>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

No-One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood  {Reviewed by THOMAS} Is there such a thing as claustrophobia in your own skin, he wondered. He thought about the possibility of a collective mind, a species mind, but why stop at species, a global mind, trapped and compartmentalised into individuals. No wonder we all feel trapped in ourselves, he thought. No wonder we do everything we can, even the most stupid things, to join ourselves back up. The most inane things. And yet, and yet, we are all the time assailed by this collective mind, he thought, how do we protect ourselves from it, and from everyone else that comprises it, how do we hold back even a little space within ourselves to be just ourselves, if there is such a thing? Do we have, or have we ever had, anything that could pass for authenticity, anyway, he wondered, and would we know whether we had it or had lost it, or not? In the age of internet hyperconnectivity, so to call it, should we fear or celebrate that so much of our thinking is done for us outside our head, how liberating, how useful, how frightening, but has this not anyway always been the case, even for our ancestors’ ancestors, is this not where the collective mind came from, after all? Too many question marks, too many superfluous words, he thought. Let’s get on. Patricia Lockwood’s novel No One Is Talking About This straddles these and other polarities, he wrote. It is both clever and moving, both piercingly funny and reassuringly sad, it is both about the bodilessness of the internet and about bodies in the world, about both isolation and intimacy, and about the burden that language bears—and the possibilities language offers—connecting or attempting to connect all these. Now he seemed to have written some sort of blurb instead of a review, he observed, not that what he had been writing or what he usually wrote could have passed as a review anyway, the blurb was closer. The first half of the book is probably the best encapsulation of the internet experience in fiction that he had read, he thought, if encapsulation is the word, though he had not read many fictions that attempted to capture the internet experience, so to call it. Actually there are very few novels that attempt this, he thought, which is surprising considering the way we all use the internet to do our thinking nowadays. Because we are all but a synapse away from everyone else on the planet, the speed of thought really is the speed of thought, he thought, by the time anyone responds to our thought, the world we thought it in has already changed, the collective mind has mutated and normalised the mutation. No One Is Talking About This is written in short paragraphs or sections of a postable size, the length of an internet thought, he thought, separated by blanks, just as thoughts seem to be. “Why were we all writing like this now?” wonders Lockwood’s narrator (that is to say Lockwood herself in the third person, past tense (he knew, he thought, why she wrote like that)). “Because a new kind of connection had to be made, and blink, synapse, little space-between was the only way to make it. Or because, and this was more frightening, it was the way the portal wrote. ::: These disconnections were what kept the pages turning, these blank spaces were what moved the plot forward. The plot! That was a laugh. The plot was that she sat motionless in her chair, willing herself to stand up.” Is this book a celebration or a satire of the internet—the portal—he wondered, who can tell the difference these days, the membrane between irony and sincerity is pretty well transparent, he wrote, avoiding a question mark where one had seemed to be called for. The portal had “once been the place where you sounded like yourself. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other,” Lockwood wrote. All the time, though, as he had said in his blurb, call that the precis of his review, perhaps, the book is really about language and the ways it bears, releases, lets slip, distorts, mocks, grapples with and fails to grapple with whatever it is that language bears, releases, lets slip, etcetera, he wasn’t quite sure what, but language did it anyway, what was always protean was only more protean in the portal. The second half of the book concerns the brief six-month life of Lockwood’s niece, born with Proteus Syndrome, a growth disorder that eventually kills its subject under the chaotic asymmetric growth of their own body. He had forgotten the name of the syndrome and had to look it up in the novel later, only to find that he had used the word adjectivally in his previous sentence, which was a bit awkward and unintentional, but there was no going back now. The Lockwood character is stricken (“If all she was was funny, and none of this was funny, where did this leave her?”), goes to support her sister, and the rest of the novel about language revolves around the niece who would never attain language of her own. The narrator’s love for the doomed niece is the least meme-able thing you could imagine, he thought, and yet the voice continues, the thought length continues, the writing style spun by the portal proves, in Lockwood’s hands (hands? mind? fingers? keyboard?) at least, capable of authenticity and feeling. Perhaps we have always thought like this, or experienced like this, he thought, perhaps the world and we ourselves are comprised of instances, snippets, bundled together by language, and the portal has only helped us to see that this is so. If I feel claustrophobic in my own skin, he thought, imagine how the parts and sub-parts of me feel. Imagine how my thoughts feel, and how badly they want to get out.

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The Imagination Chamber: Cosmic rays from Lyra's universe by Philip Pullman            $36

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Robin White: Something Is Happening Here edited by Sarah Farrar, Nina Tonga, and Jill Trevelyan         $70

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>>See a few pages of the book. 
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>>What is 'reality' anyway? 

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>>Meet Echidna. 

>>Ransack. 

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>>A book trailer!

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>>The racing mind of the narrator. 

>>Books by Dasa Drndic. 

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All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami (translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd)           $38

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Indelible City: Dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim           $40

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Land of Snow and Ashes by Petra Rautiainen (translated from the Finnish by David Hackston)             $33

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The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini          $30

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>>Short-listed for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction. 

The King of China by Tilman Rammstedt (translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire)           $30

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Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti (translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris)              $37

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No-One Around Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a working-class reader by Mark Hodkinson          $37

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The Thief ('The Queen's Thief' #1) by Megan Whaeln Turner            $25

Eugenides, the queen's thief, can steal anything - or so he says. Then his boasting lands him in the king's prison, and his chances of escape look slim. So when the king's magus invites him on a seemingly impossible quest to steal a legendary object and win back his freedom, Gen in no position to refuse. The magus has plans for his king and his country. Gen has plans of his own.

"Endlessly entertaining, deeply deceptive, and very, very clever." —Garth Nix

Here and Now: Letters, 2008—2011 between Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee           $45

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Birding Without Borders: An obsession, a quest, and the biggest year in the world by Noah Stryker      $25

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Bittersweet: How longing and sorrow make us whole by Susan Cain            $40

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"A profound book about some of the most important feelings in human life — ones that our culture averts its gaze from." —Johann Hari

Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido            $23

A fortieth anniversary edition of this much-loved novel, with new introductions by Rachel Cusk and Maria Semple. Eighteen-year-old Katherine — bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban — doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for. But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises.

"There are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one." —Rachel Cusk

A Bigger Picture: My fight to bring a new African voice to the climate crisis by Vanessa Nakate          $40

Nakate exposes the shortcomings of our global discussions around climate change, which consistently envisage the environmental crisis as a problem for future generations. Such an image is only possible through the erasure of the voices of people living in the Global South, where environmental disasters are already having a devastating impact on communities, and especially on women. This is one of the great injustices of the climate crisis: those who have contributed the least to its creation are now suffering its consequences most severely. Despite this, people from the Global South — and people of colour from across the world — are often expunged from the picture of climate activism, as typified by Vanessa's own erasure from a press photograph at Davos in 2020. As she explains, "We are on the front line, but we are not on the front page".

"Vanessa Nakate continues to teach a most critical lesson. She reminds us that while we may all be in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat." —Greta Thunberg

 Our Book of the Week has just been awarded the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa), published by Huia Publishing, is an absorbing, powerful, innovatively structured novel arising from Hereaka's mission to decolonise the legend of 'Hatupatu and the Bird-Woman' and reclaim the story from a maligned character's point of view. The judges said, "Kurangaituku is poetic, intense, clever and sexy as hell. It’s also an important novel. A game-changer.”
>>Read Stella's review. 
>>Story sovereignty —Stella interviews Whiti Hereaka. 
>>Power of the story.
>>Giving Kurangaituku a voice. 
>>Transformation: a takatāpui response.
>>Making a nest in the reader's head.
>>Pick up your pen and strike!
>>How to make a bird. 
>>One version of the Hatupatu legend. 
>>The annual Kurangaituku Netball Tournament. 
>>Hereaka is also the author of some excellent young adults' novels. 
>>Get your copy of Kurangaituku.

The winners of the 2022 OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS have just been announced — a diverse and surprising set of excellent books. 

Read below what the judges have to say about each book, and click through to our website to get your copies (or to send them to your friends).

>>Click here to see all the short-listed books. 

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers)
Ten years ago, Whiti Hereaka decided to begin the task of rescuing Kurangaituku, the birdwoman ogress from the Māori myth, 'Hatupatu and the Bird-Woman'. In this extraordinary and richly imagined novel, Hereaka gives voice and form to Kurangaituku, allowing her to tell us not only her side of the story but also everything she knows about the newly made Māori world and after-life. Told in a way that embraces Māori oral traditions, Kurangaituku is poetic, intense, clever, and sexy as hell.

BOOKSELLERS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Dressed: Fashionable Dress in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1840 to 1910 by Claire Regnault (Te Papa Press)
This beautiful and beguiling book will seduce a wide audience with its stunning images and informative text, focusing on our ancestors’ lives through the lens of their clothing. Elegantly designed and sumptuously presented, it covers the diversity of sartorial experience in 19th Century Aotearoa as it addresses simple questions such as: Who made this garment? Who wore it, and when? A valuable addition to our nation’s story, it will have wide cultural and educational reach, and is an outstanding example of illustrated non-fiction publishing.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books)
An admirable work of historical scholarship drawing on many sources, Māori and Pākehā. Vincent O'Malley's craft lies in unpacking those sources in an eloquent and incisive way, and he helps readers to think critically as he presents balanced arguments about contested battles and other conflicts. In the process, he weaves a coherent history of the New Zealand Wars. Essential reading for New Zealanders, with the bonus of excellent book production by the publishers.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

Tumble by Joanna Preston (Otago University Press)
Each poem in Tumble is a glimpse into a different world, and no two poems inhabit the same reality. Drawing from lines of art, history, contemporary journalism and fellow poets, the collection confidently shifts perspectives and registers, points of view and tone, while being held together by Joanna Preston’s light touch. Her pristine imagery and fine ear for rhythm and beat means every poem — and the book itself — is a celebration of poetry.

>>Get a celebration pack of all four category winners!



CRYSTAL ARTS TRUST BEST FIRST BOOK AWARDS

HUBERT CHURCH AWARD FOR FICTION



Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
From the very first page, this novel has readers laughing out loud at the daily trials of these two Māori-Russian-Catalonian siblings. The titular characters navigate Auckland while dealing with heartbreak, OCD, family secrets, the costs of living, Tinder, public transport and more, and they do it all with massive amounts of heart. Greta & Valdin is gloriously queer, hilarious and relatable. Rebecca K. Reilly's debut novel is a modern classic.

JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

The Architect and the Artists: Hackshaw, McCahon, Dibble by Bridget Hackshaw (Massey University Press)
A thorough and beautifully produced triangulation of creative practice that shows the value of collaboration in the arts, as evidenced in the collective projects of James Hackshaw, Colin McCahon and Paul Dibble. Archival material (including personal correspondence and sketches), informative and reflective text, and powerfully evocative photography are delivered cohesively through clean and lively design and typography. The author’s clear labour of love is reinforced by excellent external contributions, making for an enlightening and brilliant whole. Another impressive and assured first book.


E.H. McCORMICK PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION



The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change by Dave Lowe (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
In this wide-ranging autobiography, Dave Lowe follows New Zealand’s critical role in charting carbon emissions from the 1970s onwards. Writing of the methodical collection of critical data allows Lowe to convey major scientific concepts to the general reader in a very accessible way. The Alarmist has a rich texture of family and a clear awareness that members of the scientific community are not always in harmony. It is enlightening as well as very readable.


JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY



Whai by Nicole Titihuia Hawkins (We Are Babies Press)
Whai speaks to relationships with parents and childhood, with identity, with students, and with the self. Nicole Titihuia Hawkins writes with a masterful command of the English language, enhanced by ngā puna waihanga Māori, the inspirational creative springs of Māori culture and language, resulting in unique and powerful poetry. With gentle, compelling confidence Hawkins explores themes of colonisation, ancestry and education, without losing her sense of beauty and humour.

>>Get a celebration pack of all eight winners! 

STORY SOVEREIGNTY

An interview with WHITI HEREAKA

author of KURANGAITUKU

Stella: The first striking element that readers will notice with this novel is the structure — the two starting points and the intersection of these visually in the book. The two parts are distinct, although intricately related, and have their own tone. Why did you decide to approach your novel in this manner?

Whiti: I think I spent a long time fighting against the structure that this novel finally took on — I tried very hard to write it as a lineal, chronological story! But the story presented in that way was always lacking to me. While I was trying to force it into a “normal” structure it had already separated into the different strands of the story for me — part of my struggle when I was trying to make it into a lineal story was to make the different parts of the book sit together. So this approach solved some of those problems which is great! But really this structure came about because I wanted the novel to read like how a pūrākau would be told — I worked on the rhythms of English so it would read like Te Reo Māori, and I was very well supported by the editors at Huia to do this.

Time and the experience of deep time was also important to me — a creature like Kurangaituku wouldn’t experience time in the same way we do, so I wanted to replicate that in her story. I wrote Legacy while I had put this novel on hold, and I think you can see me figuring out time loops and how to use structure as a vital storytelling component in that novel.

I also wanted to push myself as a writer and because I’ve written across genre and forms I’m interested in how far you can push a novel, I’m interested in the experience of reading a novel and how that experience is unique to the form.

It was also cool! I think ye olde thespian in me is still wanting to put on a show, to put bums on seats — and I think there’s a sort of delight in turning the book when Kurangaituku’s world is overturned, in seeing the story strands weaving together. Again, I have to thank the design team at Huia for taking my outlandish plans and making them work beautifully (in the mechanical sense and the aesthetic!)

Stella: I was struck by Kurangaituku's curiosity and circumspect attitude towards humans. It reminded me of Max Porter's Papa Toothwort character in Lanny — listening in and watching — both standing outside of the action, but wanting to be noticed. Does Kurangaituku desire legitimacy or a place to stand, to be recognised as worthwhile? And do think wahine Maori have this same concern?

Whiti: Oh, I don’t know if I can presume the desires of Kurangaituku nor those of wāhine Māori! I don’t think either need to seek legitimacy or recognition from anyone — they are inherently so. I think what is important to Kurangaituku and Māori is story sovereignty, hell, sovereignty full stop — but that is a much bigger conversation. I think it is important for people to be able to tell their own stories in their own ways — and I think it is helpful for readers to read stories that are told from their cultural view point (and for those not of the culture to spend a bit of time in those stories too.)

Stella: This is a visceral novel full of passion and anger. What is the role of literature in confronting violence?

Whiti: I think literature should both reflect the world and comment on it — at least, I hope that’s what I do in my mahi.

I think the violence in Kurangaituku both in the action and the character is shown to be ultimately hollow and toxic. Without giving too much away, some of the most gory scenes the violence amounts to nothing and the actors playing out the violence are stuck in a loop — nothing changes because of the violence, it is a useless waste of energy. Often when Kurangaituku herself uses violence, it frustrates her efforts to get what she wants.

I think the anger of Kurangaituku is different from her violence because it is creative — her anger spurs her exploration and her need to tell her story.

Stella: Kuranagituku is a feminist retelling. Do you see yourself as exploring similar territory as Angela Carter in her Bloody Chamber stories and the more recent wave of feminist retellings of Greek myths? And do you feel a responsibility to articulate these often silenced voices? 

Whiti: Wow — I don’t think I can dare to say my name and Angela Carter in the same breath . Angela Carter! While I think Kurangaituku is a feminist retelling, I think more importantly it is an attempt at a decolonised retelling. Because the only place where the women’s voices in pūrākau have been silenced are in the retellings that originated with British ethnologists that published our stories and put their own patriarchal lens on them. It is unfortunate that those retellings of our stories have become those that we are most familiar with.

Being a Māori writer means always having the responsibility of articulating the voices of a community, whether I intend to do that or not! No matter what my work is there will always be the question about how that reflects on Te Ao Māori as a whole. I try my best and I’ll often get is wrong, because it is impossible for one person to speak for the multitudes of people from a community. In this retelling of Kurangaituku and in the retellings in Pūrākau, I hope we are moving away from the idea of a “definitive” telling. My novel is one of the stories told about Kurangaituku — it is one strand of many and I hope that the rope that it is a ply of will become thicker and stronger. Because a strong rope can slow even the sun.

>>Your copy of Kurangaituku. 

>>Other books short-listed for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

BOOKS @ VOLUME #277 (6.5.22)

For book news and new books, read our latest NEWSLETTER.

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

Companion Piece by Ali Smith {Reviewed by STELLA} There is only one word needed here — brilliant. Ali Smith’s latest instalment is Companion Piece. Written in the same breakneck fashion as her 'Seasons Quartet', it is set in 2021, in the time of Covid, and reaches back to grab a hand onto the scruff of a neck of a young blacksmithing girl at the time of the Black Death. Narrated by Sandy Gray, artist and wordsmith, the novel opens with a hello (a ‘hello’ which we will visit again later in the novel with an etymological dive). In typical Ali Smith style, we are thrown right into the heart of the chaos. Cerberus is there with his three heads making light of the current crisis. “Seen it all before. Let the bodies pile high, more the merrier in a country of people in mourning gas-lit by the constant pressure to act like it’s not a country in mourning.” Sand is past caring as she worries about her father in hospital and copes with lockdown. Her days are filled with looking after her father’s dog, trying to communicate with her father through the iPad, and occasionally staring up at the hospital windows with others, socially distanced, awaiting news. When a phone call from a past acquaintance comes out of the blue, a chain of events disrupts her isolation. Martina Pelf wants information and she’s decided Sand is the person who can interpret a riddle for her. “Curlew or curfew, you choose”. Held at Customs for several hours, the assistant curator Martina has been stuck in a small room with an artefact, the intricately smithed and highly decorative ‘Boothby Lock’, which she has been charged to transport back to the museum and it has ‘spoken’ to her. She wants Sand to figure out this puzzle for her. All okay, even if strange for Sand, as Martina, apart from when she attempted to get Sand to write a poetry essay for her, spent all her time ignoring her at college. All okay, until Martina’s family one by one descends on Sandy Gray’s abode, making themselves at home. Self-centred, maskless and oblivious of their upper-middle-class entitlement, they are completely unaware of their imposition. (Interestingly, invading another’s home is a factor that occurs in at least two other Smith novels: The Accidental and more obviously There But For The). This is also a parallel with another of Smith’s earlier works, How to Be Both (one of my personal favourites) with two distinct stories in time that intersect. In Companion Piece, a young woman, a girl really, surfaces in Sand’s house — homeless, hungry and filthy, needing a place to sleep and new boots. This girl has a companion — a curlew — and an odd manner. “Nails, she was saying now, and spikes and all decoratives, I’m the fellow. What needs mended here? Not counting this poor dog you’ve broken. The break’s an inner crack, yours to mend, I can’t but I’ll trade you a piece of house goods that need mending for a sleep under a roof, I’ve a tolerable hand, stew pans, lock, grate, kettle, candlestick, hinge, last a lifetime, you’ve my word, I’m good at knives, there’s many a person buried with a knife of mine for use in the next life.” So here comes our other narrator (the story within the story), a child of death from a bygone time — left in a ditch, marked with a brand, and cheated of her worth. Yet also a child of grit and insight. Ali Smith’s Companion Piece is an evocative and timely work of fiction that asks us all to consider what is important and what can we do when trust is lost. There are questions to be asked so we can embrace our future. Ali Smith with her wry and insightful wordsmithery is once again brilliant.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard (translated from German by Ewald Osers) {Reviewed by THOMAS} It is very tiring to get everything done properly, he said, it is exhausting and, really, a waste of time to get everything done properly, but it is just as exhausting and just as much a waste of time to get everything done not properly, to do a mediocre job, so to speak, he said. As not doing anything at all does not seem to be an option available to me, despite its attractions, he said, as doing nothing is fraught with its own existential dangers, so to call them, I may as well do everything properly, he said. This is a terrible trap. I will exhaust myself and waste my time whether I do things properly or not, nobody will notice whether I do things properly or not, I am uncertain if I can tell whether I am doing things properly or not myself, but they would notice if I do nothing at all. Perhaps what I call properly is in fact mediocre, I aspire to the mediocre but fall short, or I aspire to excellence and fall short, it makes no difference, I fall to the same point, somewhere below the mediocre, far below excellence, I fall to my place in the order of things whether I aspire to the mediocre or to the excellent, I may as well aspire to excellence, whatever that means, and fail more grandly, he said, though he was unsure if this failure was more grand or more pathetic. He had, he said, entertained the intention, at least briefly, of writing a proper review of Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard, he had been rereading Old Masters not merely but at least partly for the purposes of writing this review, and he had even, while researching this review or this book, discovered what seemed to him to be a video game in which he could move around the  galleries of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, although there were some galleries he could not enter for some reason, perhaps he had to advance to another level or perhaps he was just clumsy, avoiding the gallery attendants, searching for the location in which almost the entire book is set: the bench facing the painting White-Bearded Man by Tintoretto. Using the navigation arrows provided for the purpose by Google, he found, the player of the game can become well acquainted with the endless parquet flooring of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, with the marble staircases and gilded cornices and door-frames of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and with much of what Reger, the dominant voice if not the narrator of Bernard’s book, dismisses as its collection of “Habsburg-Catholic state art. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is entirely in line with the artistic taste of the Habsburgs, who, at least where painting is concerned, had a revolting, totally brainless Catholic artistic taste,” writes Bernhard as Atzbacher quoting Reger, Atzbacher being the book’s narrator, even though pretty much all he does is quote what Reger has at some time said. He must concentrate on his review, he thought, I am determined to write a proper review, he said aloud, forgetting that he had already reviewed the book with a proper review, or in any case something slightly closer to a proper review than what he felt himself now capable of, not that that is saying much, some years before. Old Masters is an entirely musical book, he wrote, starting at last in a sensible way, despite being set in a painting gallery it is entirely musical both in its phrasing and in its structure, if there is a difference between the two, he thought, drifting from the task, the musical form of the book is what matters, he wondered if he could say the form is all that matters, that form is all that ever matters. Old Masters is narrated in one unbroken paragraph by Atzbacher, about whom we learn little, he wrote, but the voice that reaches us is the voice of Reger, an elderly music reviewer, who has arranged to meet Atzbacher on their regular bench in front of the White-Bearded Man but on an irregular day, they normally meet there on alternate days only. Atzbacher arrives early in order to watch Reger waiting for him from the next room, and the first half of the book consists of Atzbacher telling us what Reger has previously told him, of Reger speaking through Atzbacher, so it seems, just as Reger also speaks, as Atzbacher notes, through the museum attendant Irrsigler: “Irrsigler has, over the years, appropriated verbatim many, if not all, or Reger’s sentences. Irrsigler is Reger’s mouthpiece, nearly everything that Irrsigler says has been said by Reger, for over thirty years Irrsigler has been saying what Reger has said. If I listen attentively I can hear Reger speak through Irrsigler.” As with Irrsigler so with Atzbacher, he thinks, Atzbacher seemingly unaware of the irony. Old Masters is a very funny book, he thinks, Reger’s reported opinions amount to a stream of invective against pretty much everything held in esteem in the society in which Reger lives, and in which Bernhard lived, separated as they are only by tense, admiration, after all, being for Bernhard a form of mental weakness. “There has virtually been no culture in Vienna for a long time, and one day there will really be no culture of any kind left in Vienna, but it will nevertheless be a cultural concept even then. Vienna will always be a cultural concept, it will more stubbornly be a cultural concept the less culture there is in it,” writes Benhard as Atzbacher as Reger and perhaps again as Bernhard. Well, he thought, as with Vienna so with Nelson, though I will not write that down, he thought. Heidegger, Stifter, Bruckner, Vienna’s public lavatories, restaurants, politicians, all are derided in the most amusing fashion and at length, he wrote, in this first section, in the words of Reger as remembered by Atzbacher as he watches Reger waiting for him to arrive. This might even be Bernhard’s funniest book, he thought, the way Reger’s ridicule surges through it, builds and collapses. When Atzbacher keeps his appointment with Reger, Reger’s rants continue via Atzbacher, but at one step less remove, the rants continue but the tone changes, subtly, Old Masters might be Bernhard’s both least and most subtle book, he thought, the least subtle because of Reger’s ranting but the most subtle because of the modulation in that ranting, all in this one paragraph, the rant no longer filtered by Atzbacher’s memory is more extreme, nastier, less enjoyable, clumsier, is the fact that I can go along with Reger’s rants in the first half a mark against me, he wondered, and if so am I redeemed by being put off when we meet Reger himself in the second, so to speak, when we meet Reger in the raw, so to speak, he wondered, and Atzbacher intercuts what Reger says to him at this time in the gallery with recollections of what Reger has said to him previously at the Ambassador cafe, and the depth of Reger’s unhappiness since the death of his wife is expressed in sequences of sentences, each ending “...Reger said at the Ambassador then,” repeated like sobs, and the unhappiness flows through and gives depth to the rest of the book, which principally concerns the difficulties of carrying on living is a world devoid of value, Old Masters is perhaps Bernhard’s funniest book and his saddest. “Oh yes, Reger said, the logical conclusion would invariably be total despair about everything. But I am resisting this total despair about everything, Reger said. I am now eighty-two and I am resisting this total despair about everything tooth and nail, Reger said.” Reger’s vitriol is a survival mechanism, he wrote, to despise is to survive, that is clumsily put, he thought, too clumsily put to write down. “One’s mind has to be a searching mind, a mind searching for mistakes, for the mistakes of humanity, a mind searching for failure. The human mind is a human mind only when it searches for the mistakes of humanity, Reger said. A good mind is a mind that searches for the mistakes of humanity and an exceptional mind is a mind that finds the mistakes of humanity, and a genius’s mind is a mind which, having found these mistakes, points them out and with all the means at its disposal shows up these mistakes.” Reger despises nothing more than old masters, so Reger says, and this is why he has sat on his bench at the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day for thirty years. “Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hypocrisy and self-deception, Reger said. … All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man’s absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. … All these so-called old masters are really failures, without exception they were all doomed to failure.” Our obsession with art, he thought, if we have an obsession with art, or with celebrity, if we have that, or with sport performers, so to call them, or with wealthy people, or actors, or singers, is not with how these apogees of achievement are more successful than us, more skilled, more wonderful, more spiritual even, whatever we mean by that, but with the flaws, the weaknesses, vices and misfortunes that make them like us after all, failures, and we are reassured that not even great success, however that is measured, not even great skill, not even great fame would stop us from being failures, and so we need not therefore even strive for these things, they would not in any case save us, so to speak. When the worst happens, though, we are devastated but it is not true to say that we do not also feel relief, and this is the saddest thing of all, he thought. “Reger was looking at the White Bearded Man and said, the death of my wife has not only been my greatest misfortune, it has also set me free. With the death of my wife I have become free, he said, and when I say free I mean entirely free, wholly free, completely free, if you know, or if at least you surmise, what I mean. I am no longer waiting for death, it will come by itself, it will come without my thinking of it, it does not matter to me when. The death of a beloved person is also an enormous liberation of our whole system, Reger now said. I have lived for some time now with the feeling of being totally free. I can now let anything approach me, really anything, without having to resist, I no longer resist anything, that is it, Reger Said.” Atzbacher accepts the ticket Reger offers him to attend a performance of Kleist’s The Broken Jug, a work also mocking human faillings, at the Bergtheater that evening, but, Atzbacher says, “The performance was terrible,” ending the book with the first opinion he has expressed that might be his own, though, given the formative influence of Reger upon him, can any opinion be his own, can anyone’s opinion anyway be considered their own, he wondered. I will give up on this review, he decided, I cannot write the review properly he realised, whatever could constitute properly, perhaps I could have done so once but I can do so no longer, at least not today, the only day I have to write it, he thought, my mind no longer performs in that way. He had spent a long time playing the Kunsthistorische Museum game but he could not find the painting of the White Bearded Man.

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“Scott Hamilton is one of the best writers and thinkers in New Zealand.” —Steve Braunias

The Stasi Poetry Circle: The creative writing class that tried to win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann             $37

Berlin, 1962. Morale is at rock bottom in East Germany, thrown into chaos by the new Berlin Wall. The Ministry for State Security is hunting for a new weapon in the war against capitalism. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi resolve to fight the enemy through rhyme and verse, winning the Culture Wars through poetry. Consisting of 15 secret agents — from WW2 veterans to schoolboy recruits — the 'Working Group of Writing Chekists' met monthly from 1962 until the Wall fell. In a classroom adorned with portraits of Lenin, the spies wrote their own poetry and were taught verse, metre, and rhetoric by East German poet Uwe Berger. The regime hoped that poetry would sharpen the Stasi's 'party sword' by affirming the spies' belief in the words of Marx and Lenin, as well as strengthening the faith of their comrades. But as the agents became steeped in poetry, revelling in its imaginative ambiguity, the result was the opposite. Rather than entrenching state ideology, they began to radically question it — and, following a radical role reversal, the GDR's secret weapon dramatically backfired.

>>Red Poets' Society.

The Land of Short Sentences by Stine Pilgaard             $38

A young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way, not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School, where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of it all, there's the small matter of juggling her roles as mother to a newborn baby and advice columnist in the local newspaper. In this understated and hilarious novel, Stine Pilgaard conjures a tale of venturing into new and uncharted land, of human relationships, dilemmas, and the perplexing byways of local social codes.

>>The author introduces the book. 

The Last Emperor of Mexico: A disaster in the New World by Edward Shawcross           $45

'One of the most monstrous enterprises in the annals of international history,' said Karl Marx. 'A madness without parallel since Don Quixote,' said a future French president. This is history's judgement on the events surrounding the ill-fated reign of Maximilian of Mexico, the young Austrian archduke who in 1864 crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been convinced to do so by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor promised Maximilian a hero's welcome, which he would ensure with his own mighty military support. Instead, Maximilian walked into a bloody guerrilla war - and with a headful of impractical ideals and a penchant for pomp and butterflies, the so-called new emperor was singularly unequipped for the task. The ensuing saga would feature the great world leaders of the day, popes, bandits and queens; intrigue, conspiracy and cut-throat statecraft, as Mexico became the pivotal battleground in the global balance of power, between Old Europe and the burgeoning force of the New World: American imperialism.

Bacon in Moscow by James Birch             $40

This funny and personal memoir is the account of an audacious attempt by James Birch, a young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking retrospective of Francis Bacon's work at the newly refurbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988. Side-lined by the British establishment, Birch found himself at the heart of a honey-trap and the focus for a picaresque cast of Soviet officials, attaches and politicians under the forbidding eye of the KGB as he attempted to bring an unseen western cultural icon to Russia during the time of 'Glasnost', just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"A rollicking cultural adventure before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meteoric rise of contemporary art in the nineties." —Grayson Perry
>>Bringing the Bacon to Moscow. 

>>Dodgy plumbing.

The Social Lives of Animals: How co-operation conquered the natural world by Ashley Ward          $45

Some animal societies hold a mirror up to the human world: elephants hold funerals for departed family members. Pinyon jays run collective creches. Rats will go out of their way to help a cold, wet stranger. Other lifestyles can seem intensely alien (or maybe not so alien). Take locusts, surging over the land in their millions, unable to slow down for a moment because the hungry ranks behind will literally bite their legs off if they don't stay one step ahead.

"A great antidote to the dog-eat-dog view of nature that we grew up with. Ashley Ward takes the reader on a personal journey of discovery to make clear that animals often depend on cooperation for survival." —Frans de Waal

Faraway Girl by Fleur Beale            $24

Etta is worried about her brother, Jamie. The doctors can find nothing wrong with him, but he is getting weaker by the day. At breakfast one morning, he seems to have lost it completely - in a voice as pale as his face, he said, 'I think I can see a ghost.' However, when they all turn to look, sure enough, materialising on the window seat is a girl about Etta's age, wearing a beautiful Victorian wedding dress. Etta has to get off to school, she has no time for this, but she is about to discover that time has a whole new significance. She and her ghost companion have no choice but to work out what is going on before Jamie is lost for ever.

Matariki by Kirsten Parkinson and Kitty Brown           $23

How can we celebrate Matariki? Let's look to the stars! Maumaharatia: Remembering our past Tiakina te taiao: Caring for our environment. Te whakawhanaungatanga: Connecting with our people. 

Me pehea tatou e whakanui i a Matariki? Tirohia nga whetu! Maumaharatia te onamata. Tiakina te taiao. Te whakawhanaungatanga ki o tatou iwi. 

Explore the nine stars of Matariki in rich, detailed imagery and bilingual text. Dive into the meanings of the stars and Matariki itself. 

Our Book of the Week, the wholly remarkable Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly, is an irrepressible, seemingly off-hand yet sharply insightful novel set in the queerness, nerdiness and cultural diversity of a distinctly vibrant contemporary Aotearoa. It has (unsurprisingly) been short-listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 
>>Invented people on real streets — Stella interviews Rebecca K. Reilly. 
>>Read Stella's review of Greta & Valdin. 
>>What sort of pants do I wear?
>>Like an old lawnmower. 
>>The Acorn Prize round table. 
>>Infrequently asked questions. 
>>Put a straw under Baby. 
>>Videotapes.
>>Sender.
>>Time for a cultural reset. 
>>Re-Verb.
>>New notebooks.
>>Perversity, cynicism and sheer wickedness.
>>Watching, reading and listening. 
>>Gin & Vonic.
>>Your copy of Greta & Valdin. 
>>Other books short-listed for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

 

INVENTED PEOPLE ON REAL STREETS

An interview with REBECCA K. REILLY

author of GRETA & VALDIN

Stella: Greta & Valdin has been a sensation — topping the indie bestseller charts and capturing a rapturous audience. Why do you think it has been so well received?

Rebecca: Oh, I mean, I think only some of a book’s numbers are down to writing. It has to be in the right hands at the right time and have ticked a whole lot of boxes like inoffensive blurb, cover that doesn’t clash in a flat lay, author photo where the writer doesn’t look too furious. Then on top of that you need word of mouth recommendations, so the content of the book has to be okay as well. Here this book has good fortune because it doesn’t really have objectionable content in it, so if the reader enjoys it they can pretty much recommend it freely except to people who are homophobic or have a vested interest in preserving Iberian Spanish. Or people who tend to err on the side of finding any kind of vague angle of intellectualism pretentious and classist, this nerd book is not for them. One of my favourite books is Bear by Marian Engels and I can’t recommend it to many people at all because you have to be chill about what I guess we can call theoretical zoophilia here.

Stella: While reading this, I was actually aware of the balance you strike in keeping the lively energy of the protagonists (and the cityscape they live in — the city is vividly portrayed) front and centre while simultaneously delving into deeper themes on race and gender.  Do you think humour is a vital tool in your kete? And where is it most useful or most successfully employed? Can it also, in contrast, obscure the intent of the writer?

Rebecca: I think balance is the key for me here. When I’m editing, I’m mostly thinking about how I can achieve a balance of entertainment and, ugh, pathos I guess? I want to feed the reader the vegetables (the gay agenda) a little bit but I mainly want to do what’s best to make an entertaining story with emotional highs and lows. I think it would be disingenuous to leave out the political realities that people like the characters in the book have to live with, but I’m not, you know, I’m not in the business of achieving social justice through opaque messaging. We don’t need books for that, we have the Instagram explore page.

I guess humour is good when trying to squeeze through material that’s difficult somehow, dense or dull but necessary structurally, or just straight out painful. I am aware that what I’m writing in a manuscript is intended for public consumption so I’m purposefully trying not to obscure my intentions with weird edgy jokes. Sometimes I think of something that would be funny but it’s too much, which I don’t see as self-censorship but rather a form of curation. I save that stuff for my edgy personal associates.

Stella: Love is a central theme to the book, whether that is raw and new or more nuanced and convoluted. At times, your novel seemed to sit alongside a Sally Rooney work, while at other times a classic Austen, Dickens (all those machinations) or a Russian meld of Chekhov and Tolstoy. What do you think?

Rebecca: Ah, I think the book is kind of tricky in this way. It does sit alongside the novels of Sally Rooney, Naoise Dolan, Laura McPhee-Browne and others because in a way, I’m also this kind of writer, I was born at the same time and I’ve spent many years at university and wear midi skirts. But I can’t say that I was influenced by millennial novelists at all, because when I wrote this book I was very out of touch with what was going on culturally with novels. I read all these books after I wrote mine. I think I’m this genre of writer circumstantially, but. . . taller and indigenous and from a different country.

I got an Austen comparison on my original manuscript for this book by the examiner, but I didn’t really know what it meant because I have never read the work of Jane Austen. My grandmother had the BBC adaptation on video and I watched one of the videos, I guess twenty years ago. I’ve never read Dickens either, I just know enough about these things to yell five sisters or Ebenezer when I’m watching The Chase. I’ve never read a Russian novel either, actually. I’ve read Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Tree. I’ve seen a production of The Pōhutukawa Tree.

I think I’ve just always been interested in convoluted plots with many mysterious characters and motives, the first time I was asked to move onto a new project rather than writing one never-ending story was in Year 1 when I filled up a whole exercise book with my story We’re Going to Invercargill, a place I had heard mentioned approximately one time. I think this is maybe what happens when you have an autistic child who likes writing but has no interest in fantasy or science fiction or non-fiction. Just this elaborate take on social realism. I used to play limb centre with my dolls, after going with my dad to pick up a new prosthetic leg once. Now I’m an adult who can invent new people and situations from scratch but would be extremely pressed to make them exist on streets that aren’t real. I’m sorry, I haven’t said anything about love – I like thinking about how love works and how people relate to one another, what sort of forms that can take, how far it can stretch. It’s an interesting area of thought like oceanography or linguistics.

Stella: Your book has a happy ending — mostly. Did you intend this?

Rebecca: The end of the book is definitely the part I’ve had the most negs about (rushed, messy, loses it, but also overly neat, unrealistic, cutesy) but I did intend it to be how it is. I know the author’s intention doesn’t matter and it’s all up to the reader, but here my intention was not to show a happy ending as such, but a not-horrible ending for my two protagonists. You know, in the queer community and in the Māori community we’ve got enough media where something cooked happens to the characters right at the end. This is not a book where people are drowning or going to jail or revealing they’re actually straight-engaged to someone else at the end. My secondary intention was to show that although maybe everything is momentarily fine in the world of the protagonists, they also needed to realise that the world, and even the people closest to them, operate on their own terms without their intervention. I wanted to break from the insularity of the tight first person and show that other stuff was going on and other characters had different viewpoints and other things they were dealing with.

I’m interested in the narrative perspective of Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, where the third-person narrator turns out to be someone in love with the protagonist and A Series of Unfortunate Events where the narrator is in love with someone who turns out to be the deceased mother of the protagonists. I wanted this type of effect as well, for my own Beatrice, a smaller version of it, not directly through narration but an absence of it. From one perspective, this book is a year in the life of a woman who has a lot going on socially and emotionally, but we only ever hear about it from the perspectives of two of her children, one who has no idea what she’s up to and one who seems like he might actually, but he just doesn’t think about it. He’s got a lot on too and has strong reasons for not thinking too much into the affairs of his mother because they affect him too much.

I don’t know, I think that this thing I’m trying to do is definitely a two-book job and I don’t regret sowing the seeds into the first book even if I can never be bothered doing the second one and a fraction of people just think I’m shit at writing endings. They don’t know what’s in my mind. I’m a real shocker for putting information for one text in another, I wrote a short story for Starling set the year before this book and V says that when he turns thirty he’ll simply stop mentioning his age. Which he does, in Greta & Valdin, he says that he’s 29 and that it’s his birthday the next month several times in the first few chapters and then he never mentions it again. I’m just giving away information at this point because the book came out a year ago next week and I would like to stop talking about this one soon and move onto the next one, I’m shit at multi-tasking. Anyway, all the things I’ve done have been worth the risk, would trade again.

>>Your copy of Greta & Valdin

>>Other books short-listed for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

BOOKS @ VOLUME #276 (29.4.22)

Read our latest NEWSLETTER and find out  what we've been reading and recommending, and for book news and new books. 

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

Entanglement by Bryan Walpert  {Reviewed by STELLA} A time traveller, a writer, a lover, a brother, a father. Bryan Walpert’s novel Entanglement, a novel of three parts — intersecting yet separate, entangled yet often also like a long open straight road, both precise and complex — has layers upon layers expanding and collapsing in on itself. It’s cerebral without being boring, pokes fun at itself while still having integrity, and has an emotional core which is richly textured. The three parts are distinct: 'Lake Lyndon Writer Retreat 2019', 'Time Traveller' and 'Sydney 2011'. We move between these stories seamlessly, picking up from where we left off in the previous related episode. Walpert gives each their own flavour. Lake Lyndon has the protagonist answerable to writers’ prompts — the retreat is the perfect time to work on the unwritten novel — to explore mechanisms for approaching his themes. These are often evocative passages, playing to the rules but pulling together story-telling and something of what might be the narrator’s own emotional memory landscape, melding dreamlike episodes with possibly factual encounters. 'Time Traveller' is instantly fascinating. Drawn in by the emotive title you are instinctively required to ask —  Who is this time traveller and where have they travelled from and where are they going? And why is it necessary? And then, as an afterthought, is it possible? It’s cold, it’s snowing, the bus is missed, the bus breaks down. The man is lost even in this familiar landscape. He knows he has to be somewhere but he can’t quite piece it together. Is this a willing deception? Walpert asks us to consider memory and trauma — regret lies at the heart of this devastated, desperate individual. 'Sydney 2011' is the love story that runs throughout, the meeting of two minds attracted to each other in a flurry of time philosophy chat and pillow talk. Anise is intelligent and independent. The narrator is drawn to her intellectually, emotionally and physically. Neither expected a romance. Each on their own trajectory, but, as with many paths, theirs intersect and become entangled in unexpected ways. This leads to marriage, a child and moving countries for reasons the couple may regret. Cleverly conceived, these chapters defy time order, sometimes moving backwards in time, so we, the reader, know more than we should and at other times the tale twists in on itself as the protagonist attempts to control the narrative, to keep us from the truth. This is his view, his story to tell. Pushing through the plot is the story of Daniel, the twin — a story that the brother wishes to change. Can time be altered? The writer’s residency at the Centre of Time in Sydney has him attempting to understand the physics of time, and the novel is rich with conversations with various department academics as they explain the science and philosophy of time. As the novel moves along, the time traveller is increasingly desperate to get to an event in the past but is waylaid by being mugged, getting a concussion, and being apprehended by a psychiatrist. We leave him standing on the ice of a frozen lake — or do we? The husband loses his wife and child and there is a heartbreaking awareness of his mistakes, now and then (in 1976). He is trapped in these moments. His guilt has clung to him, shaping the person he is and the decision he makes thirty years on. It is as if time is collapsing in on him and he knows of only one way out. But is it possible? Walpert writes with surety and restless energy. Like the structure of the novel, the thematic concerns are also layered, expressed with self-deprecating humour, earnest intent, and passages of lyrical beauty — as much a novel as a critique of writing itself. Clever and intriguing. >>Shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus by Signe Gjessing (traslated from Danish by Denise Newman)  {Reviewed by THOMAS} For some reason it had become a habit for him to write his reviews of books in the style of the books themselves, or as near a style as he could manage, a habit or an affectation, he wasn’t sure which, but this habit or affectation, if it was indeed a habit or an affectation, did have a serious intent, and was therefore not really a habit although it still could be an affectation, in that he somehow seemed to believe that a review written in the style of the subject of the review might reveal to him, and possibility to the readers of the review if there chanced to be any readers of the review, if such things could be left to chance, really such things were always left to chance, what was he saying, he seemed to believe that a review written in the style of the subject of the review might reveal something otherwise unnoticed or essential or incidental about the book in question, perhaps he was attempting to remove himself from a position of agency or of responsibility for the review by enticing, if that is the word, the book to write a review of itself. Form generates content, he shouted, frightening the cat, I want to write like a machine, I want to tinker with form until it purrs like a literary motor, then I will be able to put anything at all into the hopper, switch it on, and out comes literature. The cat was quick to resettle, she was used to this kind of excitement. If I were to write a review of Signe Gjessing’s Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus in the form of Signe Gjessing’s Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus I would also be writing it in the form of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he thought, I would be writing it in the form of  Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus because Signe Gjessing has written her book in the form of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in order, he thought, to see what kind of poetry could be generated by such a form, in order to use form as a machine for the generation of text, in order, he thought, to test the limits of language, to see what it is and is not good for, just like Wittgenstein, or just like Wittgenstein thought he was doing at the time he wrote that book. If Wittgenstein made no distinction between form and content, the same must be true of poetry, he thought. If for Wittgenstein the limits of knowledge are the limits of language, what are we to say of poetry, always straining as it does, or as it should, he thought or thought that perhaps he thought, into the unsayable? If Wittgenstein sought the limit of what can be said, through progressing out linguistically from the obvious towards that limit, pushing at it and establishing it, he thought, he entails that beyond that limit there exists not nothing but rather that about which nothing can be said. What cannot be said is signified by the complete exhaustion of that which can be said. Gjessing also is obsessed with the limit with which Wittgenstein was at the time he wrote his book obsessed, but she stands at that limit as if from the habitat beyond, both Wittgenstein and Gjessing are concerned to discover the nature of the limit inherent in language, if there is such a limit and such a limit is inherent, but Gjessing wants, he thought, to destroy that limit or even to show that the destruction of the limit inherent in language is itself inherent in language. He had written in his bad handwriting in his notebook that Gjessing had written in the introduction to her book that “The poem is a modification of the universal — as though the sayable were an incapacity of the unsayable,” and, he thought, Gjessing is running Wittgenstien’s machine in reverse to see what poetry comes out. If the world is comprised not of things but of states of affairs which are the grammatical relations between things, there is no reason to think that that which is not the case is not governed by or, he thought, even generated by this universal grammar. Texts are comprised not of words but of grammar, he shouted, but the cat was long gone. Well, he thought, if I was going to write my review of Signe Gjessing’s Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus in the form of Signe Gjessing’s Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus, I should have started earlier, I should have started, as does Gjessing, as does Wittgenstein to whose text Gjessing’s text is a response and a rejoinder, with a number of numbered statements on the first level to which another number of statements numbered to the first decimal respond or are implied and to which another number of statements numbered to the second decimal respond or are implied and so on until perhaps the fourth decimal or what we could call the fifth level, I’m not exactly sure if this is clear, a shining rack of cogs used in Wittgenstein’s case to generate philosophy, if he believed at that time there even was such a thing, and in Gjessing’s case to generate poetry, or whatever we might choose to call it, if I had written my review like this, he thought, what would I have written? Perhaps if I can devise such a grammatical machine to write reviews, a machine I can just turn upon any text, I can perhaps be relieved of certain of my duties, except perhaps to now and again apply a little oil, and perhaps get sometimes earlier to bed.  “3.01  The world is a good alternative to certainty.” —Signe Gjessing, Tractatus Philiosphico-Poeticus

Our Book of the Week is fresh out of the carton! Ali Smith's hugely anticipated new novel Companion Piece, written in 'real time', continues the project of her outstanding 'Seasons' quartet. Few writers can manage to be at the same time as angry and as playful as Ali Smith, and few can directly face the most depressing aspects of our present moment and find such hope in humanity. 
>>In grave peril of becoming a national treasure. 
>>Not a shred of autofiction. 
>>A tightrope across a ravine.
>>Puns and wordplay are ceremonious.  
>>In a time when lies are sanctioned. 
>>Does art have anything to do with life? 
>>What to do when you lose faith in the writing process. 
>>Smith reads 'Nausicaa'.
>>Read Stella's reviews of the 'Seasons' quartet. 
>>Get your Companion Piece.
>>Also available as a beautiful cloth-bound hardback. 

 NEW RELEASES

Companion Piece by Ali Smith                 $37

"A story is never an answer. A story is always a question." Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future? Ali Smith follows her wonderful 'Seasons' quartet, written in 'real time', with this further novel. Few writers can manage to be at the same time as angry and as playful as Ali Smith, and few can directly face the most depressing aspects of our present moment and find such hope in humanity.  

"A lockdown story of wayward genius. Lyrical visions alternate with fables and farce, history with Covid, in the scheme-busting fifth part of Smith's seasonal quartet." —The Guardian 

"Ali Smith is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now." —Observer
>>Also available as a beautiful cloth-bound hardback.

Tides by Sara Freeman            $33

A spare and taut novel about a woman who, finding her life suddenly drained of meaning after a tragedy, removes herself from her life and habits and ends up drifting penniless in a coastal town, where her encounters with tourists and locals at first alienate her still further from any sense she might have had of herself and then force her to re-examine her ideas of separation and connection, and the trajectory that brought her there. 

"Beautifully observed." —The Irish Times

Metronome by Tom Watson          $33

For twelve years Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They've kept busy: Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps, but something is not right. Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they're meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. And if he's been keeping secrets, maybe she should too. Convinced they've been abandoned, she starts investigating ways she might escape. As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come.
"Taut, unsettling and so completely charged with both tension and emotion, I found myself captivated by Metronome. I loved the clarity of its vision and the clean intensity of its prose, and I know that its vivid characters and the bleak, brutal beauty of the world they inhabit will haunt my dreams for a long time." —Naomi Ishiguro

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam            $23

Short-listed for last year's Booker Prize, Arudpragasam's novel explores the deep psychological and social impacts of the long civil war in Sri Lanka, and the struggle for agency for young people overwhelmed by societal trauma. 

"A Passage North is written with scrupulous attention to nuance and detail. At its center is an exquisite form of noticing, a way of rendering consciousness and handling time that connects Arudpragasam to the great novelists of the past." —Colm Toibin

"A Passage North is a profound and disquieting account of the making of a self, of the pressures of history, desire, will, and chance that determine the shape of a life. It's difficult to think of comparisons for Arudpragasam's work among current English-language writers; one senses a new mastery coming into being." —Garth Greenwell
>>It was his first time travelling north by train. 
>>No wrong answers.
>>How the past can enlighten our future. 

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes)           $37

Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of Mexico’s most thrilling writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society. Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbour - an attractive married woman and mother. Meanwhile Polo, the community’s gardener, dreams about quitting his gruelling job and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. As each face the impossibility of getting what they think they deserve, together Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.
>>Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

The Barn: The lives, landscape and lost ways of an old Yorkshire farm by Sally Coulthard              $43

Dominating the farmyard of the house where Sally Coulthard and her husband live in the gentle Howardian Hills of North Yorkshire is a large, stone-built barn. When Sally discovered a set of ancient 'witch-marks' scratched into the wall of the barn, she became intrigued by the sturdy old building and the story behind it. 

The Barn is a socio-historic exploration of a small patch of Yorkshire countryside - hidden, insignificant, invisible to the rest of the world - which has experienced extraordinary changes. From the last of the enclosures to the boom days of Victorian high farming, the fortunes of the barn have been repeatedly upturned by the unstoppable forces of agriculture and industry. Medicine, transport, education, farming, women's roles, war, technology - every facet of society was played out, in miniature, here. The walls of the barn are a palimpsest, written onto - and now about - by three hundred years of history.

Britain's Empire: Resistance, repression and revolt by Richard Gott          $25

Contrary to nationalist legend and schoolboy history lessons, the British Empire was not a great civilising power bringing light to the darker corners of the earth. Richard Gott recounts the empire's misdeeds from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the Indian Mutiny, spanning the red-patched imperial globe  to Australia, telling a story of almost continuous colonialist violence. Recounting events from the perspective of the colonised, Gott unearths the all-but-forgotten stories excluded from mainstream histories.

"Vivid and startling." —Guardian

Sticky: The secret science of surfaces by Laurie Winkless           $33

You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your desk drawer. The non-stick pan on your stove. The fingerprints linked to your identity. The rumbling of the Earth deep beneath your feet, and the ice that transforms waterways each winter. All of these things are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces, with friction playing the leading role. Winkless explores some of the ways that friction shapes both the manufactured and natural worlds, and describes how our understanding of surface science has given us an ability to manipulate stickiness, down to the level of a single atom. 

>>Why are some things sticky and other things slippery? 

The Ruin of Witches: Life and death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill             $45

In the American frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits, and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children. It will be their downfall. The Ruin of All Witches tells of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Gaskill brings to life an existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death. Through the micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world.

"Malcolm Gaskill shows us with filmic vividness the daily life of the riven, marginal community of Springfield, where settlers from a far country dwell on the edge of the unknown. The clarity of his thought and his writing, his insight, and the immediacy of the telling, combine to make this the best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place, and the result is thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel

Recovery: The lost art of convalescence by Gavin Francis           $12

When it comes to illness, sometimes the end is just the beginning. Recovery and convalescence are words that exist at the periphery of our lives - until we are forced to contend with what they really mean. Here, Gavin Francis explores how - and why - we get better, revealing the many shapes recovery takes, its shifting history and the frequent failure of our modern lives to make adequate space for it.

The Babel Message: A love letter to language by Keith Kahn-Harris          $33

A journey into the heart of language from a rather unexpected starting point. Keith Kahn-Harris is obsessed with something seemingly trivial: the warning message found inside Kinder Surprise eggs: "WARNING, read and keep: Toy not suitable for children under 3 years. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled." On a tiny sheet of paper, this message is translated into dozens of languages - the world boiled down to a multilingual essence. Inspired by this, the author asks: what makes 'a language'? With the help of the international community of language geeks, he shows us what the message looks like in Ancient Sumerian, Zulu, Cornish, Klingon - and many more. Along the way he considers why he thinks Hungarian writing looks angry, how to make up your own language, and the meaning of the heavy metal umlaut. Overturning the Babel myth, he argues that the messy diversity of language shouldn't be a source of conflict, but of collective wonder. 

Welcome to the Universe in 3-D: A visual tour by Neil DeGrasse Tyson at al           $45

Presenting a rich array of stereoscopic color images, which can be viewed in 3D using a special stereo viewer that folds easily out of the cover of the book, this book reveals your cosmic environment as you have never seen it before.

To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert         $25

After being diagnosed with AIDS, Hervé Guibert wrote this devastating, darkly humorous and personal novel, chronicling three months in the penultimate year of the narrator's life. In the wake of his friend Muzil's death, he goes from one quack doctor to another, from holidays to test centres, and charts the highs and lows of trying to cheat death. On publication in 1990, the novel scandalized French media, which quickly identified Muzil as Guibert's close friend Michel Foucault. The book has since attained a cult following for its tender, fragmented and beautifully written accounts of illness, friendship, sex, art and everyday life. 
>>Read Kate Zambreno's To Write As If Already Dead—about her attempts to write an account of Guibert and this book. 

Dark and Magical Places: The neuroscience of how we navigate by Christopher Kemp          $43

Within our heads, we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have — older even than language. Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. From the secrets of supernavigators to the strange, dreamlike environments inhabited by people with 'place blindness', he will explore the myriad ways in which we find our way, explain the cutting-edge neuroscience that is transforming our understanding of it — and try to answer why, for a species with a highly-sophisticated internal navigation system that evolved over millions of years, do humans get lost such a lot?

The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante           $23

Leda is devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarrassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier. She decides to take a holiday by the sea, in a small coastal town in southern Italy. But after a few days of calm and quiet, things begin to take a menacing turn. Leda encounters a family whose brash presence proves unsettling, at times even threatening. When a small, apparently meaningless, event occurs, Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family.

>>And now there's a film. 

Grow! A children's guide to plants and how to grow them by Rizanino Reyes            $43

In this book, discover 15 plants, then learn how to grow them. Meet each plant's surprising relations (did you know the tasty tomato is a cousin of deadly nightshade?) discover their history (bromeliads defended themselves against the dinosaurs!). Then, follow the step-by-step instructions to grow and care for each plant, whether you have a big back garden or a sunny windowsill. Beautifully illustrated and full of information. 

Violets by Alex Hyde          $33

A young woman, Violet, lies in a hospital bed in the closing days of the World War Two. Her pregnancy is over and she is no longer able to conceive. With her husband deployed to the Pacific Front and her friends caught up in transitory love affairs, she must find a way to put herself back together. In a small, watchful town in the Welsh valleys, another Violet contemplates the fate she shares with her unborn child. Unwed and unwanted, an overseas posting offers a temporary way out. Plunged into the heat and disorder of Naples, her body begins to reveal the responsibility it carries even as she is drawn into the burnished circle of a charismatic new friend, Maggie. As the stories of these two Violets begin to intertwine, they both must find the courage necessary to take hold of their lives. 

"This is a profoundly unusual novel, an intricately composed and thoroughly corporeal portrait of the intertwined lives of two women during the war." —Guardian

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore            $23

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers - the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins, a mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, takes over The Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge. Soon the town is hosting witch trails and the atmosphere of distrust and betrayal grows more extreme. Now in paperback. 
>>Angels in anguish. 
>>Also available in hardback. 

Groundskeeping by Lee Cole             $37

Eager to clean up his act after his troubled early twenties, Owen has returned to Kentucky to take a job as a groundskeeper at a small college in the Appalachian foothills, one which allows him to enrol on their writing course. It's there that he meets Alma, a Writer-in-Residence, who seems to have everything Owen doesn't — a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, and published success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma, from a supportive, liberal family of Bosnian immigrants, struggles to understand Owen's fraught relationship with his own family and home. Exploring the boundaries between life and art, and how our upbringings affect the people we can become, Groundskeeping is a novel about two very different people navigating the turbulence of an all-consuming relationship.

Nano: The spectacular science of the very (very) small by Jess Wade and Melissa Castrillón          $22

This exciting non-fiction picture book introduces young readers to the fascinating (and cutting-edge) science of the very, very small. Everything is made from something – but the way we make things, from the materials we use to the science and technology involved, is changing fast. 

"Beautiful. Plunges deep into the world of atoms, materials and the applications of nanoscience, with accessible text and richly shaded pictures." –Guardian

The Howling Hag Mystery by Nicki Thornton           $20

When there's a murder in Twinhills and a hag is heard howling at the local inn, Raven Charming realises she may not be the only secret witch in the village. With the help of boy sleuth Mortimer Scratch, and talking cat Nightshade, she sets out to solve her first magical mystery.

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles             $28

Eccentric, impulsive New York heiress, Christina Goering meets the anxious but equally unpredictable Mrs Copperfield at a party. Two serious ladies, for whom nothing s natural and anything is possible, they follow their singular paths in search of salvation. Mrs Copperfield visits Panama with her husband, whom she abandons for love of Pacifica, a local prostitute, and her brothel home. Miss Goering, for her part, seeks redemption by swapping her mansion for a squalid little house and relishing ever more extreme encounters with strangers. At the end, the two women meet again. First published in 1943, Two Serious Ladies is daring and original, with deadpan humour and devastating insights.

"The book I give as a gift. It feels like giving someone an exotic fruit." —Sheila Heti

Plain Pleasures by Jane Bowles            $28

In this collection of short fiction, ranging from North Africa to South America, Bowles explores her fascination with the hidden lives of apparently ordinary middle-aged women.

"One of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language." —John Ashberry

"A thoroughly original mind - a mind at once profoundly witty, genuinely unusual in its apprehensions, and bracingly, humanely true." —Claire Messud

BOOKS@VOLUME #275 (22.4.22)

Read our latest NEWSLETTER!

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka  {Reviewed by STELLA} This absorbing and powerful novel draws on the pūrākau of Hatupatu and the Birdwoman. In the hands of Whiti Hereaka, the story of Kurangaituku is retold, repositioned and empowered — this is a feminist perspective — wahine strong. It’s also an appreciation of storytelling and the power of words, of language to shape us and contain or conversely to free us. Picking up this attractive Huia publication you are immediately struck by Rowan Heap’s artwork on the covers — (front and front, as this is a book you can start at either end and which overlaps in its telling in the middle) — claw and hand — beaked and unmasked. It would make little difference where you start (I happened to begin on the dark side) as Hereaka avoids linear construction or strict time constraints, and instead weaves the words and actions of Kurangaituku’s travels through time, the underworld and in the forest in moments that circle each other, intersect and mesmerise as only the best storytelling can. It feels both ancient and relevant, and in this it reminded me of the fascinating yet uncomfortable character Papa Toothwort and the world he inhabits in Max Porter’s Lanny — an entity from some hidden depths, always there, watching, listening and learning. In Rarohenga, the underworld, Hereaka creates a dreamlike poetic landscape which moves between nightmare and bliss. Kurangaituku’s travels here bring her both love (with Hinenuitepo) and the desire to be beautiful. Yet it also instils the lust for revenge. It shows her the undoing of man and her own appetite for power. It’s a compelling world to witness through Kurangaituku’s eyes, through her anger and naivety and her awareness of her otherness. In parts beautiful, in parts gruesome, yet also liberating — a place to walk towards the Void, a letting go. Yet what does this mean for Kurangaituku? A creature who is a bird, a woman, both, neither? Dead, not dead? And where can this lead but back to the beginning again? The world is new, and Kurangaituku is of and by the birds. The forest is her home and the birds are her companions. They are drawn to her and they draw her. This timeless expansive moment is interrupted only by the violent murmurings of the earth. When she comes to, the world has changed and the Song Makers have arrived. She watches them, but she can not communicate — she has no voice. Yet they grow to know of her and make her a new version of herself — the story builds, as stories do, with embellishments that become truths, creating a monstrous birdwoman. She is a story and cannot control her outcome — or can she? And in this world, she meets the young warrior, or trickster, Hatupatu for the first time. Her fascination with him, and his ultimate betrayal, is Kurangaituku’s tragedy. Whiti Hereaka’s novel sits comfortably with other feminist myth retellings (Atwood’s Penelopiad or Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber) which give voice to those poorly served by their traditional tellings, with the bonus that is situated here, in Aotearoa. For a novel which is structurally and thematically complex, Kurangaituku is surprisingly agile and wonderfully alluring. >>The book is shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon {Reviewed by THOMAS} Could he even write a review of a book he had read about someone writing about sentences that he in turn had read which were written by yet other people, some of whom, or, rather, some of which, he himself had read directly, if that is the word, that is to say not just in the book about sentences in which these sentences also appear and which he has also read? The question mark, when it finally arrived, seemed somehow out of place, so far did it trail the part of the sentence he had just written in which the matter of the question appeared early, all those clauses shoving the question mark to an awkward distance, already the thought that the sentence described was changing direction, as thoughts do, but the sentence was still obliged to display the mark that would make the first part of the sentence, and indeed the whole sentence thereby into a question, there was a debt to be paid after all, he was lucky to get off without interest. The separation of the question mark from the quested matter was not the only reservation he had about the sentence he had just written, he had other reservations, both about its structure and its content, in other words both about its grammar and its import, if that is the right word. One reservation was that he had chosen to write the sentence in the third person, a habit he had acquired, or an affectation that he had adopted, that depersonalised his reviews and made them easier to write and, he hoped, more enjoyable to read, certainly, he thought, less embarrassing for himself to read, or should that be re-read, not that he was particularly inclined to do such a thing. These reviews were also written in the past tense, for goodness sake. Could he write in the first person and in the present tense, he wondered, or was that a mode he contrarily reserved for fiction? Can I even write a review of a book I have read, he wrote as an experiment, about someone writing about sentences that he has read which were written by yet other people, some of whom, or, rather, some of which, I have read directly, if that is the word, that is to say not just in the book about sentences in which these sentences also appear and which I have also read?, he wrote, though I must say, he thought, that question mark is more problematic than ever. Also, would it not be ludicrous, he thought, to even attempt to write a review about a book about fine sentences, or exceptional sentences, or exemplary sentences or whatever, from William Shakespeare to Anne Boyer, including sentences from several of my favourite writers, though not perhaps the sentences of theirs that I would choose if I had been choosing, he thought, when my own sentences churn on, when in my own repertoire I have only commas and full stops, a continuation mark and a stopping mark, when those two marks for him are already too much for him to handle, accustomed as he had once made himself to the austerity of the full stop alone, you could write a whole book using only full stops, he thought, or he had once thought. He had wandered, and tried to return to the task in hand, or the book in hand, or to the thought in head, so to speak. Because the book was about sentences he found himself unable to write any sentences about it. If he wrote a review, he thought, he had no doubt that at least some of the readers of that review, if not all of the readers of that review, if there were any such readers, which seemed unlikely, would find his sentences fell short of their subject, or if they did not fall short they would quaver under their scrutiny, weaken and collapse, which is another sort of falling. His sentences would rather point than be pointed at. Thinking of writing would have to suffice. I would like to write, he thought of writing, that this book, Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon, is the sort of book that anyone interested in reading better, or, indeed, in writing better, which goes without saying, as writing is a subset of reading, if that goes without saying, though not everyone’s subset, he thought, and would have said had he been saying instead of thinking and writing, or, rather thinking and thinking of writing, Brian Dillon is good company in working out how text works when it works well, but, although he thought of writing this, as he had said, see, he does say though he said he was not saying, he did not write this as, by this time, his comma-infested sentences were almost unable to move in any direction even if not in a straight line, bring on the full stops, he thought.  "Every writing worthy of its name wrestles with the Angel and, at best, comes out limping.” —Jean-François Lyotard

Our Book of the Week is The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw. Shaw didn't exactly intend to become a bookseller, but she found herself the proprietor of two tiny bookshops in the tiny settlement of Manapouri. In this charming volume, Shaw weaves together accounts of characters who visit her bookshop, musings on her favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her remarkable and varied life before she became a bookseller. She has sailed through the Pacific for years, was held up by pirates, worked at Sydney's King's Cross with drug addicts and prostitutes, campaigned on numerous environmental issues, and worked the yacht Breaksea Girl as an expedition/tourist boat with her husband, Lance. 
>>How to run a bookshop. 
>>Pirates, pigs and sex work. 
>>A life well lived. 
>>There were two... 
>>And now there are three!
>>Crammed with adventure. 
>>Read an excerpt.