THE VOLUME GIFT SELECTOR — THE PERFECT BOOKS FOR BOOK-LOVERS
If you're not sure what to give this season, choose from our 100 recommendations! If the perfect gift isn't there, browse the rest of our website (we have thousands of interesting titles) — or just e-mail us or phone us and we will help you choose. Let us know if you'd like the books gift-wrapped (and choose a card!). We'll send them anywhere. 
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Looking, Writing, Reading, Looking edited by Georgi Gospodinov   {Reviewed by STELLA} 


The place where words and art intersect is always interesting. In this collection, writers take on contemporary works at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and the results are various and wonderfully unexpected. These are not theory-heavy nor filled with art speak. They are critiques of a literary nature — personal responses through the observant eyes of each writer: the looking (and the looking again); and the thoughts, memories or ideas which spring from these observations. Here you will find writers you have read, others you have heard of (but maybe not encountered their writings) and some that haven’t crossed your radar yet. There are memoir pieces, poems, more direct descriptions and interpretations, fictional interviews or reportage, and creative short stories. The writing sometimes takes us further into the particular artwork. Other pieces edge us towards a deeper understanding of elements springing from the work, with cascading ideas that will lead you to future interpretations. Others reveal more about the writer, taking the reader into a more internal world with an experience revealed. Experiences that sit alongside their chosen artwork tell us something about them as well as the power of art to spark this exploration. What draws us to a particular artwork? Why does one painting or sculpture capture us — ask us to stop, to look, to read — while another will hardly leave an imprint: we will see, but merely glide by? Writers are keen observers and this writer/art project at the gallery is refreshing as it does not require us to ‘know’ or have some insider information about the objects, which are interacted with rather than described. Each artwork is photographed and sits alongside the written text, and each author has a portrait taken, in the same place, by the water’s edge, revealing something quite special about each. All 26 writers had been attendees at the museum’s writers’ festival. In this collection, Anne Carson cleverly pulls together an unofficial transcript (with notes) of contemporary philosophers on Ragnar Kjartansson’s 'Me and My Mother'. Colm Toibin explores 'La Double Face' of Asger Jorn with his assured and thoughtful considerations of all that can be held in a face — vulnerability, ambiguity and energy. Domenico Starnone introduces us to 'Museo del Prado 5' by photographer Thomas Struth, expounding on the meta meta nature of this painting/photography/writing exposure. Yoko Tawada quietly, in her storytelling style, asks us to contemplate the role of our lives while viewing Nobuo Sekine’s 'Phases of Nothingness'. Guadalupe Nettel reveals how the 'On Stone Sculptures' by Henry Heerup call to her with a delightful short essay that perfectly embraces the artist’s relationship with stone. And Delphine de Vigan, as she reencounters Louise Bourgeois’s 'Spider Couple', reminds us that our relationship with artworks change, our interpretations are sometimes unintentionally faulty (driven by a desire for an artwork to speak to us of our own experience), and the artist’s intention is not necessarily at the forefront of our understanding — and that is all fine! All the contributions have something to recommend them and there are sharp as well as emotional responses. An interesting collection (handsomely produced), worth having on your shelf for the writing and the selected artworks.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella

 


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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?

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas

 NEW RELEASES

Saint Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber               $35
Former best friends who built their careers writing about a single work of art meet after a decades-long falling-out. One of them, called to the other's deathbed for unknown reasons by a 'relatively short' nine-page email, spends his flight to Berlin reflecting on Dutch Renaissance painter Count Hugo Beckenbauer and his masterpiece, Saint Sebastian's Abyss, the work that established both men as important art critics and also destroyed their relationship. A darkly comic meditation on art, obsession, and the enigmatic power of friendship, Saint Sebastian's Abyss stalks the museum halls of Europe, feverishly seeking salvation, annihilation, and the meaning of belief.
"In sinuous, recursive sentences infused with equal parts reverence and venom, Haber constructs a darkly parodic portrait of aesthetic devotion and intellectual friendship, in which the redemptive practice of collaborative interpretation becomes a cage that two egos relentlessly rattle." —Nathan Goldman, Jewish Currents
"A delightful and dizzying excursion into the relationship between art and criticism, and all the ways that we often deceive ourselves about the things and people we love. Concise and deftly rendered, it moves forward like a rocket-or more accurately, like the transatlantic flight his unnamed American narrator takes to visit his friend and nemesis Schmidt in Berlin. In each of their lives, the painting has become a kind of mirror, reflecting their ideas and their assertions back upon themselves." —David L. Ulin, Alta Journal
"A brilliantly sustained performance: clever, droll and entrancing. Mark Haber creates something entirely new, and greatly impressive, within the Bernhardian universe." —Chloe Aridjis
Landfall 244: Aotearoa New Zealand arts and letters edited by Linley Edmeades          $30
Poetry: Rebecca Ball, Victor Billot, Peter Bland, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Diana Bridge, Rachel Connor, John Dennison, Erin Donohue, David Eggleton, Jan FitzGerald, Miriama Gemmell, Michael Hall, Ruth Hanover, Claudia Jardine, Tim Jones, Erik Kennedy, Lyndsey Knight, Claire Lacey, Jessica Le Bas, Michele Leggott, Mary Macpherson, Cilla McQueen, Anuja Mitra, Margaret Moores, Janet Newman, Mikaela Nyman, Claire Orchard, Richard Reeve, Madeline Reid, Harry Ricketts, Ruth Russ, Harriet Salmon, Elizabeth Smither, Yvette Thomas, Tim Upperton, Sophia Wilson.
Fiction: Lucinda Birch, Joanna Cho, Jana Grohnert, Kirsty Gunn, Isabel Haarhaus, Jonathan Mahon-Heap, Frankie McMillan, Zoë Meager, S. A. Muse, Gerard O’Brien, Rebecca Reader, Angela Trolove.
Non-fiction: Tina Makereti, Jess Richards, Maggie Sturgess.
Art: Neil Pardington, Madison Kelly, Sam Kelly.
Review: Airini Beautrais, Kate Duignan, Emma Gattey, Lawrence Patchett, Laura Toailoa.
>>The winner of the 2022 Landfall Essay Competition. 
The Book of Dirt: A smelly history of dirt, disease and human hygiene by Monika Utnik-Strugala, Piotr Socha     $55
Millions of people on Earth start their day the same way: we get out of bed, go to the toilet and wash ourselves. But this hasn't always been the standard routine. Ancient Greeks and Romans were happy to splash about in public baths, but by the time the plague struck 14th-century Europe, many people believed that water spread diseases. It was not until the 18th century that Louis Pasteur proved that dangerous germs actually lurk in dirt. Even when hygienic habits began to be taught in schools, lessons were limited to washing faces and hands, because those were the parts that everyone could see. Dive deep into the history and science of dirt, discovering how people around the world (and out in space!) keep themselves and their surroundings free from filth, how our ideas of what's clean and what's not have changed and developed over the centuries, and why a little dirt can sometimes be a good thing.
This Place / That Place by Nandita Dinesh              $37
In a nameless country under military occupation, two friends prepare to attend a wedding. The young man is from the occupied region ('This Place'), the woman is from the occupying nation-state ('That Place'). The complicated relationship between these two protagonists with unusual professions--he is a Protest Designer and she is a De-programmer--is tested when, on the eve of the wedding, the occupying power, That Place, formally annexes This Place and declares a curfew. Suddenly finding themselves confined to the same isolated space, the young woman and man try to kill time but inevitably wind up talking about the ways in which the war between their homelands pervades the unexplored and undeniable attraction between them. Will their relationship become another casualty of war?
Nevada by Imogen Binnie              $25
Maria, a trans woman in her thirties, is going nowhere. She spends her aimless days working in a New York bookstore, trying to remain true to a punk ethos while drinking herself into a stupor and having a variety of listless and confusing sexual encounters. After her girlfriend cheats on her, Maria steals her car and heads for the Pacific, embarking on her version of the Great American Road Trip. Along the way she stops in Reno, Nevada, and meets James, a young man who works in the local Wal-Mart. Maria recognizes elements of her younger self in James and the pair quickly form an unlikely but powerful connection, one that will have big implications for them both. This hilarious, groundbreaking cult classic inspired a whole literary movement, and is now available outside the US for the first time.
"I've told people that Nevada is the On the Road of trans literature, but that's glib and unfair to Imogen Binnie, who is a lot smarter than Jack Kerouac. Nevada crept in under cover of night in 2013 and assumed its position as a classic while everyone's attention was elsewhere." —Lucy Sante
Why Climate Breakdown Matters by Rupert Read              $44
Climate change and the destruction of the earth is the most urgent issue of our time. We are hurtling towards the end of civilisation as we know it. Rupert Read asks us to face up to the fate of the planet. This is a book for anyone who wants their philosophy to deal with reality and their climate concern to be more than a displacement activity. As people come together to mourn the loss of the planet, we have the opportunity to create a grounded, hopeful response. This meaningful hopefulness looks to the new communities created around climate activism. Together, our collective mourning enables us to become human in ways previously unknown.

The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen       $40
Bowen takes us on a journey across the Middle East and through its history. He meets ordinary men and women on the front line, their leaders, whether brutal or benign, and he explores the power games that have so often wreaked devastation on civilian populations as those leaders, whatever their motives, jostle for political, religious and economic control. With his deep understanding of the political, cultural and religious differences between countries as diverse as Erdogan’s Turkey, Assad’s Syria and Netanyahu’s Israel and his long experience of covering events in the region, Bowen offers readers a gripping and invaluable guide to the modern Middle East, how it came to be and what its future might hold.
The Blue Commons: Rescuing the economy of the sea by Guy Standing          $50
The sea provides more than half the oxygen we breathe, food for billions of people and livelihoods for hundreds of millions. But giant corporations are plundering the world's oceans, aided by global finance and complicit states, following the neoliberal maxim of Blue Growth. The situation is dire: rampant exploitation and corruption now drive all aspects of the ocean economy, destroying communities, intensifying inequalities, and driving fish populations and other ocean life towards extinction. The Blue Commons is an urgent call for change, from a campaigning economist responsible for some of the most innovative solutions to inequality of recent times.
"In this landmark book, Guy Standing not only documents how state-corporate collusion is destroying fragile ocean ecosystems, fisheries, and coastal communities. He explains how degrowth economics and fishery commons could restore the 'Blue Commons-Wealth' that belongs to all of us. The Blue Commons is at once a brilliant synthesis, a searing analysis, and an inspiring call to action." —David Bollier
Class: A graphic guide by Laura Harvey, Sarah Leaney and Danny Noble             $33
What can class tell us about gentrification, precarious work, the role of elites in society, or access to education? How have thinkers explored class in the past, and how does it affect us today? How does class inform activism and change? Class: A Graphic Guide challenges simplistic and stigmatising ideas about working-class people, discusses colonialist roots of class systems, and looks at how class intersects with race, sexuality, gender, disability and age.
The Best of E-Tangata, Volume two edited by Tapu Misa and  Gary Wilson          $18
A thought-provoking set of Maori, Pasifika, and tangata Tiriti writers combine in this celebration of some of the best writing from E-Tangata. Traverse a landscape of contemporary and historical issues through the lens of a mother's loss, a man's hard-won expertise, a homesick student abroad and with the knowledge that all good things begin with ten guitars. These writings exemplify that grief and hope go hand-in-hand in the pursuit of justice and the reclaiming of identities in Aotearoa and the Pacific. Contributors Becky Manawatu, Maui Solomon, Max Harris, Andrew Robb, Joanna Kidman, Joe Williams, Moana Maniapoto, Kingi Snelgar, Emmaline Pickering-Martin, Moana Jackson, Rangi Matamua, Dale Husband, Patrick Thomsen, Shelley Burne-Field, Tainui Stephens, Connie Buchanan, Simone Kaho, and Christine Ammunson.
Tiaki: A shout-out to Aotearoa's lesser-known creatures by  Jean Donaldson          $30
This book is about the weird and wonderful endangered species in Aotearoa, those lesser-known creatures that don't regularly make the news. But they are just as important as the 'stars' like kakapo and kiwi, for they are the foundation of our unique biodiversity. Tiaki includes such exotic animals as the Smeagol gravel maggot, a sea slug found on the south coast of Wellington; the moko kakariki, a gecko with a bright blue mouth; the kowaro/Canterbury mudfish, which can survive out of water for up to several months; and the tiny, critically endangered pekapeka-tou-roa/long-tailed bat.
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A history of food, from sustainable to suicidal by Mark Bittman           $37
The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence, arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments-from slavery and colonialism to famine and genocide-and to our current moment, wherein Big Food exacerbates climate change, plunders our planet, and sickens its people. Even so, Bittman refuses to concede that the battle is lost, pointing to activists, workers, and governments around the world who are choosing well-being over corporate greed and gluttony and fighting to free society from Big Food's grip. Sweeping, impassioned, and ultimately full of hope, Animal, Vegetable, Junk reveals not only how food has shaped our past, but also how we can transform it to reclaim our future. 
Encountering China: New Zealanders and the People's Republic edited by Duncan Campbell and Brian Moloughney             $40
In this collection of 50 texts, which range from essays to poems, a wide range of authors, from diplomats and students to politicians, academics and businesspeople, reflect on their experiences of and in China over the last half century. 
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera            $19
Petra Pena wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth will soon be destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children — among them Petra and her family — have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet — and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard — or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again? A multi-award winning and bestselling novel, blending science fiction and Mexican folklore to explore the power of storytelling.
"Gripping in its twists and turns, and moving in its themes — truly a beautiful cuento." —New York Times
The Little Captain by Paul Biegel            $17
One morning, after a fierce storm, the people of the harbour come down to find a strange ship called the Neversink stuck fast on top of the sand dunes. Inside is only a small boy with a big cap - The Little Captain. He and his ship stay marooned on top of the dunes until one day a giant wave sweeps the Neversink to freedom. And so The Little Captain sets sail once more, this time with three of the town's children, Podgy, Marinka and Thomas, as his crew mates. Together they are determined to find the island of Evertaller, where legend has it children turn into grown-ups overnight and never have to go to school again.

Notes from a Small Kitchen Island by Debora Robertson               $55
Robertson introduces us to the recipes that made her, as much as she made them. From feasts in her French holiday cottage to the Turkish-inspired weeknight dinners created with ingredients from her local Hackney high street, her recipes encapsulate the comfort to be found in the everyday. 
Always Going Home: Lauris and Frances Edmond, A mother-and-daughter story by Frances Edmond              $40
Writing from memory, family recollections, and the goldmine of poet Lauris Edmond's correspondence and diaries, Frances Edmond details how her life intersected with, and often diverged from, her mothers. As creative collaborator, sole literary executor, and a frequent sounding board and confidante, Frances was privy to details known to very few. She learned about the wounds her mother carried and her inability to manage, or influence, the shifting tides of grief and resentment within their family.  





VOLUME BooksNew releases

Our Book of the Week is Barbara Kingsolver's wonderful new novel Demon Copperhead. Told by its eponymous protagonist, a red-headed child born to a teenage mother in an opiate-infused Appalachia, Kingsolver's novel, like a modern-day parallel to Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, is full of sharp observation of social ills underlaid with deep compassion and expressed with a great joy for language, character and story. 
>>The book she was born to write. 
>>In conversation with Ann Patchett. 
>>A literary ancestor. 
>>Seething with love and outrage. 
>>The voice of Demon Copperhead. 
>>Hillbillies not included. 
>>Get your copy now!

VOLUME BooksBook of the week


Kiwi Christmas Books. If you can't imagine the festive season without a pile of good books, remember that there are children whose whānau are experiencing hardship and who have little to look forward to at Christmas. If you would like to give books to needy children in our community, either 1. Make a donation and we will choose books on your behalf; or 2. Choose books from our website yourself and just put "Kiwi Christmas Books" in the 'notes' field as you check out. Thank you for making a difference! >>Find out more about the Kiwi Christmas Books scheme. 
VOLUME Books

 


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The Touch System by Alejandra Costamagna (translated by Lisa Dillman)   {Reviewed by STELLA}

I was drawn to this novel firstly by the cover. Who can resist a typewriter? And then by the description of a story pieced together by encyclopedic entries, typewriter exercises, immigration manual snippets, and snapshot interludes. That it is also published by the interesting and excellent Transit Books and the author is Chilean all added to this one finding a place on my shelf. Ania is a woman, about 40, who is in limbo. She has quit teaching and pet-sits for a bit of cash; her father has remarried and has ‘another family’ — one which Ania feels ousts her from her place as ‘daughter’; and her boyfriend is a remote figure in this story — whether this is her perspective or a reality we never know. And this is what hooks you in — Ania always seems like she is looking in, but never really participating. Her present is something she wishes to escape from and her past haunts her yet draws her back — seems to have a hold on her. This is a story about exile and migration, about worlds cleaved between past and present but inextricably linked. It’s a tale of never quite fitting in — an exploration of what belonging is and whether it can be truly achieved if you are severed from a part of yourself (whether that be literally, as in physical space, or metaphorically, as in a mental state). When Ania's uncle Augustin dies, her father asks her to go to Argentina in his place (he is unable to leave Chile while his wife is convalescing). Crossing the mountains brings back memories of her childhood summers spent with her grandparents and extended family. Every summer she would spend months as the ‘Chilenita’ — her otherness the role cast for her. Yet she was not the only outcast. Nelida (Augustin’s mother), the young bride who came from Italy and never adjusted, spends her days in the cool of her dark room slowly subsiding into madness (or sadness). Augustin wants to escape his home but doesn’t have the courage to abandon his family, so faithfully takes his typing lessons and remains bound to his mother. He is enamoured of his friend Garigilo’s ease of being and infatuated with Ania. The reader is left to pull the threads together about the state of the relationships between these characters. It seems as though something has occurred that has had an impact on all three, yet the action, if there was one, has happened off the pages, beyond the book, and it is only a residue — an unsaid feeling — that circles beneath Ania. Returning to the town, the memories of childhood are both threatening and endearing. Here she has a role, she is the ‘Chilenita’. As she is drawn into the vortex of her own past, she thinks about her family and their life as migrants from Italy. Her childhood memories butt up against her adult knowledge. What allowed her father to find his escape, while Augustin was stuck in time and place? Why did Nelida find it so hard to adjust, and does she carry a similar burden? What is the way forward if you are an exile in your own life or mind? Costamagna’s writing effortlessly moves across characters and time. The typewriter exercise, family snapshots, and encyclopedia entries give the reader pause as well as context and are interwoven between the unfolding narrative at just the right pitch. The Touch System is a beautiful example of fine writing and intriguing themes — a novel that compulsively draws you in where you are at fingertip distance of something palpable. 

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella

 


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Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle   {Reviewed by THOMAS}

There is nothing funnier than depression, he thought, at least nothing funnier to me than my own depression. There is nothing more ludicrous than my inability to do even the simplest things, the kind of inability you would ordinarily expect to belong to the most difficult things, but really the simplest things are for me the most difficult, or at least indistinguishable from the most difficult, there is no difference between the simplest and the most difficult, but not in a way that would make the most difficult things achievable, though really there is no reason why this should not be the case, other than my inability to imagine myself as the person who has achieved even the simplest, let alone the most difficult, things, he thought. There is nothing more ludicrous and perforce nothing funnier than that, he thought. There is a rupture of some kind, he thought, between me and my fortunate place in the world, making one of those self-obsessed, self-indulgent, grandiloquent statements that he found intolerable when others made them and so usually pretended not to hear them, which probably made him appear unsympathetic when he was in fact oversympathetic, which is just as useless. Is there any point in being oversympathetic to the self-revulsion of others, he wondered, no, this is just as pointless as my own self-revulsion, experience is disjoined from reality, neither revulsion is reasonable or appropriate, these revulsions are entirely ludicrous and perforce funny. That there is nothing funnier than my own self-revulsion should make my self-revulsion tolerable, but then it would hardly be self-revulsion and therefore not ludicrous enough to be funny, he thought. If I could find relief in this way from my suffering, he thought, recognising the self-obsession, self-indulgence and grandiloquence of this statement about suffering even as he made it, if I could find relief in this way from my suffering it wouldn’t be suffering and therefore wouldn’t be ludicrous enough to qualify as a relief. There is no relief, which only makes my suffering all the more ludicrous and perforce all the more funny. The more pathetic my suffering, the more inappropriate and ludicrous my suffering, the more self-obsessed and self-indulgent and grandiloquent and entirely pointless and unreasonable my suffering, the more I perforce suffer, and the funnier it is. Nothing funnier, he thought. Is this why I enjoyed this book, Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, he wondered, this book he had read almost inadvertently, this book concerning a depressed young woman’s heroic efforts to achieve not very much and the degrees of shortness to which those efforts fall, this book concerning the disjunction between this young woman and her place in the world, this book at once funny and pathetic and, he supposed, terribly sad, written in the first person by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle but, as it says on the front cover, fiction, just like what he is writing now. He could not decide if he was oversympathetic or undersympathetic when he found this supposedly fictional woman’s depression so funny, but, he thought with a ludicrously grandiose thought, the tragic is only more tragic for not existing in the context of a tragedy, and it is this disjunction, he thought, that makes depression so ludicrous. Taking it seriously would increase the disjunction and make it more ludicrous still. 

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas

 NEW RELEASES

The Summer of Diving by Sara Stridsberg (translated by S.J. Epstein), illustrated by Sara Lundberg                                        $37
Zoe's father isn't home. She still sees him in photographs, laughing and playing tennis, but for now she can only visit him in a building where everyone looks sad and the walls are an ugly pink color. Some days Zoe's father is too sad to see her, but she goes to the hospital anyway. While waiting she meets Sabina, who invites her to swim across the world. Zoe's not sure it's possible, but Sabina tells her, "A girl can do everything she wants." Even though Sabina sometimes dives deep into her own thoughts, the two of them swim around the world many times that summer, until eventually Zoe's father is ready to come home. A tender and thoughtful book. Lundberg's beautiful paintings reflect and validate a child's feelings of loss and longing for closeness when a parent's joy for living temporarily fades.
"This poignant, gentle book will be immensely helpful to anyone caring for the child of someone with major depression. It fills an important gap in literature for young children." —Andrew Solomon
>>See some sample pages. 
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li            $33
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised - the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story. As children in a backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves — until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss. The Book of Goose is a beautifully written story of disturbing intimacy and obsession, of exploitation and strength of will.
"A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout — I loved it." —Charlotte Mendelson
"One of our finest living authors. Propulsively entertaining." —New York Times
"Wonderfully strange and alive." —Jon McGregor
>>"I'm not that nice friendly Chinese lady who writes."
Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto (translated by Jesse Kirkwood)          $37
In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young couple are discovered. The police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, an old and shabby detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they will begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime.
"This 1958 classic of postwar Japanese crime fiction was banned in its day for its 'decadent western ideas'. Now, the fascinatingly detailed investigations of Inspector Torigai echo those of Simenon's Maigret in a pared-down narrative shot through with political critique." —Financial Times

The Song of the Cell: An exploration of medicine and the new human by Siddhartha Mukherjee          $40
Since the discovery of the cell in the 1660s and the discovery in the 1850s that most diseases can be traced back to our cells, human beings have been understood as an ecosystem of units that produce exponentially complex structures and effects. How did we discover these units, and their functions? How did we begin to understand hearts, brains, kidneys as collections of cooperating cells? What are cells anyway? How do they work, and how (why?) do they work together? Why build organs and organisms out of these units? And could we re-assemble a new kind of human? Could we alter cells to become resistant to diseases? Could we make new humans out of new kinds cells, endowed with novel properties, functions or intentions? Another fascinating book from the author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene. 
Strangers to Ourselves: Stories of unsettled minds by Rachel Aviv              $40
Does a mental health diagnosis have the power to perpetuate, or even create, symptoms as its subject adapts to live within it? Is there another way of talking about their experience? Are patients being truly heard? In an attempt to answer these questions, Aviv has chosen five subjects who have the capacity to interrogate the theories and explanations they have been given for their own mental states — subjects who at some stage fundamentally reject psychiatry's explanatory framework, and see their own suffering through another lens —spirituality, loneliness, legitimate existential despair. Aviv believes that it is a writer's job to listen and imagine and so tell the stories that other disciplines may be missing. Alongside her subjects' stories she will write about the evolution of psychiatry, with particularly interesting and troubling reference to its imposition through colonial history. How far can we go to the edge of experience and emotion and still remain sane? What happens to us — socially, culturally, medically, psychologically — when we step into the spaces outside of 'ordinary life'?
"So attuned to subtlety and complexity. A book-length demonstration of Aviv's extraordinary ability to hold space for the 'uncertainty, mysteries and doubt' of others." —New York Times Book Review 
The Book of Jewish Food: An odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the present day by Claudia Roden             $75
Sixteen years in the writing and now twenty-five years bringing pleasure and knowledge to cooks and foodies worldwide, this wonderful book is endlessly rewarding both to cook from and to read. Roden shines a light on the diverse flavours and cultural origins of overlooked dishes, revealing the beauty and simplicity of traditional Ashkenazi and Sephardi food on the page. This 25th anniversary edition has some new content and recipes.
"One can't imagine a better food book than this, ever: for the reader and the cook." —Nigella Lawson 
"The first great encyclopedia of Jewish life. I love it for the narrative embroidery around the recipes." —Simon Schama
Euphoria by Elin Cullhed (translated by Jennifer Hayashida)            $33
A woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more. The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life, reimagined in fictive form by Elin Cullhed. As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through the heady days of their first summer in Devon together, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. She has decided to die, but the art she creates in her final weeks will make her name.

Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri                $33
An unnamed man arrives in Berlin as a visiting professor. It is a place fused with Western history and cultural fracture lines. He moves along its streets and pavements; through its department stores, museums and restaurants. He befriends Faqrul, an enigmatic exiled poet, and Birgit, a woman with whom he shares the vagaries of attraction. He tries to understand his white-haired cleaner. Berlin is a riddle—he becomes lost not only in the city but in its legacy. Sealed off in his own solitude, and as his visiting professorship passes, the narrator awaits transformation and meaning. Ultimately, he starts to understand that the less sure he becomes of his place in the moment, the more he knows his way.
"Chaudhuri has already proved that he can write better than just about anybody of his generation." —Jonathan Coe
"Chaudhuri has, like Proust, mastered the art of the moment." —Hilary Mantel
Total by Rebecca Miller             $33
Arresting and darkly prescient, these stories navigate the fault lines of relationships. A middle-aged novelist devoid of inspiration alights on material in the form of an obsessive pet-shop worker from Cincinnati. A pregnant mother of two finds herself increasingly in thrall to her help, Nat. For Joad, the discovery of a haunting type-written document in an old desk in need of restoration is overwhelming. And when Roxanne rescues her sister from an institution, she comes to realise how vulnerable they both are.
"Miller is a luminous writer." —Olivia Laing
"Miller possesses the soaring eye of the epicist and the sly instinct of the satirist." —New Yorker
Delphi by Clare Pollard              $33
Set during the 2020 lockdowns, this relatable narrative introduces a protagonist who, faced with a global pandemic and a marriage in crisis, looks to the ancient art of prophecy for consolation. A darkly funny and heartbreaking novel about the way we live now; the way we lived before and the stories, connections and consolations that help us keep on living in a world where everyone is watching and yet none of us feels seen. This is a story about now. It's a story about a woman, and a family. It's about the dramas unfolding on our screens and behind the curtains of our homes, and how time and certainty and, sometimes, those we love can slip away. But it's also about before. It's about the questions we have always asked and the answers that are coming for us whether we like them or not.
"For anyone looking for ways of thinking creatively and with love about art in an emergency and what just happened to us all I would recommend it, because despite the bleakness - you can't have realism without bleakness now - this is clever, warm and funny writing." —Sarah Moss, Guardian 
"Funny and sharp and ripe with references and allusions, Delphi is not just a novel about Covid; it's also about how a given historical moment such as the pandemic can connect us to the past and to the universal." —John Self
"Delphi distils something elusive and upsetting about all the things we can't quite see or understand about the present moment, even as all we ever do is look. This feels impressive, part of what good fiction is meant to do." —New York Times
Surplus-Enjoyment: A guide for the non-perplexed by Slavoj Žižek         $44
Contemporary life is defined by excess. There must always be more, there is never enough. We need a surplus to what we need to be able to truly enjoy what we have. Slavoj Žižek's guide to surplus (and why it's enjoyable) begins by arguing that what is surplus to our needs is by its very nature unsubstantial and unnecessary. But, perversely, without this surplus, we wouldn't be able to enjoy, what is substantial and necessary. Indeed, without the surplus we wouldn't be able to identify what was the perfect amount.Is there any escape from the vicious cycle of surplus enjoyment or are we forever doomed to simply want more? Engaging with everything from The Joker film to pop songs and Thomas Aquinas to the history of pandemics, Žižek argues that recognising the society of enjoyment we live in for what it is can provide an explanation for the political impasses in which we find ourselves today. And if we begin, even a little bit, to recognise that the nuggets of 'enjoyment' we find in excess are as flimsy and futile, might we find a way out?
"Surplus-Enjoyment is the author at his most supple, addressing urgent current concerns and the need for a global solidarity that cannot be divorced from egalitarianism. Zizek is a pick-me-up for fatigued brains." —Prisma
None of the Above: Reflections on life beyond the binary by Travis Alabanza             $40
Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. These phrases that have stayed with them over the years. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse; sentences that speak to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary. Through these seven phrases, which include some of their most personal transformative experiences as a Black, working-class, non-binary trans person, Travis Alabanza turns a mirror back on society, giving us reason to question the very framework in which we live and the ways we treat each other.
"Alabanza lifts the lid on our potential for empathy, alliance and complicity." —Irish Times
The Bear that Wasn't by Frank Tashlin                                    $48
“Once upon a time, in fact it was Tuesday,” the Bear went into the woods to settle in for his long winter nap. But when he awoke what had happened? The trees were gone, the grass was gone, the flowers were gone, and in their place were buildings, cars, a fenced-off courtyard. The Bear had no idea that he was in the middle of a factory. “Get back to work!” a man yelled out of the blue. “I don’t work here,” said the Bear, “I’m a bear.” The man laughed and laughed. “Fine excuse for a man to keep from doing any work—saying he’s a bear.” And so it began and so it went, with the Bear protesting his bearness all the way from the Third Vice President to the First, and no one willing to believe that he wasn’t just a silly man in a fur coat who needed a shave. How the bear endured and how he finally prevailed are the subject of this delightful modern classic—beautifully illustrated with the author’s inventive line drawings—about sticking up for yourself, no matter how many Foremen, General Managers, Vice Presidents, or even Company Presidents stand in your way. A nice hardback edition.
Vagina Obscura: An anatomical voyage by Rachel E. Gross         $60
The Latin term for the female genitalia, pudendum, means 'parts for which you should be ashamed'. Until 1651, ovaries were called female testicles. The fallopian tubes are named for a man. Named, claimed, and shamed: Welcome to the story of the female body, as penned by men. But now, a new generation of (mostly) women scientists is redrawing the map of female genitalia. With modern tools and fresh perspectives, they're looking at the organs traditionally bound up in reproduction—the uterus, ovaries, vagina—and seeing within them a new biology of change and resilience. Gross takes readers on an anatomical odyssey to the center of this new world—a world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs, and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves. Vagina Obscura is a celebratory testament to how the landscape of knowledge can be rewritten to better serve everyone.
"The vagina is having a much-belated moment, and thanks to Rachel E. Gross, now so are the ovaries, clitoris, and uterus. In Vagina Obscura, Gross clears away the linguistic and scientific shroud from the least investigated and most misunderstood structures in the human body and tells their story deftly and beautifully." —Emily Willingham
My Friend the Octopus by Lindsay Galvin            $19
England, 1877. Aquarium fever is at its height. Twelve-year-old Vinnie Fyfe works in the tea-shop at Brighton aquarium, and waits for her milliner mother to return from Paris. The arrival of a giant octopus changes her life for ever. Discovering a talent for art, Vinnie begins to draw the extraordinary beast. She soon realises she can communicate with the octopus through colour and — as a gripping mystery begins to unfold — discovers what true courage really means.
There is a vast class of properties that science has so far almost entirely neglected. These properties are central to an understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of fundamental phenomena, yet they have traditionally been thought of as impossible to incorporate into fundamental explanations. They relate not only to what is true — the actual — but to what could be true — the counterfactual. This is the science of can and can't.
Chiara Marletto, a pioneer in this field, explores the promise that this fascinating, far-reaching approach holds not only for revolutionising how fundamental physics is formulated, but also for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices to designing AI.
"A wonderful book, which has taught me new ways of thinking and expanded my mind. It's extremely beautifully written, full of wonder and passion and humour and energy." —Hermione Lee
"Clear, sharp and imaginative. The Science of Can and Can't will open the doors to a dazzling set of concepts and ideas that will change deeply the way you look at the world." —David Deutsch
"I enjoyed this book very much, not least because of the freshness of its approach to a subject that can easily become hard for the non-scientific mind to grasp. The theory of 'can and can't' is an intriguing way of describing problems that are not only scientific (it describes very well what a storyteller does, for instance), and Marletto's account of some things I thought I more or less understood (the nature of digital information, for one) illuminated them from an angle that showed them more clearly than I'd seen them before." —Philip Pullman
A clear and well-photographed examination of 100 geological features of Aotearoa, the forces that formed them and how they are continually changing. 

Gentrification is Inevitable, And other lies by Leslie Kern           $40
Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City, travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris and San Francisco and scrutinises the myth and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times. First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the yoga studio, farmer's market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural, that it can not be understood in economic terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the setter colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities. But if gentrification is not inevitable, what can we do to stop the tide? In response, Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced.
>>Housing as a human right. 
Taking its title from a chilling warning made by the United Nations that the world's soils could be lost within a lifetime, Sixty Harvests Left uncovers how the food industry is threatening the planet. Put simply, without soils there will be no food. And time is running out. From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Brazil to the Gambia to the USA, Philip Lymbery, author of Farmageddon, goes behind the scenes of industrial farming and confronts 'Big Agriculture', where mega-farms, chemicals and animal cages are sweeping the countryside and jeopardising the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the nature that we treasure. However, he also finds hope in the pioneers who are battling to bring landscapes back to life, who are rethinking farming methods, rediscovering traditional techniques and developing technologies to feed an ever-expanding global population.
"A call to action — to change our world from the ground up. A vitally necessary book." —Isabella Tree
Growing up on the outskirts of Sheffield, Hugh Brody ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but was always given to understand that the real, the perfect food came from his mother's home, Vienna. He attended Hebrew classes three times each week but was sent off to a Church of England boarding school. Conflicted and bewildered, he sought places to which he could escape — but everywhere he discovered deep and troubling silences. He takes us on his first journeys to the Arctic, a world so far removed from anything he had known as to be a chance to learn, all over again, what it can mean to be alive. As he reveals, the realities of the far north were a joy, but even there he found abuses of the people and the land — and voices that were deeply silenced by the forces of colonialism. In these landscapes, human well-being appears to be both possible and impossible. Yet in memory, in the land, in the defiance of silence, Hugh Brody sees a profound humanity — as well as hope.
"Landscapes of Silence is a remarkable, often uncomfortable, exploration of difficult terrains in which the author's pain and the damage done to indigenous peoples is livid and raw." —Literary Review



VOLUME BooksNew releases

 

Book of the Week: The Golden Mole, And other living treasure by Katherine Rundell  
The animal world is endlessly varied, fascinating and inspiring, and needs to be preserved both for its own sake and for the richness it adds to human experience and thought. Rundell considers 22 animals (including the human) whose existence is endangered by humans, and reveals the depths of wonder embodied in these animals. For instance, did you know that the Golden Mole is luminescent, but blind and therefore unable to see its own radiance? This hardback book is beautifully presented (it even has gilt edges), and illustrated by Tayla Baldwin. 
>>Startling astonishments. 
>>Consider the golden mole.
>>Consider the hummingbird. 
>>Consider the hare. 
>>The world will not starve for want of wonders. 
>>On the illustrations. 
>>Weird and wonderful. 
>>A 21st century bestiary. 
>>Consider a copy of the book. 
>>Other books by Katherine Rundell. 

VOLUME BooksBook of the week

 


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Unraveller by Frances Hardinge   {Reviewed by STELLA}

The country of Raddith is an odd place, complex and unpredictable. Kellen, once a weaver, has been gifted or cursed, depending on your perspective, with the ability to ‘unravel’ curses. Nettle, his trusty sidekick (she’s always there — a watchful appeaser to Kellen’s unpredictable temperament) was not so long ago a heron cursed to feed on fish and watch her siblings (each other bird species) struggle with their human-bird / bird-human natures. Though she’s back in her human body, her experience has altered her and some of her heron qualities linger. She’s not the only one haunted by their recent past. Kellen was a weaver from a weaving village, but once he was cursed with unravelling, it wasn’t too long until his parents had to cast him out or suffer the consequences of a village’s livelihood undone.  But there is always work for a curse-fixer, and Kellen and Nettle mostly stay on the right side of law and order. Not all things go smoothly though in the curse game and it’s not too long until Kellen’s temper gets the better of him and they find themselves arrested. No fear, a stranger seeks them out and makes them an offer they are in no position to reject. Gall, a man bonded to a marsh horse (a strange and demonic creature) employs them on behalf of an official. Dark magic and conspiracy are afoot in the chambers of powers and someone wants to see the equilibrium — the deal struck with the Little Brothers (spidery inhabitants of the lowlands) — undone. The Little Brothers spin webs of mystical power and gift the curse eggs to those who carry loathing and hate in their guts. Curse eggs can be controlled, but not easily, and cursers and the cursed alike often regret their actions. Step in the likes of Kellen, who can unpick these spells. With no choice but to follow Gall’s instructions, Kellen and Nettle find themselves pulled tighter into a web of danger and confusion. Will their friendship endure? Will the Little Brothers help or hinder Kellen when he needs them most? The story weaves in uneven and unexpected ways as the two teens travel to the capital to meet their employer — a startling discovery, head to a remote village through a haunted forest, and end up in the lowlands and on the treacherous waters of the Moonlight Market where a clever hand will need to be played if Kellen is to keep his head and Nettle survive a deceit that will surprise the reader as well as her. Hardinge’s latest is a highly structured tale, much like a spider’s web, with two competing but complementary protagonists at its centre. It has those classic elements of loyalty and betrayal, trust and deceit alongside a vividly portrayed fantastical world (at times wonderfully overwhelming and darkly unsettling), which Hardinge does so well. Another stunner from the author of The Lie Tree and A Skinful of Shadows. 

 

VOLUME BooksChildren's books, Review by Stella

 


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The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer   {Reviewed by THOMAS}
It did not read like a love story, he thought, but it was a love story. It did not even read like a story, not that he likes stories, but it was a story. And he still liked it. It was not just a stream of invective, though it certainly was a stream of invective, and he has nothing against streams of invective, especially literary streams of invective, quite the reverse, he likes them, he even, and he wonders if the word is correct, collects them, if it is possible to collect streams in anything other than a lake. A lake of invective, perhaps, that doesn’t sound right. Fiction always is an essay in time, or on time, though neither sounds right, the act of reading is a linear act and the act of writing is a linear act, no matter how clipped and disordered that act may be in either case, no matter how you cut the strands, all fiction at base is an offence against time, an offence whence springs the hope and splendour of fiction, he thought. There are two strands in this story, he thought, though he wondered why he called it a story, the time of the telling and the time of all that presses upon the telling from the past. The novel, let him call it that, consists entirely of a monologue spoken, if it is even spoken, by a young German woman to a Dr Seligman, a rant of Bernhardian dimensions or proportions, neither of these words seem right, vulgar, surprising, hugely funny, ultimately sad. He could feel the spoilers coming on. Dr Seligman does not speak, or if he speaks he speaks between the paragraphs and his words are not recorded. He is like the auditor in Beckett’s Not I, not speaking but by his silence the enabler of the saying of all that is said, without him the tremendous disburdening, if that is a word, of the voice could not occur, without this receptive silence there would be no story. We might think at first that Dr Seligman might be a psychoanalyst, but he is not a psychoanalyst, nor even a counsellor, though she was sent to a counsellor, Jason, after threatening her workmate with a stapler, of all things, and fair enough, a counsellor who did not keep silent, who could not play the auditor, who shut her down by speaking. “When we are actually forced to talk about ourselves, things always get so awkward, because there is really very little to talk about. … People like Jason only live off making others feel bad about themselves by pretending that they know the way when in the end they will drown just like everyone else,” she says. Dr Seligman is not a psychoanalyst, though he could be to the body what a psychoanalyst is to the mind, whatever that is, a body is more personal than a mind, after all, if indeed there is anything personal at all about a mind, history is an offence on a body by a body, all the rest is stories, and here come some spoilers and it is not too late, even now, even if you have read this far, reader, to stop reading, he thought, I will accept not complaints if you continue, at least no complaints in this regard. What, though, is sayable and what is not sayable? When the Jewish Dr Seligman does not throw her out after her initial provocation-test recounting invented sexual fantasies involving Hitler, if a fantasy can be invented or can be anything but invented, the hurdle at which Jason fell, he begins to gain her trust and she begins to disburden herself to him of her unhappiness, her discomfort, since childhood, with her identity, or, rather, with the identity imposed upon her as all identities are imposed. “And I think that in a way that’s all we are: other people’s stories. There’s no way we can ever be ourselves,” she says, demonstrating, incidentally, how her monologue changes register so often on a comma, passing from vulgar to reflective within a sentence, if not back again as well. Since childhood she has been repelled both by her mother’s body and by her own, she says. At this point, he thought, he might compare the splendid Volckmerian rant with the splendid Bernhardian rant, each filled, he might say, with loathing, each skewering the rot in society, if you want rot on a skewer, each exposing, among other things, the indelible mark of Nazism upon a nation. The Bernhardian rant, as it progresses, though, he thought, rings more wrong, if that is the right way to put it, that is Bernhard’s genius, the narrator’s loathing is seen to be self-loathing, the ills of the world have their bastion within, so to speak, but the Volkmerian rant, as it progresses, rings more right, he thought, that doesn’t sound right, and this is more disturbing, even, what begins as self-loathing spreads out and shows us what is wrong with the world in which the loather sits and soaks, or whatever. All crimes are crimes of identity, he thought, a provocation of his own that he doesn’t really know how to think about, though perhaps he is right. We get everything wrong. “That’s where we differ from animals: with very few exceptions they always look the part, like perfect representations of their species, dignified and in just the right shape.” Bit by bit the monologist’s story is revealed, and we learn of her relationship with K, a relationship that broke all the various taboos with which identity is ring-fenced, though what the difference is between ring-fenced and plain fenced, he does not know, at least in this instance, metaphors aren't fussy. The pact was to remain impersonal, to play out their frustrations and harm upon each other, to use up the harm, to reflect and to become the other in the mirror, but when K. says, “Be with me always,” the monologist, call her Sarah, monologist is a stupid word, if it is even a word, ends the relationship forthwith. When she later hears of K.’s suicide, she completes the journey to deciding to become him, I told you it was a love story, though not the sort you expected, which is why she is delivering her monologue to Dr Seligman, a plastic surgeon who “is fitting a German woman with a Jewish cock,” you were warned about the spoilers, a process paid for with Sarah’s inheritance from her grandfather, the stationmaster at the last stop before Auschwitz. The Holocaust lies at the root of harm. Volckmer lambasts what she sees as the German delusion is having ‘dealt with’ the Holocaust by ensuring “that we remained de-Nazified and full of respect. But we never mourned; if anything, we performed a new version of ourselves, hysterically non-racist in any direction and negating difference wherever possible. Suddenly there were just Germans. No Jews, no guest workers, no Others. And yet we never granted them the status of human beings again or let them interfere with our take of the story.” The victims remain victims, their myriad stories still overwritten by a single story outside their control, Jews still trapped in the German national myth, still othered to the extent that they are Jewish, those losses, those bodies annulled still not seen by the Germans as their own bodies, not properly mourned as their own bodies, writes Voclkmer, or Volckmer seems to write, at least to him, the distance between the story and the body is a scale to measure shame. Guilt is a ritual, he thinks, though he has not yet thought the thought to its end, a ritual that seems to address but actually conceals shame, to address is to preserve, after all, but what else is there to be done? “It takes several minds to be beautiful,” says Sarah, writes Volckmer, and, he thinks, when the desire to be otherwise has more power than identity, when we lose our footing and begin to swim, can he never purge himself of these metaphors, when we submit to or we welcome the urgent undoing of what we are or are seen to be, if there is a difference between them, then, he thinks, though it is not him who thinks the thought, he merely reports what is thought, we can be many things at once or no things, open to whatever. Sarah remarks, writes Volckmer, there comes a time when “someone has split you into two versions of yourself.” This chimes with Bachmann, he thinks, though chimes is not the right word, when she wrote, in Malina, “I am not one person, but two people standing in extreme opposition to one another, which must mean I am always on the verge of being torn in two. If they were separated it would be livable, but scarcely the way it is.” It is hard, he thinks, to find what is livable.

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas