unease in many of the women as they navigate life — somewhat remote — seemingly disconnected from their interactions with others due to fear, loss or the desire remain unfettered despite the contradictory impulse in seeking meaningful emotional connection. 'Gold' is powerful and memorable — about taking a chance and unwittingly creating risk. Grace as a teen is abandoned by her mother, smart and tough enough to cope. And she does, gets herself through school, further education and a sound job — always sensible and competent, her life has a predictable path as long as she does not swerve from it, but she is completely alone. A stalwart to all, but nobody to everyone. Yet a painting changes her life, like a flip of a coin — a new side is revealed with all its possibilities. Galloway writes tautly with black humour that lifts the words from the doldrums, using illuminating metaphors which give richness and depth to the text, and with a visceral passion and a lightness of touch that complement the more cerebral moments. |
 |
Armand V.: Footnotes to an unexcavated novel by Dag Solstad {Reviewed by THOMAS}
1] Wishing to write a review of the novel Armand V. by the Norwegian author Dag Solstad, I’ve decided the best way to realise this is not by writing a review of the novel but by allowing it instead to appear in an outpouring of footnotes to a review that will not be or can not be written. The sum of the footnotes, therefore, is my review of the novel Armand V.
1 B ] Although admittedly ludic, possibly to the point of irritation, some attempt to justify this approach could be made on the basis that it corresponds to the approach of the author Dag Solstad in this writing of his novel comprised entirely of footnotes to a novel that the author considers in some way pre-existing but which he has determined will remain “unexcavated”, a novel that he refuses to write, or feels himself incapable of writing, or a novel that is unable to be written, or that, if written, would be of no interest to the writer (and therefore unable, presumably, to be written). Solstad writes, “Wishing to write a novel about the Norwegian diplomat Armand V., I’ve decided the best way to realise this is not by writing a novel about him but by allowing him instead to appear in an outpouring of footnotes to this novel. The sum of the footnotes, therefore, is the novel about Armand V.”
1 C ] Solstad is aware of at least some of the problems inherent in this approach, but it is problems such as these that allow him to explore problems inherent in the writing of novels per se, and in the relationship of an author to her or his material. “But who wrote the novel originally, if I’m simply the one who discovered and excavated it? … It is indisputable that this novel, the sum of the footnotes of the original novel, which is invisible because the author refused to delve into it and make it his own, is about Armand V. … It is by no means certain that the theme of the novel is the same as that of the original novel. … Why this avowal? Why does the author refuse to enter into the original novel? Put more directly: why don’t I do it, since I’m the one who’s writing this?”
1 D ] The air of a footnote hangs over Solstad’s entries, if a footnote can be said to have an ‘air’, giving them a greater perspective and distance from their subjects, but a greater alienation, or perhaps a resignation, also, a feeling that a narrative continues upon which we (and the author) have no control, and of which we (and the author) are only very incompletely aware. This said, we can safely say that the footnotes also provide less perspective, concentrating often, as footnotes often do, on matters of detailed fact, with a topography very different from the text to which the footnote ostensible refers. The author from time to time notes his relief from the expectations of the received novel form, comparing the unwritten novel ‘up there’ with his work in the footnotes to that novel: “Of course, the novel up there attempts to explain why their marriage failed. But not here. Here it is simply over. No comment.” The novel-as-footnotes form allows Solstad to explore aspects of the life of Armand V. (including a very long exploration of the contented blandness of a one-time school-mate, which is implicitly contrasted with the angst-ridden nullity of Armand V.’s life (about which see the footnote below)) without subjecting these explorations to an overall schema or narrative that would restrict the usefulness of these explorations.
1 E ] Some of the footnotes are very long.
1 F ] Perhaps our awareness of our life has always and only the relationship to our actual life that a footnote has to the text to which it refers. Plot and purpose are as artificial when applied to our lives as they are when used as novelistic crutches to make stories, and for much the same reasons.
1 G ] “All these footnotes seem to be suffering from one thing or another. The footnotes are suffering. The unwritten novel appears as heaven.”
2 ] Armand V. is a diplomat nearing retirement. He has “mastered the game” of concealing his personal opinions and performing his role to perfection. “He assumed that his bold way of behaving helped to divert attention from what might have been perceived as more suspect qualities that he possessed, whatever they might be.” So perfect is his performance that at no time does he act in a personal way or express his beliefs in any way that could risk their having any effect. The visible and invisible aspects of Armand V.’s life share little but his name. He is, in effect, a non-person.
2 B ] Complete separation between the invisible and the visible aspects of one’s life, or, we might say, between the inner and outer aspects of one’s life, is impossible to sustain indefinitely, but the resolution of such separation, whether this be metaphorised as lightning or as rot, is seldom satisfactory. For instance, Armand’s deep-seated hatred of the United States for its death penalty, and for the war that disabled his son (see the footnote below) is expressed in no practical way, but releases its pressure in disturbing misperception and an embarrassing slip of the tongue during an otherwise bland conversation with the American ambassador in the toilets during an official dinner.
2 C ] “Armand V. knew that he lived in a linguistic prison, and he knew that he could do nothing else but live in a linguistic prison.”
3 ] The unbridgeability of the schism between his inner life, so to call it, and his outer circumstances, so to call them, has led to an unsatisfactory personal life, so to call it, for Armand V. He was married to N, the mother of his son, but only felt close to her when he thought of her twin sister, thinking of N. as “the twin sister’s twin sister.” Other examples abound.
4 ] The novel is particularly concerned with the relationship of Armand V. with his son, who is first a student and then becomes a soldier, much to the disapproval of the father, and loses his eyesight during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. The novel is particularly concerned with the alienation of Armand V. from his son.
4 B ] Armand goes regularly to pay his son’s rent, both when his son is a student and when he is a soldier and mostly absent, and is reluctant to stop doing so even when his son can easily afford it and asks his father to stop.
4 C ] Armand does not speak to his son about what is making the son unhappy but sneaks out of the apartment. When his son later expresses the idea of joining an elite army unit, Armand makes a scornful outburst which cements the son’s intention. Armand V. does not act when action is appropriate, and acts inappropriately when action is unavoidable. Armand V. feels he has sacrificed his son to the US, or God, the two malign forces becoming for Armand almost indistinguishable.
4 D ] When his son returns disabled, Armand returns him to child-like dependency, assuming the suffocating Father-provider role he had not exercised during his son’s childhood due to his separation from N.
4 E ] In the earlier footnotes, when his son is a student, Armand spends a lot of time considering the time, decades ago, when he himself was a student. When his son is blinded and at an institution in London, Armand stays in his son’s flat in Oslo. It would not be unreasonable to see a conflation between father and son, and, after the ‘sacrifice’ of the son by the father, an assumption of the son’s place by the father. This can also be seen, due to the conflation of the two, as a return to the father’s own youth, a trick against time.
5 ] “What does Armand have instead of hope? Don’t know. But: no sense of destiny, a lack of purpose … that makes a novel about him readable, or writable.” Only footnotes, then.
|
>>The importance of dark sky sanctuaries.
>>The Dark Sky Project.
>>Heavens above.
>>Sky light.
>>Visit Naomi Arnold's website.
>>Your copy of the book.
>>Related titles:
Stargazer: A guide to the Southern night skies by Maggie Adern-Pocock
The World at Night by Babak Tafreshi
Dark Skies: A journey into the wild night by Tiffany Francis
An Ode to Darkness by Sigri Sandberg
Mt John: The first 50 years by Alan Gilmore and John Hearnshaw
NEW RELEASES
The gods are dead. Decades ago, they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why. But are they really gone forever? When 15-year-old Hark finds the still-beating heart of a terrifying deity, he risks everything to keep it out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists, and a secret fanatical cult so that he can use it to save the life of his best friend, Jelt. But with the heart, Jelt gradually and eerily transforms. How long should Hark stay loyal to his friend when he's becoming a monster — and what is Hark willing to sacrifice to save him? Another jaw-dropping novel from the author of The Lie Tree and A Skinful of Shadows.
Aotearoa New Zealand was founded on stargazing. It was celestial navigation that brought the first people here, and it was tatai arorangi, Maori astronomy, that helped people survive once they arrived. There is no better place on Earth to view the brilliance of other worlds. Covering eclipses, aurorae, comets and constellations, backyard observatories, traditional stargazers and world-class astrophotographers, this is the unique story of Te Whanau Marama, our family of light - the night sky that glows above us all.
Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
An insightful and well written novel about the impossibility of raising a son well in an age of toxic masculinity, from the author of pleasingly inventive Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04.
"A novel of exhilarating intellectual inquiry, penetrating social insight and deep psychological sensitivity. The future of the novel is here." —Sally Rooney
"The Topeka School is what happens when one of the most discerning, ambitious, innovative, and timely writers of our day writes his most discerning, ambitious, innovative and timely novel to date. It's a complete pleasure to read Lerner experimenting with other minds and times, to watch his already profound talent blooming into new subjects, landscapes, and capacities. This book is a prehistory of a deeply disturbing national moment, but it's written with the kind of intelligence, insight, and searching that makes one feel well-accompanied and, in the final hour, deeply inspired." —Maggie Nelson
"In Ben Lerner's riveting third novel, Midwestern America in the late nineties becomes a powerful allegory of our troubled present. The Topeka School deftly explores how language not only reflects but is at the very center of our country's most insidious crises. In prose both richly textured and many-voiced, we track the inner lives of one white family's interconnected strengths and silences. What's revealed is part tableau of our collective lust for belonging, part diagnosis of our ongoing national violence. This is Lerner's most essential and provocative creation yet." —Claudia Rankine
>>"I think novels are good at showing how each of us is made up of an array of contradictory discourses."
Offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson's life as it unfolded within Helsinki's bohemian circles and her island home. Spanning fifty years between her art studies and the height of Moomin fame, the letters deal with the bleakness of war, the hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist.
140 authentic yet accessible recipes highlighting the pre-Hispanic indigenous cuisine of the Oaxaca region.
Tsiolkas's new novel continues to explore the themes he treated in The Slap and Barracuda: violence, toxic masculinity, inequality, brutality — but does so 2000 years back in time, when Christianity was just being established in the face of persecution. Tsiolkas's novel may be heretical, but his call to withstand the ills of the world is as urgent as ever.
A very insightful account of four years working with the United Nations emergency team in Gaza. On her last day Garson told her Palestinian colleagues that she is Jewish. New Zealand author.
>>Interview on Breakfast TV.
Fed up with being on the suffering end of the British housing crisis, Davies left Bristol for a shack in the far west of Cornwall. Rebuilding the shack, and spending more time by herself, she found a greater sense of direction and appreciation of nature.
"You will marvel at the beauty of this book, and rage at the injustice it reveals." —George Monbiot
"Incredibly moving. To find peace and a sense of home after a life so profoundly affected by the housing crisis, is truly inspirational." —Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path
"I have been catching moles in gardens and farms for years and I have decided that I am not going to do it any more. Molecatching is a traditional skill that has given me a good life but I am old now and tired of hunting and it has taught me what I needed to learn." Moles are mysterious: their habits are inscrutable, they are anatomically bizarre, and they live completely alone. Marc Hamer has come closer to them than most, both through his long working life out in the Welsh countryside, and his experiences of rural homelessness as a boy, sleeping in hedgerows. Beautifully illustrated with wood engravings, this book is a gem of nature writing.
With inspiration from a community of millers, farmers, bakers, and scientists, this book provides a fascinating look into the way artisan bread baking has evolved and continues to change — from wheat farming practices and advances in milling, to sourdough starters and the mechanics of mixing dough.
Mitchell originally made this compilation of drawings and hand-written lyrics as a gift for friends in 1971.
>>Blue (1971).
Depicting the everyday lives of the country's train conductors, steelworkers, weavers, farmers, scientists, and fishermen, these unique lino-cut and woodblock prints are a fascinating way to explore the culture of this still virtually unknown country.
A lively story of various goings-on told through texts, Instagram posts, emails, fliers, committee minutes, posters, diary entries, blog posts, chatrooms, school homework, raps and the reliably bonkers community noticeboard. Inventive and fun.
"Wildly inventive and a goatload of fun. A surprise triple reverse jackknife to the funny bone. I’ve never read anything like it. Tumeke!" —Toby Morris
>>Look inside!
A novel of the final years of Giuseppe Tomasi, last prince of Lampedusa, as he struggles to complete his novel, The Leopard (published to great acclaim in 1958).
"Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little." —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Kafka, Poe, Rousseau, Mann, Ruskin, Pound, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Stravinsky...
War had meant that Omar must leave Afghanistan with his mother and journey across the sea. When their boat sinks, they are washed ashore and have experiences they never could have imagined. Morpurgo's riff on Gulliver's travels carries important messages in a world beset by displacement and populism.
>>"The world is getting nastier."
From Stonewall to the present. Well illustrated. Includes Georgina Beyer.
Poems charting the changes in Hoey's life due to the development of a chronic illness, and due to the treatments.
>>How to lose money and entertain people.
The anonymous bones found in an Anglo-Saxon graveyard in Northumberland lead us to a better understanding of a violent period of history, where religious fervour and tribal expansion combined to transform Britain.
A novel based on the life of Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy, 'inventor' of the fairy tale at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home? What is the psychological effect of a birthmark on a child? Where can I rent a guillotine? What do you feed a salamander? What is the natural enemy of a duck? Who built the English Channel? A compendium of questions asked of librarians before they invented Google to lighten their load.
>>A few questions, usefully filed.
