BOOKS @ VOLUME #281 (3.6.22)

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Unfortunately, our Book of the Week is urgently relevant in many parts of the world at the moment, and increasingly relevant elsewhere. Timothy Snyder's ON TYRANNY: Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century alerts us to the tell-tale signs of a society shifting away from democracy and towards authoritarianism, and gives us some simple but effective ideas on combatting this. This graphic edition of this important book is given even greater depth and resonance by the illustrations by Nora Krug. Beware!
>>How the illustrations were made. 
>>"If we don't observe carefully we don't know how to intervene."
>>The dangers of passive allegiance. 
>>Some pages. 
>>"It turns out that people really like democracy."
>>Other excellent books by Timothy Snyder. 
>>Also by Nora Krug. 
>>Your copy of On Tyranny. 

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

Metronome by Tom Watson   {Reviewed by STELLA} It’s the near future and a couple are near the end of a twelve-year exile. The Warden is due to uplift them from their remote island prison where they have lived a subsistence existence reliant on yearly supply drops, what they scavenge from shipwrecks, and pills deposited at eight-hour intervals. The yearly supply drops have become non-existent. The Warden hasn’t shown up the last three years. Whitney sees this as a test — of their loyalty to the regime and their contrition. Aina is more doubtful —  increasingly suspicious of not only the Warden and the regime but also her husband. 'No one is coming' is the refrain that ebbs at the edges of her mind. The shipwrecks, which had become more frequent, have dwindled as they see fewer signs of any human behaviour. Yet when a yacht is pitched up on the Needles — a sharp range of rocks just off the coast — it is surprisingly rich with treasures and unsettlingly obvious that human inhabitants have been living on board recently. But where are they? Whitney is sure they have come on land. Aina is more puzzled by their lack of access to pills. How could they survive without them? And that brings us to the Pill Clock. Every eight hours, via identification by thumbprint technology, a pill is dispensed — one for Whitney and one for Aina. Without the medication, they will die, poisoned by the atmosphere. This is a climate hell — low on resources, crappy weather (a massive flood triggers chaos as well as a personal catastrophe), and bad air. The pill dispenser keeps them tethered to the croft and the patch on land they live on. They are controlled, even at a distance, by the schedule of the clock — by the prison sentence. As the day of their freedom comes and passes, the couple respond in opposing manners. Whitney’s concept of 'the test' is reinforced, while Aina is determined to unpick the doubts she harbours and the questions that bother her about the island. Is it really an island? If yes, where did the lone sheep come from and why is Whitney determined to keep her from exploring beyond a craggy range? This schism, in conjunction with an unexpected encounter, undermines their relationship and pulls them both back to an unbearable past. A past where breaking the rules — having a child without permission — resulted in their banishment, and Maxime, their son, taken by the state. It was an oppressive regime, where citizens toed the line, dobbing in others, hoping to remain unnoticed or to be socially rewarded. Yet saving your own skin in this conservative regime didn’t, you realise as the story unfolds, keep the wolf from the door — resources became scarce and the environment harsher. Whitney and Aina, completely isolated, know little, and as Aina makes a decision to leave, determined to find Maxime, it is unclear whether this will be her redemption or destruction. Tom Watson’s debut focuses on the tense relationship between the couple, their diverging perspectives, lack of trust in each other, and disintegrating grip on reality. Metronome is tightly drawn with the clockwork precision and logic of survival, balancing the emotional turmoil of love and betrayal in this remote atmospheric landscape.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

Now, Now, Louison by Jean Frémon (translated by Cole Swensen)   {Reviewed by THOMAS} Whose is this voice, addressing the artist Louise Bourgeois as ‘you’? It is the voice of Louise Bourgeois as written by Jean Frémon, a gallerist and writer who knew her and has written this insightful, beautifully written little book, which could be classified as a 'second-person autobiographical fiction'. Bourgeois is here, as in her art, both ‘I’ and ‘you’, both present and cast through time, both active and passive, both spectator and actor, both mathematician and instrument of the id, both innocent and knowing, at once both highly connected and aware and utterly separate, both ancient and young; gendered, ungendered, double- and multi-gendered; highly personal and rigorously particular, yet also universal. Bourgeois inhabits a zone that is at once “too complicated and too clear. No need to shed too much light on it,” a zone of vagueness in which the body is the territory of metaphors, though never of signs, the zone from which the formless coalesces into form. Bourgeois’s dreams are as real — and as inscrutable — as actuality: “Let them decipher my dreams — me, I’m fine with the mystery. No need to interpret them. Obscurity has its virtues.” Frémon-Bourgeois captures perfectly the singular intensity and fluidity of awareness that both enables and accesses art like that of Bourgeois, a mode of approach in which the distinction between initiative and surrender is erased. The book explores the key experiences of Bourgeois’s life without converting them into fact — they remain experiences, with all the ambivalences of experiences (though I here list them as facts): her childhood in France, where she would make the representations of leaves and branches with which her mother would replace the genitals cut from old tapestries in her family’s tapestry refurbishment business; her father’s philandering and double standards; her obsessiveness; her sensitivity to trauma, especially childhood trauma; her mother’s death, which prompted Louise to abandon mathematics for art; her departure for New York (“That’s what exile’s like. Apart from here and part from there, apart from everything. … Take an electric adaptor along with you.”); her long obscurity as an artist; her long loneliness following the death of her partner; her immense productivity; her ‘discovery’ in old age; her continued immense productivity; her very old age; her death. Bourgeois strives to understand what Frémon-Bourgeois calls “the survival of the unfit”, the evolutionary counter to the survival of the fittest. Art, perhaps, is a method of survival, as it is for Cyclose and Uloborus spiders, who “sculpt doubles of themselves, and then they place them on the web where they can be easily seen so that predators will attack this bait instead of them.” For Bourgeois only the gauche is beautiful: “Aim for beauty, and you get the vapid, aim for something else — encyclopedic knowledge, systematic inventory, structural analysis, personal obsession, or just a mental itch that responds to scratching — and you end up with beauty. Beauty is only a by-product, unsought, yet available to amateurs and impenitent believers.” And all the time, there is the artist who is indistinguishable from her art yet inaccessible through it (because her art is primarily a point of access to ourselves): “I am what I make and nothing else. I make, I unmake, I remake.”

 NEW RELEASES

Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley            $36
Having returned to the Mackenzie Country to deal with the unexpected death of his brother, Roland has more than enough on his plate. The last thing he needs are the demands of a cantankerous neighbour, the complaints of his partner back in Australia and to find that someone is impersonating him on Facebook, stirring up the locals against him. Even the weather is hostile, rendering roads unpassable, his old home an icebox and the fire offering little comfort. And yet, when cycling on the empty roads, cocooned in a snow-muffled landscape, he finds he can confront what he actually feels.
"Fearnley's prose is precise, spare, springy with cadences of colloquial Kiwispeak, yet resonant with imagery." —David Hill

>>Read an extract.
>>Other books by Laurence Fearnley.

Galatea by Madeline Miller              $13

In this short story, Miller boldly retells the legend of Galatea and Pygmalion, focussing on Galatea's plight as the 'creation' of an obsessively controlling husband, and her determination to secure her own independence and personhood. A beautifully produced little hardback from the author of The Song of Achilles and Circe. 

How To Be A Bad Muslim by Mohamed Hassan            $35

From Cairo to Takapuna, Athens to Istanbul, How To Be A Bad Muslim maps the personal and public experience of being Muslim through essays on identity, Islamophobia, surveillance, migration and language. Traversing storytelling, memoir, journalism and humour, Hassan speaks authentically and piercingly on mental health, grief and loss, while weaving memories of an Egyptian immigrant fighting childhood bullies, listening to life-saving '90s grunge and auditioning for vaguely ethnic roles in a certain pirate movie franchise. 
>>Hassan introduces the book. 
>>Hassan's poetry collection National Anthem was short-listed in the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

A Perfect Wonderful Day with Friends by Philip Waechter          $30

A genuinely heartwarming but not-at-all cloying, beautifully illustrated book — an instant favourite. Raccoon decides to bake an apple cake. But he has no eggs, so visits his friend Fox, who needs a ladder to mend the roof. Badger will have one, but he needs help too, so they set off to find Bear. They stroll through meadows, meet up with Crow, nibble blackberries and find Bear fishing at the river. Soon the five friends are having the best day out--the sun shining on their fur, fishing, swimming, picnic and finally home to bake the cake — two cakes, because bears have big appetites. 

Breadsong: How baking changed our lives by Kitty and Al Tait            $45

The genuinely heartwarming story of how a teenager beat depression through baking — and a whole batch of her bakery's favourite recipes, too.

"If you had told me at 14 when I couldn't even get out of bed with depression and anxiety that three years later I would have written a book I would never have believed you. But here it is — the story of the Orange Bakery. How I went from bed to bread and how my Dad went from being a teacher to a baker. You reading it means everything to me." —Kitty Tait
>>Kitty's story — and some recipes!

The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight                $37

On the morning of October 21, 1966, Kathleen Middleton, a music teacher in suburban London, awoke choking and gasping, convinced disaster was about to strike. An hour later, a mountain of rubble containing waste from a coal mine collapsed above the village of Aberfan, swamping buildings and killing 144 people, many of them children. Among the doctors and emergency workers who arrived on the scene was John Barker, a psychiatrist from Shelton Hospital, in Shrewsbury. At Aberfan, Barker became convinced there had been supernatural warning signs of the disaster, and decided to establish a “premonitions bureau,” in conjunction with the Evening Standard newspaper, to collect dreams and forebodings from the public, in the hope of preventing future calamities. Middleton was one of hundreds of seemingly normal people, who would contribute their visions to Barker’s research in the years to come, some of them unnervingly accurate. As Barker’s work plunged him deeper into the occult, his reputation suffered. But in the face of professional humiliation, Barker only became more determined, ultimately realizing with terrible certainty that catastrophe had been prophesied in his own life.

Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust ends by Linda Kinstler           $33

:To probe the past is to submit the memory of one's ancestors to a certain kind of trial. In this case, the trial came to me." A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead, a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather, was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. It looked as if the proceedings might pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors were dying. With no living witnesses, how secure are the facts of history? What is the nature of memory and justice when revisionism, ultra-nationalism and denialism make it feel like history is slipping out from under our feet?

"A masterpiece." —Peter Pomerantsev

A Gentle Radical: The life of Jeanette Fitzsimons by Gareth Hughes        $40

How did a girl from a conservative rural family get to the front lines of radical political thought and then into the front benches of Parliament? How did she become the first Green MP in the world to win an electorate seat? How did she survive the brutal world of politics and get through the death of her co-leader Rod Donald? How did the world's first national Green Party form in New Zealand, and what was Jeanette's role? What can we learn from her politics and what did she think of the Green Party that followed her?

Changing Track by Michel Butor (translated from French by Jean Stewart)         $32

On a train from Paris to Rome on his way to surprise his lover, the businessman Leon Delmont begins to mull over his past and question the decisions he has made about his future. These musings — together with his impressions of the unfolding scenery, conjectures about his fellow passengers and some recurring leitmotifs — form the basis of a narrative that provides a psychological case study of an everyman and subtly illustrates the onset of the protagonist's doubts and fears. Published in 1957 as La Modification and awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Michel Butor's groundbreaking novel remains the most widely read work of the nouveau roman genre. Written in the second person in order to immerse the reader more fully into the psyche of the main character, Changing Track pulls off the rare feat of being at once experimental and accessible, disquieting and engrossing.
>>A brief sample.

Winchelsea by Alex Preston              $37

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a baby, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends. To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

"Imagine Daphne du Maurier crossed with Quentin Tarantino, and you will have some idea of just what a thrilling, bloody and heady ride this novel is." —Tom Holland

"I was riveted. Winchelsea is a great read — terrific narrative drive, credible characters, and such an elegant creation of the backdrop in terms of both time and place." —Penelope Lively

"What a story! What a heroine! What an adventure! Alex Preston sweeps you from scene to scene, surprise to surprise with all the deft theatricality and fluency of a modern Robert Louis Stevenson. I have rarely read anything so vivid or that makes the 18th century, with all its ambitions, terrors, desires and sheer juiciness, so grippingly alive." —Adam Nicolson

Life as Told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal by Juan José Millás and Juan Luis Arsuaga            $37

Juan Jose Millas has always felt like he doesn't quite fit into human society. Sometimes he wonders if he is even a Homo sapiens at all, or something simpler. Perhaps he is a Neanderthal who somehow survived? So he turns to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the world's leading palaeontologists and a super-smart sapiens, to explain why we are the way we are and where we come from. Over the course of many months, the two visit different places, many of them common scenes of our daily lives, and others unique archaeological sites. Arsuaga tries to teach the Neanderthal how to think like a sapiens and, above all, that prehistory is not a thing of the past.

The King of the Copper Mountains by Paul Biegel               $18

At the end of his thousand-year reign of the Copper Mountains, old King Mansolain is tired and his heart is slowing down. When his attendant, the Hare, consults The Wonder Doctor, he is told he must keep the King engaged in life by telling him a story every night until the Doctor can find a cure. The search is on for a nightly story more wonderful than the last, and one by one the kingdom's inhabitants arrive with theirs; the ferocious Wolf, the lovesick Donkey, the fire-breathing three-headed Dragon. Last to arrive is the Dwarf, with four ancient books and a prophecy that the King will live for another thousand years — but only if the Wonder Doctor returns in time.

Modern Times: Temporality in art and politics by Jacques Rancière       $28

Time is more than a line drawn from the past to the future. It is a form of life, marked by the ancient hierarchy between those who have time and those who do not. This hierarchy, continued in the Marxist notion of the vanguard and nakedly exhibited in Clement Greenberg's modernism, still governs a present which clings to the fable of historical necessity and its experts. In opposition to this, Rancière shows how the break with the hierarchical conception of time, formulated by Emerson in his vision of the new poet, implies a completely different idea of the modern. He sees the fulfilment of this in the two arts of movement, cinema and dance, which at the beginning of the twentieth century abolished the opposition between free and mechanical people, at the price of exposing the rift between the revolution of artists and that of strategists.

Notes from Deep Time: A journey through our past and future worlds by Helen Gordon             $25

The story of the Earth is written into our landscape: it's there in the curves of hills, the colours of stone, surprising eruptions of vegetation. Gordon's odyssey takes her from the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from a state-of-the-art earthquake monitoring system in California to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes, hidden beneath the green hills of Naples. At every step, she finds that the apparently solid ground beneath our feet isn't quite as it seems. "In deep time," Gordon finds, "everything is provisional. Bones become rock. Sands become mountains. Oceans become cities."

Love and Youth: Essential stories by Ivan Turgenev (newly translated by Nicolas Slater)             $28

This collection places Turgenev's novella 'First Love' alongside a selection of his classic stories, from the evocative rural scenes of 'Bezhin Meadow' and 'Rattling Wheels', to the pathos and humanity of 'The District Doctor' and 'Biryuk'. 

Out of the Sun: Essays at the crossroads of race by Esi Edugyan               $40

A searing analysis of the relationship between race and art. What happens when we bring stories consigned to the margins up to the light? How does that complicate our certainties about who we are, as individuals, as nations, as human beings? As in her fiction, the essays in Out of the Sun demonstrate Esi Edugyan's commitment to seeking out the stories of Black lives that history has failed to record. Edugyan reflects on her own identity and experiences as the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. She delves into the history of Western Art and the truths about Black lives that it fails to reveal, and the ways contemporary Black artists are reclaiming and reimagining those lives. She explores the legacy of Afrofuturism, the complex and problematic practice of racial passing, the place of ghosts and haunting in the imagination, and the fascinating relationship between Africa and Asia dating back to the 6th Century. 

Matariki: The Maori New Year by Libby Hakaraia       $21

A good survey of the traditions and practices associated with the rising of the Matariki stars that marked on of the most significant periods of the year. Includes information on astronomy, celestial navigation, mahi whai (string patterns), celebrations, the planting and harvesting calendar, gathering practices, and the reading of omens. 

New Zealand Nurses: Caring for our people, 1880—1950 by Pamela Wood          $45

In the late nineteenth century, British nurses who had been trained in the system established by Florence Nightingale began to spread across the world. This was the British nursing diaspora and New Zealand was its southernmost landfall. New Zealand Nurses explores the growth of a distinctly Kiwi nursing style and how nurses in this part of the globe responded to, and ultimately came to challenge, imperial influences. New Zealand Nurses examines the nursing cultures that emerged in a range of different settings and circumstances: from hospitals to homes, rural backblocks to Maori settlements, and from war and disaster zones to nursing through a pandemic. 

"A pleasure to read - there are lots of lively stories and it will have great appeal to nurses and former nurses." —Barbara Brookes

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Della Rosa           $33

Whether working in food service or in high-end retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, sharing a dangerous apartment in the city, a rooming house in China or a vacation rental in Mallorca, the protagonists of the ten stories comprising this collection navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the unreliable body. By turns unsparing and tender, Dalla Rosa explores our lives in late-stage Capitalism, where globalisation and its false promises of connectivity and equity leave us all further alienated and disenfranchised.

"An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is an existential prayer of a book that attempts to find meaning in a rapidly changing and absurdly disconnected, occasionally nightmarish, modern world. Often bleakly hilarious, while remaining relatably, fiercely, melancholic, Dalla Rosa's characters quietly yearn for love, for change, for those childlike demands that went unfulfilled: to be seen and heard." —Oliver Mol

Anna: The biography by Amy Odell         $40

A major biography of Anna Wintour, the hugely influential editor of Vogue. 

Lionel Eats All By Himself by Éric Veillé       $15

Lionel may have a mane but in other respects he is just taking his first steps towards independence. Sitting in his high-chair, he decides that it is about time for him to start feeding himself. Most of the food gets into his mouth, but quite a bit gets in other places. What fun! A very relatable board book.

>>And, of course, Lionel Poops. 

The Adventure of French Philosophy by Alain Badiou           $33

Guided by a small set of fundamental questions concerning the nature of being, the event, the subject, and truth, Badiou pushes to an extreme the polemical force of his thinking. Against the formless continuum of life, he posits the need for radical discontinuity; against the false modesty of finitude, he pleads for the mathematical infinity of everyday situations; against the various returns to Kant, he argues for the persistence of the Hegelian dialectic; and against the lure of ultraleftism, his texts from the 1970s vindicate the role of Maoism as a driving force behind the communist Idea.

Eating to Extinction: The world's rarest foods and why we need to save them by Dan Saladino             $40

A thrilling journey through the history of humankind's relationship with food, revealing a world at a crisis point. From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to great chunks of fermented sheep meat in the Faroe Islands, from pistachios in Syria to flat oysters in Denmark, from a wild honey harvested with the help of birds to an exploding corn that might just hold the key to the future of food - these are just some of the thousands of foods around the world today that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover the stories of these foods. He meets the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are preserving food traditions and fighting for change. All human history is woven through these stories, from the first great migrations to the slave trade to the refugee crisis today.

Yellow Notebook: Diaries, Volume one: 1978—1987 by Helen Garner         $30

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. Now in paperback. 

Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Mark           $58

Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century. This volume presents Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected here are a record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

The short lists for the 2022 NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS have just been announced. >>Click through to find out more — and to make your choices.
>>Read what the judges have to say. 

Book news! New books!

BOOKS @ VOLUME #280 (27.5.22)

Read our latest newsletter.

Our Book of the Week has just been awarded the 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE. 
TOMB OF SAND by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, was described by the judges as "a book that is engaging, funny and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries — whether between religions, countries or genders."
>>"All languages have the possibility of crossing borders."
>>Stories imbue your senses.
>>On translating Tomb of Sand.
>>Ballroom dancers. 
>>"An exuberance and a life."
>>Showered in language. 
>>"The most original and undefinable work of our times."
>>On the author's bookshelf. 
>>On the translator's bookshelf. 
>>"Writers make national literature; translators make universal literature."
>>Fun shorts. 

>>Tilted Axis Press was founded in 2015 by Deborah Smith, using the International Booker Prize money she won for translating Han Kang's The Vegetarian. 
>>Your copy. 
>>Other excellent books listed for the 2022 International Booker Prize. 

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson by Kristina Sigunsdotter, illustrated by Ester Eriksson (translated from Swedish by Julia Marshall)   {Reviewed by STELLA} Ever been eleven and lonely? Or wondered why your best friend is hanging out with the mean kids? Or wished your mother didn’t sigh so much? If you answer yes to any of these questions then you need Cricket Karlsson. Ever wanted to make art? Ride a horse in the moonlight? Ever been unable to get out of bed or unable to get someone you love out of bed? Then you need Cricket Karlsson. Cricket Karlson is eleven, has a ‘potato’ heart (which is currently mashed because her best friend Noa isn’t talking to her), is finding out about love, is visiting her aunt in the psych ward, loves to draw and doesn’t like the horse girls. And she has secrets — secrets that only a best friend, like Noa, knows! The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson from the pen of Kristina Sigunsdottir and the brush of Ester Eriksson is another standout from Gecko Press. I loved it, and it’s even better on the second reading. It has lists of not very Ugliest Words, absurd and unlikely Things Grandpa Says you Can Die From, unusual Psychiatric Illnesses I Don’t Want, and delightful Secrets I Have Only Told to Noa. Told with the keen observation of an eleven-year-old with all the concerns of childhood and changing circumstances, the words leap off the page with feistiness, humour and pathos. It lightly touches on worries and fears (climate change, mental health, sadness, regret) while embracing the best things about being that age when you’ll still a kid, but only just. Who hasn’t noticed the horse girls with their neighing and prancing, or squirmed when a boy (or a girl) is doe-eyed and you just don’t like him like that, or locked themselves in the bathroom (sometimes crying) to avoid being harassed? Cricket Karlsson finds out that life isn’t always what you expect, that loneliness passes, and that even an eleven-year-old can make a sad person happy. Black humour abounds and Cricket Karlsson is a star (with secrets and lists, a big heart and a little mischief, and her favourite food is cheese-on-cheese-in-cheese). I think I’ll pop to bed and read it again.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

Armand V.: Footnotes to an unexcavated novel by Dag Solstad (translated from Norwegian by Steven T. Murray)  {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.

 NEW RELEASES

Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine           $37
Pine follows her remarkable 2019 essay collection Notes to Self with a novel of equal clarity and perspicacity. Dublin, 7 October 2019.One day, one city, two women- Ruth and Pen. Neither known to the other, but both asking themselves the same questions — how to be with others and how, when the world doesn't seem willing to make space for them, to be with themselves? Ruth's marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice — to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge. For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants.
"Full of empathy and good will." —The Irish Times

>>The author reads. 

They by Kay Dick          $23

A forgotten dystopian classic, first published in 1977. The Sussex coast. Sunsets paint the windswept ocean; seagulls haunt the marshland; hunting rifles crack across hillsides. But this is England through-a-glass-darkly. They are coming closer. They begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Then, the National Gallery is purged; motorway checkpoints demarcate Areas, violent mobs stalk the countryside, destroying cultural artefacts — and those who resist. The surviving writers, artists and thinkers gather together, welcoming 'dissidents' like the unmarried and the childless. These polyamorous and queer communities preserve their crafts, create, love, and remember. But as 'subversives' are captured in military sweeps, cured of identity, desensitised in retreats, They make it easier to forget. Introduction by Carmen Maria Machado.

"A masterpiece of creeping dread. —Emily St. John Mandel

"Lush, hypnotic, compulsive. A reminder of where groupthink leads." —Eimear McBride

"A masterwork of English pastoral horror: eerie and bewitching." —Claire-Louise Bennett

>>"If your understanding of dystopia does not begin with your own complicity, you have missed the point." 

Three Rings: A tale of exile, narrative and fate by Daniel Mendelsohn             $20

Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create work of their own — work that pondered the nature of narrative itself: Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul; Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus — a veiled critique of the Sun King, and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years — resulted in his banishment; and the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books — a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father — that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. 
>>How literature makes reality feel. 

>>Presenting Three Rings. 

Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima          $40

During the tumult of 1968, Beat poet Diane di Prima began writing her "letters," poems filled with a potent blend of utopian anarchism and Zen-tinged ecological awareness that were circulated via underground newspapers and stapled pamphlets. In 1971, Lawrence Ferlinghetti published the first collection of these poems in his iconic Pocket Poets Series, and di Prima would go on to publish four subsequent editions, expanding the collection each time. During the last years of her life, di Prima got to work on the final iteration of this lifelong project, collecting all of her previously published "letters" and adding the new work, poems written from 2007 up to the time of her death in October 2020. Published in a board-bound edition that features the original edition's cover art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
>>A living weapon in your hand. 

>>Every housewife a political prisoner. 

Mona by Pola Oloixarac (translated by Adam Morris)              $28

Mona is a Peruvian writer based on a Californian campus, open-eyed and sardonic, a connoisseur of marijuana and prescription pills. In the humanities she has discovered she is something of an anthropological curiosity — a female writer of colour treasured for the flourish of rarefied diversity that reflects so well upon her department. When she is nominated for 'the most important literary award in Europe', Mona sees a chance to escape her sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, and leaves for a small village in Sweden. Now she is stuck in the company of her competitors, who arrive from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran and Colombia. The writers do what writers do: exchange flattery, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back and go to bed together. But all the while, Mona keeps stumbling across traces of violence on her body, the origins of which she can't — or won't — remember.

"Mona reads like Rachel Cusk's Kudos on drugs." —The Atlantic 

"Ruthless, very funny." —New York Times 

"One of the great writers of the Internet, the only country larger than Argentina." —Joshua Cohen 

A Girl Returned by Donatella di Pietrantonio      $23

"I was the Arminuta, the girl returned. I spoke another language, I no longer knew who I belonged to. The word 'mama' stuck in my throat like a toad. And, nowadays, I really have no idea what kind of place mother is. It is not mine in the way one might have good health, a safe place, certainty." Without warning or a word of explanation, an unnamed 13-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family: a large, chaotic assortment of individuals whom she has never met and who seem anything but welcoming. Thus begins a new life, one of struggle, conflict, especially between the young girl and her mother, and deprivation. But in her relationship with Adriana and Vincenzo, two of her newly acquired siblings, she will find the strength to start again and to build anew and enduring sense of self. Translated  by Ann Goldstein, who has also translated the works of Elena Ferrante.

A Florence Diary by Diana Athill             $23

In August 1947, Diana Athill travelled to Florence by the Golden Arrow train for a two-week holiday with her good friend Pen. In this playful diary of that trip, Athill recorded her observations and adventures — eating with (and paid for by) the hopeful men they meet on their travels, admiring architectural sights, sampling delicious pastries, eking out their budget and getting into scrapes. Enjoyable. 

The Lobster's Shell by Caroline Albertine Minor (translated from Danish by Caroline Waight)             $33

A complex tale of family mythology and regret, The Lobster's Shell is the story of three orphaned siblings, now in their thirties and forties; their attempts at connection, their failures and frustrations. Over the years their differences have driven them apart, but during five days in April they have to confront their relationship and shared history. Sidsel asks Niels for a service that challenges his chosen loneliness and Ea gets in touch from the United States. Hoping to make contact with their mother, she has visited a clairvoyant. Lately, a nagging question has been haunting her.

"Minor's acute, elliptical observations and silky prose are a delight to read, as the misunderstandings, machinations and mysteries of past and present knit together, fall apart, and re-establish themselves in an uneven, bright weave in Caroline Wright's distinctive, unforced translation." —The Irish Times 

>>Grief's garden. 

The Nutmeg Trail: A culinary journey along the ancient spice routes by Eleanor Ford              $55

80 spice-infused recipes following the trails of ancient maritime trade through Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Iran and the Emirates. Ford combines historical research with a travel writer's eye and a cook's nose for a memorable recipe. Interwoven are stories that explore how spices from across the Indian Ocean — the original cradle of spice — have, over time, been adopted into cuisines around the world.

>>How spice changed the world. 

Matariki Around the World: A cluster of stars, A cluster of stories by Rangi Mātāmua & Miriama Kamo         $35

The Matariki constellation (or Pleiades) is known by many different names and is seen and celebrated by many cultures around the world. This beautifully illustrated book features 9 stories that explore the Māori Matariki stars, and 12 stories from different cultures around the globe that also reference this constellation, from the Pacific Islands to Australia, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa.

Te Toi Whakairo: The art of Māori carving by Hirini Moko Mead             $50

A new edition of this indispensable guide to te toi whakairo. Beginning with carving's mythical origins, this book explores the evolution of styles and techniques through the four main artistic periods to the present day, and provides detailed explanations of carving styles in different parts of the country, using examples from meeting houses and leading artists. Later chapters delve into the main structures, forms and motifs, and the role of the woodcarver, and explore the status of the art in contemporary New Zealand. Practical guidance is given for use of materials, tools, techniques, surface and background decoration, the human figure, and carving poupou.

Fledgling by Lucy Hope            $17

A cherub is blown into Cassie Engel's bedroom during a thunderstorm, triggering a series of terrifying events. Cassie must discover if its arrival was an accident or part of something more sinister. With a self-obsessed opera singer for a mother, a strange taxidermist father, and a best friend who isn't quite what he seems, Cassie is forced to unearth the secrets of her family's past. As the dark forces gather around them, can Cassie protect all that she holds dear?

Seven and a Half Brief Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett         $25

In seven short chapters (plus a brief history of how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience. Along the way, you'll also learn to dismiss popular myths such as the idea of a 'lizard brain' and the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or even between nature and nurture, to determine your behaviour.

Kid's Guide to Chess: Learn the Game's Rules, Strategies, Gambits, and the Most Popular Moves to Beat Anyone! by Ellisiv Reppen and Flu Hartberg

Good both for beginners and those who just want to improve. Fully illustrated. 

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden               $23

Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted by her job and now seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. She meets Wolf, a troubled young writer, who — enthralled by her stories — begins to write Mrs Death's memoirs. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced (or facilitated), their friendship flourishes. All the while, despite her world-weariness, Death must continue to hold humans' fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect her. A paperback edition of this enjoyable, life-affirming book.  

"A modern-day Pilgrim's Progress leavened with caustic wit. This is not light-hearted stuff, yet Godden has produced a miraculously light-hearted novel, an elegant, occasionally uproarious, danse macabre." —Guardian

Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh            $23

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was eleven a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like Kerri's, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. Thin Places, a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing, explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone's throw from beauty and hope, and how political misadventure is, once again, allowing the borders to become hard, and terror to creep back in. Paperback edition. 

"A special, beautiful, many-faceted book." —Amy Liptrot

"A remarkable piece of writing. Luminous." —Robert Macfarlane

The Nightworkers by Brian Selfon             $40

A Brooklyn family of money launderers thrown into chaos when a runner ends up dead and a bag of dirty money goes missing. Shecky Keenan's family is under fire—or at least it feels that way. Bank accounts have closed unexpectedly, a strange car has been parked near the house at odd hours, and Emil Scott, an enigmatic artist and the family's new runner, is missing—along with the $250,000 of dirty money he was carrying. Inspired by a career that has included corruption cases and wiretaps as an investigative analyst for New York law enforcement, Selfon unspools a tale of crime and consequence through shifting perspectives across the streets, alleys, bodegas, and art studios of Brooklyn. 

Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women's Charter edited by Gay Simpkin and Marie Russell           $30

In the late 1970s, as the women’s movement was fracturing, trade union women put forward a new agenda to bring feminists and women workers together. The one-page, 16-clause Working Women’s Charter covered: ★ the right to work ★ equal pay ★ an end to discrimination at work ★ better conditions, family leave, flexible work arrangements ★ free, quality childcare ★ reproductive rights —and more. Challenged by patriarchal union traditions, the women worked hard to win union support for their demands. This book includes chapters by women who promoted the Charter, and others looking at what has been achieved since — and what remains to be done.

Soundings: Journeys in the company of whales by Doreen Cunningham          $38

Doreen first visited Utqiagvik, the northernmost town in Alaska, as a young journalist reporting on climate change among indigenous whaling communities. There, she joined the spring whale hunt under the neverending Arctic light, watching for bowhead whales and polar bears, drawn deeply into an Inupiaq family, their culture and the disappearing ice. Years later, plunged into sudden poverty and isolation, living in a Women's Refuge with her baby son, Doreen recalls the wilderness that once helped shape her own. She embarks on an extraordinary adventure: taking Max to follow the grey whale migration all the way north to the Inupiaq family that took her in, where grey and bowhead whales meet at the melting apex of our planet.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The true story of the woman at the heart of the German resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner       $40

Born and raised in America, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD programme in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment-a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her co-conspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. During a hastily convened trial at the Reichskriegsgericht — the Reich Court-Martial — a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On 16 February 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.

Niho Taniwha: Improving teaching and learning for ākonga Māori by Melanie Riwai-Couch          $70

Niho Taniwha equips educators with culturally responsive practices to better serve and empower Māori students and their whānau. The book is centred around the Niho Taniwha model, in which both the learner and the teacher move through three phases in the teaching and learning process: Whai, Ako and Mau. Written by a senior advisor to the Ministry of Education, the book shows that educational success for Māori students is about more than academic achievement – it includes all aspects of hauora (health and wellbeing). This book demonstrates how to create learning environments that encompass self-esteem, happiness and engagement in Māori language, identity and culture.

All That She Carried: The story of Ashley's sack, a Black family keepsake by Tiya Miles            $36

In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few precious items as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley's survival. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language—including Rose's wish that "It be filled with my Love always." Ruth's sewn words, the reason we remember Ashley's sack today, evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. Winner of a (US) National Book Award.

"Deeply layered and insightful. A bold reflection on American history, African American resilience, and the human capacity for love and perseverance in the face of soul-crushing madness." —The Washington Post

Jungle Nama by Amitav Ghosh, illustrated by Salman Toor            $35

A beautifully illustrated verse adaptation of a legend from the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest. It tells the story of the avaricious rich merchant Dhona, the poor lad Dukhey, and his mother; it is also the story of Dokkhin Rai, a mighty spirit who appears to humans as a tiger, of Bon Bibi, the benign goddess of the forest, and her warrior brother Shah Jongoli. Jungle Nama is the story of an ancient legend with urgent relevance to today's climate crisis. Its themes of limiting greed, and of preserving the balance between the needs of humans and nature have never been more timely.

Woodcut Postcard Book by Bryan Nash Gill             $35

24 cards of twelve prints taken from the arboreal rings of actual trees. 

>>Other woodcuts by Gill. 

BOOKS @ VOLUME #279 (20.5.22)

Read our latest NEWSLETTER and find out what we have been reading and recommending. 

Book of the Week: The Fish by Lloyd Jones

In this fable-like novel from the author of (most famously) Mister Pip and (most recently) The Cage, the narrator's sister gives birth to a very different sort of child, who reveals the family's capacities for both love and shame, set against small-town small-minded New Zealand in the 1960s. Just what is Fish's relationship with the sea beside which he was born, and what bearing might this have on the Wahine disaster? And what is the relationship between the narrator writing this account and the events that are contained within it? 
>>Read Stella's review.

>>Strange and slippery. 

>>“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”

>>Variegation.

>>Strange fish. 

>>The Wahine disaster. 
>>Read Thomas's reviews of The Cage and High Wire. 
>>....and then there were none. 

>>Your copy of The Fish. 

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

The Fish by Lloyd Jones  {Reviewed by STELLA} Lloyd Jones's latest novel, firmly set in 1960s New Zealand, turns the tables on our expectations. The Fish is a story of a writer, and a tale of a family fraught with shame, tragedy and love. When the teenage daughter, always referred to as The Fish’s Mother, gives birth to ‘Fish’ she is simultaneously both protected and rejected by her family, and by extension, her child also. That this baby is viewed as different — he has googly eyes, a lopsided wide gob, smells strongly and sometimes has gills — is more a reflection of the family’s shame or discomfort with the situation they find themselves in rather than the child in and of itself. Although you do, through the eyes of his uncle (the narrator of this story), get the district impression of an oddity — Fish is not like other children and possibly not like other humans. This otherness lies at the heart of the novel (what happens when you take a fish out of water, or, as a writer, you are both inside and outside of lived family experience?), and the family’s complex responses to Fish, and interactions with each other. Both daughters are wayward: Clara, the eldest, escapes to Sydney, where she works in ‘modelling’ or as she later puts it, the "professional girl-friending" business. The Fish’s Mother is promiscuous and drug-addicted, often found on the ships. Uncle, our narrator, is the youngest of this trio of siblings and, only nine when Clara leaves home and The Fish arrives on the scene, is both witness and victim of the complex family narrative. Anyone who has grown up in a family with a challenging sibling will instantly recognise the conflicting emotions that arise in such family dynamics, moving in a forever-cycle of guilt, blame and shame as well as love and care. Jones hints at incest, but this is ambiguous. Mrs Montgomery’s insistence at naming Fish ‘Colin Montgomery’ after her husband may be her finger-pointing, and her shoplifting, drinking and later dementia may indicate her various forms of escape from the unhappy household. Water — the sea specifically — plays a major character role. As a gentle loving embrace — the house and the caravan (a central refuge, as well as a symbol of heartache, for all the family members at different times in their lives) on the coast, the summers at the beach, the freedom of the ocean, and Fish’s great ability to stay underwater for significant periods of time. And in comparison an angry force, unforgiving and prepared to wreak havoc — the sea (or the ships) take the Fish’s Mother away, washes through Colin Montgomery senior as his heart fails, and a storm, specifically the one that sank the Wahine, swallows its victims — some are spat out, but others are taken to its depths. Lloyd Jones writes with both careful silences — much is unsaid or only hinted at — and descriptive clarity — the Wahine storm is vivid, while the building tempo of 1960s society, piece by piece, reaches a crescendo, its own storm wave. Littered with oblique references to mythology, sea lore, and with metaphoric resonance, The Fish is a thought-provoking novel unafraid, like its protagonist, to travel against the tide while still adhering to what makes a tale compassionate — humanity in all its glory and squall.

>> Read all Thomas's reviews.

The Very Last Interview by David Shields   {"Reviewed" by THOMAS} So, what makes you want to write a review of David Shields’s new book, The Very Last Interview?  Then why are you writing one? Every week? Whose idea was that?    Surely at your age, you shouldn’t be so bound by obligation or by expectation, or whatever you call it? Yes, but do you really care what these readers might think, and do you even believe that there are such people? Aren’t you being altogether a bit precious?  Do you really think that this helps to pay the mortgage, I mean that this makes a direct and measurable contribution towards paying your mortgage? Or even an indirect and unmeasurable but still valuable contribution towards paying your mortgage?  Well, what else would you be doing? Surely you’re joking?  Okay, we’ve got a bit off the track there. I will reframe my first question. What makes you think that you are able to write a review of David Shields’s new book?  Don’t you think your humility is a bit mannered? The Very Last Interview is a book consisting entirely of questions that interviewers have asked David Shields over the years, omitting his answers, assuming he will have answered probably at least most of the questions, and your review, if we can call it that, of this book also consists of a series of questions ostensibly directed at you but without your answers, if indeed there were answers, which is less certain in your case than in the case of David Shields. Is this, on your part, a deliberate choice of approach, and, if so, is it justifiable?  Do you really believe that a review written in imitation of, or in the style of, the work under review inherently reveals something about that work, even if the review is badly written, or should your approach rather be attributed to laziness, stylistic insecurity, or creative bankruptcy?  Has it ever occurred to you that the supposedly more enjoyable qualities of your writing are actually nothing more than literary tics or affectations, and, furthermore, that it might be these very literary tics and affectations that prevent you from writing anything of real literary worth?  Do you think that, by removing his input into the original interviews but retaining the questions, David Shields is attempting to remove himself from his own existence, or merely to show that our identities are always imposed from outside us rather than from inside, or that we exist as persons only to the extent that we are seen by others? Is this, in fact, all the same thing?  What do you mean by that statement, ‘We are defined by the limits we present to the observations of others’? What do you mean by that statement ‘There is no such thing as writing, only editing,’ and how does that relate to Shields’s work?  Do you think that David Shields, in this book as in the much-discussed 2010 Reality Hunger, sees the individual as an illusion, a miserable fragment of what is actually a ‘hive mind’ or collective consciousness, and that ‘creativity’, so to call it, is another illusion predicated on this illusion of individuality? You don’t? What do you think David Shields would have answered, when asked, as he was, seemingly in this book, “But what is the role of the imagination in this ‘post-literature literature’ that you envision?” and how might this differ from the answer you might give if asked the same question?  Shields was asked if he had written anything that couldn’t be interpreted as ‘crypto-autobiography’, but don’t you think the salient question is whether it is even possible to write anything that couldn’t be interpreted as crypto-autobiography?  Is a perfectly delineated absence, such as David Shields approximates in The Very Last Interview, in fact the most perfect portrait of a person, even the best possible definition of a person, as far as this is possible at all?  But do you actually have a personal opinion on this?  Do you think then that you, like Shields, like us all perhaps, are, in essence, a ghost?

 NEW RELEASES

Otherlands: A world in the making by Thomas Halliday          $54
An exhilarating journey into deep time, showing us the Earth as it used to exist, and the worlds that were here before ours. Travelling back in time to the dawn of complex life, and across all seven continents, Halliday gives us a mesmerizing up close encounter with eras that are normally unimaginably distant. Halliday immerses us in a series of ancient landscapes, from the mammoth steppe in Ice Age Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica, with its colonies of giant penguins, to Ediacaran Australia, where the moon is far brighter than ours today. We visit the birthplace of humanity; we hear the crashing of the highest waterfall the Earth has ever known; and we watch as life emerges again after the asteroid hits, and the age of the mammal dawns. These lost worlds seem fantastical and yet every description—whether the colour of a beetle's shell, the rhythm of pterosaurs in flight or the lingering smell of sulphur in the air—is grounded in the fossil record. Otherlands is an imaginative feat: an emotional narrative that underscores the tenacity of life—yet also the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, including our own. To read it is to see the last 500 million years not as an endless expanse of unfathomable time, but as a series of worlds, simultaneously fabulous and familiar.

Wivenhoe by Samuel Fisher              $40
A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no-one tried to stop. Wivenhoe is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation. Fisher imagines a world, not unlike our own, struck down and on the edge of survival. If society as we know it is lost, what would we strive to save? At what point will we admit complicity in our own destruction?
"Quiet, fable-like menace radiates from every page of Wivenhoe. Elegant and searching, it asks vital questions about what it means to be part of a community — about integrity, belonging, and how darkness can go unchecked when isolation and suspicion sets in — questions that now feel more relevant than ever." —Sophie Mackintosh

Landfall 243 edited by Lynley Edmeades           $30

Words by Vincent O’Sullivan, Bill Direen, Louise Wallace, David Eggleton, Emma Neale, Janis Freegard, Tim Upperton, Erik Kennedy, Rebecca Hawkes, and many others. Images by Sione Monū, Kim Pieters, and James R. Ford. This issue also announces the 2022 winner of the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition.

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías (translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott)          $34

'The world is this house,’ says Clara while she is trying to protect her beloved ones from the world – yes, that one outside their house walls – which seems to threaten them more and more. Clara entrenches herself with her father and her daughter Flor in a dark apartment that inevitably crumbles on them. The roof becomes their last recess of freedom. A caged bird is the only witness of Clara’s fear and resistance against those she thinks are trying to destroy her. Are threats and pain external or inside our own bodies? Where is violence’s root? What are we afraid of? Is there a possibility to find a roof to finally being able to breathe? What are our umbilical cords? Fernanda Trías does not answer these questions – impossible for anyone – about instinct, civilization and taboos, instead she gives them shape and dives deep into them a with a grotesque and forceful history written with agility and a Kafkaesque sense of humour. The Rooftop is a claustrophobic novel about freedom, and also about fear, violence, motherhood and loss. 

"One of the most interesting authors writing in Spanish today." —Mario Levrero

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (translated by Angela Rodel)           $38

An enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a 'clinic for the past' that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. As Gaustine's assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a 'time shelter', hoping to escape from the horrors of our present — a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

"In equal measure playful and profound, Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter renders the philosophical mesmerizing, and the everyday extraordinary." —Claire Messud

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park (translated by Anton Hur)          $38

“Sang Young Park’s sharp, funny picaresque follows Young, our charming hero, through his rakish college days and into his still-insouciant thirties, as he drifts through boyfriends, jobs, friends, and most of all, through Seoul. Among the many pleasures of this wonderful novel are Young’s running commentaries about work, class, sex, queer domestic life, contemporary Korean family dynamics, and the literary world he finds himself in. I’m obsessed with this book.”—Andrea Lawlor

Long-listed for the 2022 International Booker Prize

The New Adventures of Helen by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (translated by Jane Bugaeva)               $35

'Adult fairy tales' asking deep questions about gender, love, history, memory, and the future, taking place in times between history and the now.

"Her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next." —The New York Times Book Review

"Petrushevskaya has a ringleader's calm mastery of the absurd." —The New Yorker

"Petrushevskaya is the Tolstoy of the communal kitchen. She is not, like Tolstoy, writing of war, or, like Dostoevsky, writing of criminals on the street, or, like poet Anna Akhmatova or novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, noting the extreme suffering of those sent to the camps. Rather, she is bearing witness to the fight to survive the everyday. She is dazzlingly talented and deeply empathetic." —Slate

The Passenger: Rome              $33

"Fresh and diverting, informative and topical without being slight or ephemeral. This supremely well-edited combination of current affairs, journalism, commentary, and fun facts is perfect for our pause-button moment." —AFR. If you believe what's currently being said about Rome, the city is on the verge of collapse. Each year, it slips further down the ranking of the world's most liveable cities. To the problems faced by all large capitals, Rome has added a list of calamities of its own: a string of failing administrations, widespread corruption, the resurgence of fascist movements, rampant crime. A seemingly hopeless situation, perfectly symbolised by the fact that Rome currently leads the world in the number of self-combusting public buses. If we look closer this narrative is contradicted by just as many signs that point in the opposite direction. Above all, the lack of the mass emigration one would except in these circumstances: the vast majority of Romans don't think for a second of 'betraying' their hometown, and the many newcomers who have populated it in recent decades are often indistinguishable from the natives in the profound love that binds them to the city. Rome is a place of contradictions: an "incredibly deceptive city", always different from what it appears to be. 

Other destinations in the excellent 'The Passenger' series: Greece; Berlin; India; Japan; Paris; Ireland. 

The Land Gardeners — Cut Flowers by Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld         $55

The Land Gardeners show you how to establish organic garden beds and sow, grow and harvest over 100 varieties of cut flowers. 

"With their instinctive flair, Elworthy and Courtauld established cutting gardens that bring the deep poetry of organic flowers to their enthusiastic customers." —Patrick Kinmonth

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy            $33

Cushla Lavery lives with her mother in a small town near Belfast. At twenty-four, she splits her time between her day job as a teacher to a class of seven-year-olds, and regular bartending shifts in the pub owned by her family. It's here, on a day like any other — as the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploding, another man shot, killed, beaten or left for dead — that she meets Michael Agnew, an older (and married) barrister who draws her into his sophisticated group of friends. When the father of a young boy in her class, becomes the victim of a savage attack, Cushla is compelled to help his family. But as her affair with Michael intensifies, political tensions in the town escalate, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
"Dazzling." —Guardian

The Island of Extraordinary Captives: The true story of an artist, a spy and a wartime scandal by Simon Parkin           $38

In May 1940, faced with a country gripped by paranoia, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the internment of all German and Austrian citizens living in Britain. Most, like artist Peter Fleischmann , were refugees who had come to the country to escape Nazi oppression. They were now imprisoned by the very country in which they had staked their trust. The Island of Extraordinary Captives tells, for the first time, the story of the internment camp in the Isle of Man, and of how a group of world-renown artists, musicians and academics came to be seen as 'enemy aliens'. It reveals how Britain's treatment of refugees during the Second World War was a series of shameful missteps.

The Politics of Design: Privilege and prejudice in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and South Africa edited by Jane Venis, Frederico Freschi, and Farieda Nazier         $50

Taking a broad definition of design and drawing on the shared histories and legacies of settler colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, The Politics of Design offers a wide-ranging comparative study that focuses specifically on the role of design in creating and perpetuating the privileges and prejudices of racial hierarchies. This provocative volume raises long-overdue questions about the problematic histories and effects of design in the context of these settler-colonial societies. The authors draw on a range of subjects and themes, including various manifestations of visual culture and urban and design technologies, from both an historical and contemporary perspective. Indigenous voices are prominent, enabling a recovery of knowledge that was erased through colonial systems of integration and assimilation. In the current context of globalism, resurgent nationalism and calls for decolonisation The Politics of Design challenges us to think comparatively across disparate but conceptually similar cultural and geographical contexts. In drawing attention to the role of design in sustaining the prejudices and privileges of whiteness and in rendering visible its complexities and contradictions that have long been hidden in plain sight this book makes the argument for a new kind of restorative knowledge.

This Woman's Work: Essays on music edited by Sinead Gleeson and Kim Gordon         $38

Published to challenge the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman's Work seeks to confront the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Contributions by Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li, and Zakia Sewell.
"What binds these writers is their emotional connection to music, and their experience of songs as a portal to memories – whether painful or joyful – and a broader understanding of the world. This Woman’s Work is a collection of music writing, but in the loosest possible sense. Here, music is the soil in which all manner of stories take seed and bloom." —Guardian

>>'This Woman's Work'. 

Seven Pillars of Science: The incredible lightness of ice, and other scientific surprises by John Gribbin            $25

The seven fundamental - and surprising - scientific truths of our existence. These 'pillars of science' also defy common sense. For example, solid things are mostly empty space, so how do they hold together? There appears to be no special 'life force', so how do we distinguish living things from inanimate objects? And why does ice float on water, when most solids don't? You might think that question hardly needs asking, and yet if ice didn't float, life on Earth would never have happened.

The Lost Whale by Hannah Gold           $23

Rio has been sent to live with a grandmother he barely knows in California, while his mum is in hospital back home. Alone and adrift, the only thing that makes him smile is joining his new friend Marina on her dad's whale watching trips. That is until an incredible encounter with White Beak, a gentle giant of the sea changes everything. But when White Beak goes missing, Rio must set out on a desperate quest to find his whale and somehow save his mother.

Trust by Hernán Diaz       $38

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Trust puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

“Intricate, cunning and consistently surprising.” —New York Times

“An absolutely brilliant novel." —Los Angeles Times

London Clay: Journeys in the deep city by Tom Chivers          $48

Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of the city streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves. A lyrical interrogation of a capital city, a landscape and our connection to place, London Clay celebrates urban edgelands: in-between spaces where the natural world and the metropolis collide.

Nothing But the Truth: Stories of crime, guilt, and the loss of innocence by 'The Secret Barrister'             $40

Just how do you become a barrister? And why do only 1 per cent of those who study law succeed in joining this mysteriously opaque profession? If it's such a great occupation, how come you work 100-hour weeks for what works out as a very low rate? And why might a practising barrister come to feel the need to reveal the lies, secrets, failures and crises at the heart of this world of wigs and gowns? Read about those lies, secrets, failures and crises in this book.

"Excellent. At once a vicious polemic, a helpful primer and a cringe-inducing account of one barrister's travails." —Daily Telegraph

>>Other jaw-dropping books by 'The Secret Barrister'.

Tales from the Tillerman: A life-long love affair with Britain's waterways by Steve Haywood        $28

"Haywood conjures up a picture of a different world, filled with interesting and eccentric people. A cross-section of the best of middle England, in fact." —The Oxford Times

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath            $23

From her mid-teens Sylvia Plath wrote stories, twenty-four of which are collected here, along with works of journalism and extracts from her journal. An office assistant in a hospital pursues a secret vocation. A girl endures a series of initiation ceremonies to join her high school sorority. A married woman seeks relief from the dull realities of daily life. New edition.

"all the pieces presented here are revealing. It ought to round out one's knowledge of the writer, and, perhaps, offer some surprises. Luckily it does both." —Margaret Atwood, New York Times

Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin          $20

Kurara has never known any other life than being a servant on board the Midori, but when her party trick of making paper come to life turns out to be a power treasured across the empire, she joins a skyship and its motley crew to become a Crafter. Taught by the gruff but wise Himura, Kurara learns to hunt shikigami – wild paper spirits who are sought after by the Princess. But are these creatures just powerful slaves for the Crafters and the empire, or are they beings with their own souls – and yet another thing to be subjugated by the powerful Emperor and his Princess?

The Colony of Good Hope by Kim Leine          $38

1728: The doomed Danish King Fredrik IV sends a governor to Greenland to establish a colony, in the hopes of exploiting the country's allegedly vast natural resources. A few merchants, a barber-surgeon, two trainee priests, a blacksmith, some carpenters and soldiers and a dozen hastily married couples go with him. The missionary priest Hans Egede has already been in Greenland for several years when the new colonists arrive. He has established a mission there, but the converts are few. Among those most hostile Egede is the shaman Aappaluttoq, whose own son was taken by the priest and raised in the Christian faith as his own. Thus the great rift between two men, and two ways of life, is born. The newly arrived couples - composed of men and women plucked from prison - quickly sink into a life of almost complete dissolution, and soon unsanitary conditions, illness and death bring the colony to its knees. Through the starvation and the epidemics that beset the colony, Egede remains steadfast in his determination - willing to sacrifice even those he loves for the sake of his mission.

The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave              $38

In Strasbourg, in the boiling hot summer of 1518, a plague strikes the women of the city. First it is just one - a lone figure, dancing in the town square - but she is joined by more and more and the city authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in. The devil will be danced out of these women. Just beyond the city's limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. Her best friend Ida visits regularly and Lisbet is so looking forward to sharing life and motherhood with her. And then, just as the first woman begins to dance in the city, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from six years penance in the mountains for an unknown crime. No one - not even Ida - will tell Lisbet what Nethe did all those years ago, and Nethe herself will not speak a word about it. It is the beginning of a few weeks that will change everything for Lisbet – her understanding of what it is to love and be loved, and her determination to survive at all costs for the baby she is carrying. Lisbet and Nethe and Ida soon find themselves pushing at the boundaries of their existence – but they're dancing to a dangerous tune.

Brittle With Relics: A history of Wales, 1962—1997 by Richard King           $55

A history of the people of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.

"Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best: containing multitudes and powerfully evoking that most remote but also resonant of times, the day before yesterday." —David Kynaston

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami           $24

All told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator, these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator may or may not be Murakami himself. Now in paperback.

Hedgewitch by Skye McKenna           $25

Witches aren't born, they're made... It has been seven years since Cassie Morgan last saw her mother. Left at a dreary boarding school, she spends her days hiding from the school bully and reading forbidden story books about the world of Faerie. Certain that her mother is still alive, Cassie is determined to find her, whatever the dangers, and runs away from school. Lost and alone, she is chased by a pack of goblins but, to her surprise, escapes with the help of a flying broom and a talking cat named Montague, who takes her to the cosy village of Hedgely. Here she discovers that she comes from a family of witches, women who protect Britain from the denizens of Faerie, who are all too real and far more frightening than her story books suggest. The first book in a new series. 

Auto Erotica: A grand tour through classic car brochures of the 1960s to 1980s by Jonny Trunk             $55

Car brochures of the era had fabulous photography, dazzling colour charts, daring typography, strange fold outs and inspiring styles symbolising the automobile aspirations of their generations. 

>>Fab.

PLAY THE GAME

Some of the games we have in stock. Just click on the images to find out more, and to make your choices.

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BOOKS @ VOLUME #278 (13.5.22)

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

EXCELLENT FICTION AWARDED PRIZES this week:
The delightfully destabilising Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu (translated from the Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao) was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize (for books published by small presses). >>The other short-listed books for the RoC Prize are also all outstandingly good. 
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for its playful-yet-deeply-serious exploration of the contradictions, currents and undercurrents experienced in American Jewishness. 
No-One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood was awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize ("for the best literary work written in English by an author under forty") for her funny and tragic novel of the internet's relationship with what we call 'real life'. >>"The voice of a generation." >>Read Thomas's review. 

 

The short list for the 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE contains six books representing a diverse pool of excellent fiction translated into English:
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree (translated by Daisy Rockwell)
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur)
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (translated by Frances Riddle)
Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd)
A New Name (Septology VI—VII) by Jon Fosse (translated by Damion Searls)
>>Order your copies now. >>Find out more about the books, the authors, and the translators. 

>> Read all Stella's reviews.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St.John Mandel {Reviewed by STELLA} Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is a book to be lost in. It’s a book about time, living and loving. Superbly constructed, it stretches from 1912 to 2401; from the wildness of Vancouver to a moon colony of the future. A remittance man, Edwin St.John St.Andrew, is sent abroad. He’s completely at sea in this new world — he has no appetite for work nor connection — and makes a haphazard journey to a remote settlement on a whim. Here, he has an odd experience which leaves him shaken. He will return to England only to find himself derailed in the trenches of the First World War and later struck down by the flu pandemic. It’s 2020 and Mirella (some readers will remember her from The Glass Hotel) is searching for her friend Vincent (who has disappeared). She attends a concert by Vincent’s brother Paul and afterwards waits for him to appear, along with two music fans at the backstage door. It’s here, on the eve of our current pandemic, that she discovers that Vincent has drowned at sea. Yet it is an art video that Vincent had recorded and been used in Paul’s performance which is at the centre of the conversation for one of the music fans. The film is odd — recounting an unworldly experience in the Vancouver forest. A short clip — erratic and strangely out of place, out of time. It’s 2203 and Olive Llewellyn, author, is on a book tour of Earth. She lives on Moon Colony Two and is feeling bereft — missing her husband and daughter. It’s a gruelling schedule of talks, interviews and same-same hotel rooms; and, if this wasn’t enough, there’s a new virus on the loose. Her bestselling book, Marienbad is about a pandemic. Within its pages is a description of a strange occurrence which takes place in a railway station. When an interviewer questions her about this passage, she’s happy to talk about it, as long it is off the record. It’s 2401, and detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts from the Night City has been hired to investigate an anomaly in time. Drawing on his experiences and the book, Marienbad, and finding connections between the aforementioned times and people, will lead him to a place where he will make a decision that may have disruptive consequences. A decision which will cause upheaval. Emily St.John Mandel is deft in her writing, keeping the threads of time and the story moving across and around themselves without losing the reader, and making the knots — the connections — at just the right time to engage and delight intellect and curiosity. Moving through time and into the future makes this novel an unlikely contender to be a book of our time, but in so many ways it is. Clever, fascinating, reflective and unsettling, it’s a tender shout-out to humanity.