NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS
Read our latest NEWSLETTER and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending, and get yourself a new book to read and recommend!
2.6.23
Book of the Week: Knowing What We Know: The transmission of knowledge, from ancient wisdom to modern magic by Simon Winchester
How do we acquire knowledge, first-hand or otherwise? How do we store and sort this knowledge, both inside and outside our heads, and how do we make this knowledge available to others? With advances in technology that have immersed us in a limitless sea of information, what is there left for our brains to do? How do different technologies change the way we think of the world, and of each other? Who controls our experience of information, and to what end? Simon Winchester’s new book asks — and answers — some very important — and interesting — questions.
These Possible Lives by Fleur Jaeggy (translated by Minna Proctor) {Reviewed by THOMAS}
The desire to understand must not be confused with the desire to know, especially in biography. Too often and too soon an accretion of facts obscures a subject, plastering detail over detail, obscuring the essential lineaments in the mistaken notion that we are approaching a definitive life. Such a life could not be understood. Instead a whittling is required, a paring from the mass of fact all but those details that cannot be separated from the subject, the details that make the subject that subject and not another, the details therefore that are the key to the inner life of the subject and the cause of all the extraneous details of which we are relieved the necessity of acquiring (unless we find we enjoy this as sport). Jaeggy, whose fictions remain as burrs in the mind long after the short time spent reading them, has here written three biographies, of Thomas De Quincey, John Keats and Marcel Schwob, each as brief and effective as a lightning strike and as memorable. Jaeggy is interested in discovering what it was about these figures that made them them and not someone else. By assembling details, quotes, sketches of situations, pin-sharp portraits of contemporaries, some of which, in a few words, will change the way you remember them, Jaeggy takes us close to the membrane, so to call it, that surrounds the known, the membrane that these writers were all intent on stretching, or constitutionally unable not to stretch, beyond which lay and lies madness and death, the constant themes of all Jaeggy’s attentions, and, for Jaeggy, the backdrop to, if not the object of, all creative striving. How memorably Jaeggy gives us sweet De Quincey’s bifurcation, by a mixture of inclination, reading and opium, from the world inhabited by others, his house a place of “paper storage, fragments of delirium eaten away by dust”, and poor Keats, whose “moods, vague and tentative, didn’t settle over him so much as hurry past like old breezes,” and Schwob, with his appetite for grief tracing and retracing the arcs of his friends’ deaths towards his own. These essays are so clean and sharp that light will refract within them long after you have ceased to read, drawing you back to read them again. Is the understanding you have gained of these writers something that belongs to them? Too bad, you will henceforth be unable to shake the belief that you have gained some access to their inner lives that has been otherwise denied.
A is for Art by Sarah Pepperle {reviewed by STELLA}
Fresh out of the block is a new ABC art book. This beautifully designed board book comes from the excellent Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. A is For Art is brilliant. Lively and joyful, it features art from Aotearoa and around the world — all examples from the gallery’s collection ranging from 1880 to the present day and across many art genres. Here you will both find familiar works as well as being introduced to some less well-known, and, for a child, it is all a wonderful new experience. Each work has been chosen with care to appeal to a younger audience without dumbing down the art. It’s lovingly curated and cleverly designed. The white space around the images allows them to sing on the page and text is highlighted with colour accents and a good use of changing scale to accentuate the letter and leading word/s. The text adds another layer of dialogue, complimenting the visual language in the images. It tells stories, suggests we can 'read' the artwork, and gives vocabulary in English and te reo. Turn to ‘D’ and here you will see Rita Angus’s ‘A Goddess of Mercy’ and the text “Dd is for deer friends.” And look again at this very attractive image, and there are the deer — one on each side of the goddess. On the facing page is ‘E’, a playful juxtaposition with the surprised or bemused elephant of Brent Harris’s ‘Troubled (Appalling Moment)’. For D the words tia/deer; for E arewhana/elephant are highlighted. K is kiwi and kete (made from kiwi feathers). The corresponding artists — illustrator Eileen Mayo and weaver Cath Brown. R introduces the rail (in the painting Hawkins by Rata Lovell-Smith) for the train (‘The Present Time, 60 Miles an Hour’ by Thomas Stevens) that will come with T; and Y and Z ask us to look, introducing the ideas of observation and questioning so intrinsic to appreciating art. In Z find the bee in the Willem van Royen ‘Still Life’ and in Y the sentence “The light on the lemon is soft and yellow” is pleasingly evocative for the film still by Nova Paul. These snippets are just some of the delights in A is for Art. It’s a success on so many levels. Excellent choice of artworks with a breadth of styles. There are objects, drawings, paintings, video stills, sculpture and print. There are serious considerations of art ideas in the simplest terms sitting easily alongside playful and humorous connections. It’s ABC that isn’t scared to be a little bit different while still fulfilling a function. And it will be a joy to share with young minds. If you like the gallery’s publications, we also have just received Ink on Paper (excellent), and have several of their books on our shelves.
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies.
Different for Boys by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Tea Bendix $28
Ant Stevenson has many questions, like when did he stop being a virgin? Are there degrees of virginity? And is it different for boys? Especially for boys who like boys? Ant tries to figure out the answers to his questions as he balances his relationships with three very different boys: Charlie, who is both virulently homophobic and yet close friends with Ant; Jack, whose camp behaviour makes him the target of Charlie's rage; and finally Freddie, who just wants Ant to try out for the rugby team.
"Not content with merely writing a moving coming-out story, Ness has also constructed a postmodern satire of the limitations of the young adult novel. The hormones are crackling and the dynamics within the group twist and turn as they explore their sexuality. Ness is perceptive, plots beautifully and writes like a dream." —Times
>>Look inside!
>>Ness talks about the book.
19 Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica (translated by Sarah Moses) $33
On hearing her neighbour's body plummet on to her patio, a woman's comfortable life seems to split open. A cab driver's perfectly manicured nails may be concealing grisly secrets. A woman whose partner has left her begins to act out an increasingly deranged set of instructions.In these tense, macabre stories, Bazterrica strikes to the dark heart of our desires, fears and fantasies. From the author of Tender Is the Flesh.
”In 19 Claws, Bazterrica resumes the study of the macabre that characterised Tender Is the Flesh. This time, however, the brutality of the female experience is cut through with a dark wit and a heavy dose of the fantastic.” —Guardian
”Gothic and brilliantly grim, these uneasy tales from the author of Tender Is The Flesh are as shadowy as night even in the bright glare of sunshine, as Bazterrica's darkly macabre imagination works like talon and beak, capable of tearing apart everyday situations and transforming them into something horribly chilling.” —Daily Mail
>>”Capitalism and cannibalism are the same.”
A Tidy Armageddon by BH Panhuyzen $38
The world is utterly transformed: every product of human creation has been organised by an unknown hand into a vast grid of nine-story blocks, each comprised of a single item type: watering cans, lighthouses, fake Christmas trees, helicopters, plastic spoons, and everything else Earth's culture and technology have ever produced, stacked in homogenous towers and separated by a maze of passageways. Navigating this depopulated environment, a small contingent of diverse soldiers tries to make sense of this enigmatic apocalypse while desperately searching for survivors. They are led by Elsie Sharpcot, a Cree woman who has endured the military's rampant racism and misogyny, and Dorian Wakely, her PTSD-afflicted second-in-command. Both veterans of the war in Afghanistan, they lead a group of army misfits while they all struggle — against the elements and each other — to survive. Passing with fear and wonder through this museum of human achievement, provisioning themselves from its resources, the group races to outrun the approaching winter and find a home.
"A Tidy Armageddon is a gorgeous, provocative, pitch-perfect conceptual art piece in the literary lineage of Tom McCarthy's Remainder and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was immersed from the first page into a world resembling an enormous and very organised megastore, where capitalism's last breath chastened and delighted me. Had God's hand rearranged all the things just so, or was it an advanced alien civilisation? No, it was BH Panhuyzen in passionate authority presenting me with the end of the world in a way never before imagined. Unforgettable." —Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
"Samuel Beckett meets Stephen King in an absurd and eerie coming-of-end tale that should serve as some sort of warning (but probably won't)." —Peter Darbyshire
>>Read an excerpt.
A is for Art by Sarah Pepperle $30
A joyful alphabet of art from Aotearoa and around the world, curated especially for children! Before children can read, they engage with the language of pictures. The experience of art brings joy and delight to young children, connecting them with moments of beauty and wonder in the world around them. Curated for children aged 2–4, this beautifully designed board book features full-page artworks by acclaimed artists from Aotearoa and around the world, accompanied by short, read-aloud texts. It features artworks in different media, from paintings to sculpture, photography to woodcuts, from the 1700s to the present. This stylish art book is the perfect way to introduce young children to art.
>>Have a look inside this lovely book!
Landfall 245 edietd by Lynley Edmeades $30
POETRY: Evangeline Riddiford Graham, Gregory O’Brien, Philip Armstrong, Nick Ascroft, Rebecca Ball, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Medb Charleton, Janet Charman, Jennifer Compton, Brett Cross, Jodie Dalgleish, Jackie Davis, Mark Edgecombe, Shirley Eng, Alexandra Fraser, Amber French, Tim Grgec, Lincoln Jaques, Paula King, Brent Kininmont, Jackson McCarthy, Maria McMillan, Michael Mintrom, Ruben Mita, Josiah Morgan, Emma Neale, Bill Nelson, Claire Orchard, Lorenz Pöschl, Nafanua Purcell Kersel, Brett Reid, Derek Schulz, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Nicola Thorstensen, Steven Toussaint, Tim Upperton, Nicholas Wright
FICTION: Rebecca Ball, Holly Best, Jonny Edwards, Danielle Heyhoe, Zoë Meager, Annabelle O’Meara, Lisa Onland, James Pasley, Rachel Smith, Rachael Taylor, Phoebe Wright
NONFICTION: Airini Beautrais, Xiaole Zhan
ART: Gavin Hipkins, Amanda Shandley, Anya Sinclair
And announcing the winner of the 2023 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition!
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov (translated by Reuben Woolley) $38
Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea. A ragtag group gathers round a mysterious grave in Lychakiv Cemetery — among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych are teaming up to discover the source of the ‘anomalies’. Meanwhile, Taras — who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra — is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money. The young lovers don't know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city. Shot through with Kurkov's unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait one the world's most intriguing cities.
”A latter-day Bulgakov . . . A Ukrainian Murakami.” —Guardian
”A post-Soviet Kafka.” —Daily Telegraph
”A kind of Ukrainian Kurt Vonnegut.” —Spectator
”This beguiling literary postcard from a recent, now supplanted past brims with the bittersweet charm and rueful satire of the books, such as Death and the Penguin, that established Kurkov's international reputation.” —Financial Times
>>Long-listed for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
>>Read an extract.
>>”I owed Lviv a novel.”
>>A profession that necessarily starts as a hobby.
Monsters: A fan’s dilemma by Claire Dederer $38
Can we—and, if so, should we—separate an artist’s work from their biography? What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our unruly feelings about it? Claire Dederer explores these questions and our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and her own behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same.
”Monsters is an incredible book, the best work of criticism I have read in a very long time. It's thrillingly sharp, appropriately doubtful, and more fun than you would believe, given the pressing seriousness of the subject matter. Claire Dederer's mind is a wonder, her erudition too; I now want her to apply them to everything I'm interested in so I can think about them differently.” —Nick Hornby
”In a world that wants you to think less — that wants, in fact, to do your thinking for you — Monsters is that rare work, beyond a book, that reminds you of your sentience. It's wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off.” —Lisa Taddeo
Parisian Days by Banine [Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff] (translated by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova) $40
The Orient Express hurtles towards the promised land, and Banine is free for the first time in her life. She has fled her ruined homeland in what is now Azerbaijan and unhappy forced marriage for a dazzling new future in Paris. Now she cuts her hair, wears short skirts, mingles with Russian emigres, Spanish artists, writers and bohemians in the 1920's beau monde — and even contemplates love. But soon she finds that freedom brings its own complications. As her family's money runs out, she becomes a fashion model to survive. And when a glamorous figure from her past returns, life is thrown further into doubt. Banine has always been swept along by the forces of history. Can she keep up with them now? Tanslated into English for the first time.
“ delightful memoir of an eventful life set against the helter-skelter of the 20th century. Banine herself shines through as an intelligent and independent spirit, longing for her own self-determination.” —Financial Times
>>The eventful life of Banine.
>>Also by Banine: Days in the Caucasus.
Sparrow by Hames Hynes $38
Raised in a brothel on the Spanish coast in the waning years of the Roman Empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, the herb-scented garden, then the loud and dangerous tavern, and finally the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes of every ethnic background from the far reaches of the empire – do their mysterious business. When not being told stories by his beloved ‘mother’ Euterpe, he runs errands for her lover the cook, while trying to avoid the blows of their brutal overseer or the machinations of the chief wolf, Melpomene. A hard fate awaits Sparrow, one that involves suffering, murder, mayhem, and the scattering of the little community that has been his whole world. Through meticulous research and bold imagination, Hynes brings the entirety of the Roman city of Carthago Nova – its markets, temples, taverns of the lowly and mansions of the rich – to vivid life. Sparrow recreates a lost world of the last of old pagan Rome as its codes and morals give way before the new religion of Christianity.
”Utterly engrossing, vivid, and honest, this coming of age story reaches across millennia to grab us by the throat.” —Emma Donoghue
”An unnerving, exhilarating, unflinching portrayal of sex, slavery and sisterhood, takes the reader to one the most pitiless backstreets of the Roman Empire in its final years only to discover there — between the violence and the suffering, amid the Decline and the Fall — enduring tenderness and love. This is a novel of ancient times for our times. And it is splendid, a work of scorching distinction.” —Jim Crace
In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on trial by Mona Chollet (translated by Sophie R. Lewis) $25
What remains of the witch hunts? A stubborn misogyny, which still tints the way our societies look at single women, childless women, aging women, or quite simply, free women. Who was historically accused of witchcraft, often meeting violent ends? What types of women have been censored, eliminated, repressed, over the centuries? Mona Chollet takes three archetypes from historic witch hunts, and examines how far women today have the same charges levelled against them: independent women; women who choose not to have children; and women who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing. Finally, Chollet argues that by considering the lives of those who dared to live differently, we can learn more about the richness of roles available, just how many different things a woman can choose to be.
”A thought-provoking, discursive survey by Mona Chollet, a bright light of Francophone feminism . Chollet has emerged as a quiet revolutionary, pushing back against the cliches and the patriarchy that shapes them.” —The New York Times
Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the language of power by Clare Hunter $30
I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that shaped her.
At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In sixteenth-century Europe women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.
”In this charmed feat of imagination and learning, the beauties and disasters of Mary Stuart's life unfold again, and her nimble brain and fingers are alive. It is a personal project, with the flavour of a memoir, but dense with fascinating information that the less inspired might miss. Clare Hunter is at ease in this glittering, alien world, and moves through it as a woman, with Mary's 'joyouestie' in mind as well as her suffering.” —Hilary Mantel
Children of the Rush by James Russell $21
It's 1861, and gold fever is sweeping the world. Otherwise sensible adults have gone mad and will do anything to get their hands on the precious metal. But two children have been caught up in the rush. Michael and Atarangi couldn't be more different, but they share one thing: each has a remarkable and magical talent. Circumstances conspire to bring the children together in the remote and inhospitable goldfields, and they're thrust into a world where lawlessness, greed, and cruelty reign. When the children find out that a cut-throat gang stalks the goldfields, preying upon the innocent, they have a choice to make: turn a blind eye, or fight back?
>>2023 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults — finalist
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng $37
The new novel from the author of The Gift of Rain and The Garden of Evening Mists. It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert's, comes to stay. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley's friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she sees him as he is — a man who has no choice but to mask his true self. As Willie prepares to leave and face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including how she came to know the charismatic Dr Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China. And more scandalous still, she reveals her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts — a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction. A novel of public morality and private truth, based on real events.
”The House of Doors is brilliantly observed and full of memorable characters. It is so well written, everything so effortlessly dramatised, the narrative so well structured and paced that this is a book that will mesmerise readers far into the future.” —Colm Toibin
”A tremendous feat of literary imagination. Highly evocative, richly observed and entirely convincing, it is a tour de force!” —William Boyd
Sibley Backyard Birding postcards $50
100 postcards featuring beautiful images from David Sibley’s Field Guide to Birds.
>>Like this!
Pod by Laline Paull $38
Ea has always felt like an outsider. As a spinner dolphin who has recently come of age, she's now expected to join in the elaborate rituals that unite her pod. But Ea suffers from a type of deafness that means she just can't seem to master spinning. When catastrophe befalls her family and Ea knows she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave the pod. As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. Not to mention the ocean itself seems to be changing: creatures are mutating, demonic noises pierce the depths, whole species of fish disappear into the sky above. Just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life. Laline Paull explores the meaning of family, belonging, sacrifice — the harmony and tragedy of the pod — within an ocean that is no longer the sanctuary it once was, and which reflects a world all too recognisable to our own. From the author of The Bees.
”Laline Paull succeeds splendidly in rising to the most important literary challenge of our time — restoring voice and agency to other-than-human beings.” —Amitav Ghosh
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Grace (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Allison C. Meier $23
Grave takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Allison C. Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However, graves turn out to be not always so subtle, reverent, or permanent. While the indigent and unidentified have frequently been interred in mass graves, a fate brought into the public eye during the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice today is not unlike burials in the potter's fields of the colonial era. Burial is not the only option, of course, and Meier analyses the rise of cremation, green burial, and new practices like human composting, investigating what is next for the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life.
Contents: 1. The Grave: Our House of Eternity; 2. Navigating Through Necrogeography; 3. The Living and the Dead; 4. The Privilege of Permanence; 5. An Eternal Room of Our Own; 6. No Resting Place; 7. To Decay or Not to Decay; 8. New Ideas for the Afterlife; 9. Dead Space.
>>Other excellent ‘Object Lessons’.
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS
Read our latest NEWSLETTER to find out what we’ve been reading and recommending, about the latest new releases, and to learn about the winner of the 2023 International Booker Prize.
26.5.23
The Limits of My Language: Meditations on depression by Eva Meijer (translated from Dutch by Antoinette Fawcett) {reviewed by THOMAS}
He did not want to write any aphoristic gems about depression, and he did not want to read any, either. When he wrote, Depression sharpens the tools but makes them too heavy to use, he crossed this out immediately, it was simply not true, after all, depression blunts the tools and makes them too heavy to use, which is hardly an aphoristic gem. Nothing to be gained. As Eva Meijer points out in her excellent and well-written book The Limits of My Language, the sensitivities that may appear to be a side benefit of depression might in any case just as well be precursors of the depression that renders them useless, at least in those times when the depression is at its most obliterative and those sensitivities are impossible to recognise as any sort of benefit, no matter how kindly others might assure us that they are. Meijer’s book is not a self-help book, thank goodness, he thought, but a thoughtful account of the experience of depression, or rather the non-experience that so often constitutes depression, and of the philosophical and practical considerations entailed by that (non)experience. It is what Meijer terms “the expired present” that makes it impossible for the depressed person to see the point in anything, even, or most especially, their most basic everyday needs; if they do see value in anything, they cannot see any possible connection between this value and themselves. The depression prevents the depressed person from achieving the benefits of agency and identity that commonly result from (or produce) a person’s experience of time (agency being a connection with a future (through intention); identity being a connection with the past (through memory)). “When you are depressed, all the time is between-time or anti-time, just as the depressed person is a between-person, not dead but certainly not alive (if only you were actually dead or alive).” The present is erased, he thought, or I am erased in that present, which is the same thing, at least for me. This depression, a state with no feelings, with no capacities, is indistinguishable from brain damage, he thought, that is, unless I do have actual brain damage, which sometimes I wonder; this self-loss, this moment-by-moment existence that resembles an erasure, this inability to actually achieve anything that I would recognise as thought or action, or, at best, the achievement of what seems to me a mere simulacrum of thought, a mere simulacrum of action, the best I can achieve, that I have learned to achieve, on a good day, simulacra that may carry me through that day, though their connection to me is less than tentative, as far as I can see, but not nothing. “Depression isn’t always something that you can solve with your head,” writes Meijer, who has herself slowly learned, over the years, her own habits and techniques that help to pull her though depressive periods, or to avoid some of their worst effects (for instance, by putting “into brackets” what cannot be removed (a useful editing technique)). “Time persists in moving forward and moving you too,” she writes. Although thinking may have its uses, even as far as depression is concerned, the withstanding of depression, if it is to be withstood, seems to come from some other something in oneself, perhaps, he thought, something to do with the physical aspects of oneself, whatever they are, or the physical aspects of the world around, so to call it, or of some relationship between the two, physical aspects being more conducive to the physics of momentum, he supposed, which can carry us though. Even though I hardly believe in momentum, at least as far as I am concerned, here I am, carried forward, there is at least some evidence that I have been susceptible to being carried forward, despite it all, for what it’s worth, at least so far. What is it that enables or compels us to continue, he wondered. Whatever depression makes most difficult could be the best tool to use against it, but depression makes that tool blunt and makes it too heavy to use. All we can hope to do, he thought, and this is not nothing, is learn to withstand it all, perhaps, anchored maybe by whatever is too heavy to be used, and allow time to pass. This is not nothing, at all.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
After watching a mediocre documentary about the always-interesting Brontë sisters, I stepped into our library to see what the shelves could offer up. And there was Anne, waiting to be read. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was not only insistent that it be read but that it should be read aloud. So I began and this has been the nightly ritual over the last fortnight. (BTW, excellent with dinner preparation and even more excellent for doing the dishes, too — that may sound a bit domestic, but it was a fair division of labour. I read while the other one gets more pleasure out of the dishes than was previously imagined. Maybe classics and dishes could be a new trend). The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a delight, unexpectedly funny — excellent satire and social commentary here, the right amount of drama (all those horrendous aristocratic men) and romance (love, loyalty, duty, honour — which is best?), and an excellent (and rather modern) framework from which it all hangs. This is the story-within-the-story, richly rewarding in the best meta-fiction sense. And so it opens with Gilbert Markham, country gent, writing a letter to his friend in anticipation of conveying a good tale. The letter proceeds for a number of chapters in which Markham describes the arrival of a particular Mrs. Graham to the neighbourhood, mysteriously living with her young son at the rundown Wildfell Hall. A widow, who is trying to sketch out her living by selling her paintings, Mrs. Graham is the talk of the community. And she hasn’t turned up at church yet. Strikingly attractive and by manner a woman of some standing, her presence alone (without a man) is causing a stir. A mix of emotions from attraction to curiosity to jealousy and, for a few, indifference swirl in the conversation in the parlours and lanes of the shire. Anne Brontë keeps her a mystery to the reader too! We are on tenterhooks, wanting to know more, but we, like Markham’s friend, must await his revelations. As Markham strikes up a friendship with Mrs. Graham (instigated initially by her young son’s attraction to a playmate — the gentleman’s dog), it doesn’t take long to develop into something more serious, and with this intensification comes a difficult situation for the mysterious woman. Mrs. Graham, as we are well aware, has a past that she is trying to keep under wraps, and, as time passes, the gossip flourishes, so not only are Markham's attentions problematic, but so is containing her secret. As you can imagine, things come to a head. But all is not revealed immediately. No, Markham (Anne) takes us aside and says read this (a diary in the lady’s hand) and back we go to the story and a tale well-told, until the eventable end, where our teller takes us in hand again to complete his letter to his friend. So what’s so wonderful about a convoluted tale? Anne Brontë’s telling. Sharp and fearless, Brontë critiques her society, social class, hypocrisy, and honour, and lays it bare. Cue — the ruthless and pathetic drunkards. Cue — the cruel deeds and arrogance of men. Cue — the problem with duty! Brontë also is wonderfully witty, taking no prisoners in her merciless ridicule of several of her players. Cue — the sanctimonious ponderings of the minister. Cue — the shallow pursuit for title, power, and favour. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is as compelling in its main drama about a woman making a stand against expectations seeking freedom and independence (recognised by many critics as an early feminist novel), as it is for its minors who whirl around the tale, shocking as well as amusing us.
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies.
Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü (translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely) $23
A lyrical autofictional account of the author's fight to survive depression and carve out her own path in 1950s and 60s Istanbul. The narrator of Cold Nights of Childhood grows up in a rapidly changing Turkey, where the atmosphere is nationalist, patriarchal, technocratic. As a misfit in search of freedom, love and happiness, she escapes to Berlin, is overcome by depression on her return, and trapped in a psychiatry clinic for five years. After electroshock therapy and inhumane treatment, she is released into the care of friends and family, making tentative steps in a halting journey towards recovery. In her unique, unstructured style, Tezer Özlü explores the extremity of her inner life and the painful pleasures of memory.
Trilogy by Jon Fosse (translated from Norwegian by May-Brit Akerholt) $35
Trilogy is Jon Fosse's critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas (Wakefulness, Olav's Dreams, and Weariness), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council's Prize for Literature in 2015.
”It is easy to see Fosse's work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more." —New York Times
"An exploration of zones that are murky, dangerous, crucial, where craftmanship and inspiration seek and repulse each other." —Le Monde
>>Pure prose.
>>Other books by Jon Fosse.
The North African Cookbook by Jeff Koehler and Ellie Smith $80
Life in North Africa heavily revolves around that most important of passions, food. Drawing on Berber, Arabic, and Ottoman influences as well as French, Spanish, and Italian ones, this gorgeous cookbook explores the culinary diversity of the Maghreb, a region that spans Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. With 445 delicious and authentic North African dishes that can easily be recreated at home, this book reveals an exciting cuisine that is as varied and fascinating as the countries it covers. Authentic ecipes and stunning photography bring the region to life, from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast in the west and the north, across farmland, orchards, plateaus carpeted in wheat, and mountain peaks, to the great Sahara in the south and east. Essays scattered throughout the book introduce key ingredients and cultural traditions, celebrating the food culture in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as well as providing a brief history of North Africa itself.
”A thorough, investigative journey through the food of the Maghreb, full of comforting and inviting recipes.” —Yotam Ottolenghi
”If you're interested in the vibrant food of North Africa, this book is absolutely essential. Smart and beautifully written, it is filled with wonderful recipes you'll want to cook.” —Ruth Reichl
>>Look inside!
Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins $35
This poetic book traces the fall of the Langrishes—a once wealthy, highly respected Irish family—through the lives of their four daughters, especially the youngest, Imogen, whose love affair with a self-centered German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in lush, erotic, and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the invasion and decline of this insular family, but the decline of Ireland and Western Europe as a whole in the years preceding World War II. In the tradition of great Irish writing, Higgins's prose is a direct descendent from that of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and nowhere else in his mastery of the language as evident as in Langrishe, Go Down.
”The best Irish novel since At Swim-Two-Birds and the novels of Beckett." —The Irish Times
”The ferocious and dazzling prose of Aidan Higgins, the pure architecture of his sentences, takes the breath out of you. He is one of our great writers." —Annie Proulx
>>The book was adapted for television by Harold Pinter.
Knowing What We Know: The transmission of knowledge, from ancient knowledge to modern magic by Simon Winchester $38
With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things—no need for maths, no need for map reading, no need for memorisation—are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness? Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion—from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundaneum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.
"Winchester has written about information systems before, as in his 1998 book The Professor and the Madman, about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. In his robust new compendium, the author examines those systems in far grander scope, from mankind's earliest attempts at language to the digital worlds we now keep in our pockets. This isn't just a rollicking look back; Winchester asks what these systems do to our minds, for good and ill." —Los Angeles Times
Pathogenesis: How germs made history by Jonathan Kennedy $40
Humans did not make history — we were its host. This humbling and revelatory book shows how infectious disease has shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome, and the rise of Islam. How did the Black Death lead to the birth of capitalism? And how did the Industrial Revolution lead to the birth of the welfare state? Infectious diseases are not just something that happens to us, but a part of who we are. The only reason humans don't lay eggs is that a virus long ago inserted itself into our DNA. In fact, 8% of the human genome was put there by viruses. We have been thinking about the survival of the fittest all wrong- human evolution is not simply about our strength and intelligence, but about what viruses can and can't use for their benefit.
”Pathogenesis doesn't only cover thousands of years of history - it seeks radically to alter the way the reader views many of the (often very well-known) events it describes.” —Rachel Cooke, Observer
>>A golden age for microbes.
Devil-Land: England under siege, 1588—1688 by Clare Jackson $40
Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land' — a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's revisionist account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed. Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state' — endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes use of eyewitness accounts — many penned by stupefied foreigners — bring to life this century of flux.
”Jackson reappraises Stuart England in two distinctive ways: The result is a richer picture not only of England under the Stuarts and as a republic, but also of its neighbours. The research is impressive, the writing lucid and every page thought-provoking. It is also tremendously entertaining.” —London Review of Books
>>Talking Tudors.
Brutes by Dizz Tate $33
In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, the girls edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives. Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the 'we' of young friendship, and the moment those bonds are broken forever.
”Whip-smart and warped.” —Guardian
The Maiden by Kate Foster $38
"In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me." Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian Nimmo is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess. Only a year before, Christian was leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn't the only woman in Forrester's life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead. A compelling historical novel based on an actual case, with a feminist revisionist twist.
”The Maiden is a masterpiece. A thrilling historical murder tale but so much more. Vivid, evocative and full of humanity. The fact this is inspired by a true story makes it all the more chilling and relevant. I was transported to 17th Century Edinburgh so completely, I'm sure a part of me is still there.” —Janice Hallett
How to Think Like a Philosopher: Essential principles for clearer thinking by Julian Baggini $33
Pay attention. As politics slides toward impulsivity, and outrage bests rationality, how can philosophy help us critically engage with real world problems? Question everything. Drawing on decades of work in philosophy including a huge range of interviews with contemporary philosophers, Julian Baggini sets out how philosophical thought can promote incisive thinking. Introducing everyday examples and contemporary political concerns — from climate change to implicit bias — How to Think Like a Philosopher is an exploration of the techniques, methods and principles that guide philosophy, and how they can be applied to our own lives. Seek clarity, not certainty. Covering canonical philosophers and focal movements, as well as introducing new voices in contemporary philosophy, this is both a short history of philosophy and an accessible, practical guide to good thinking.
>>Browse our philosophy shelves.
The Mud Puddlers by Pamela Rushby $19
Twelve-year-old Nina is not happy. Her scientist parents are spending a year in Antarctica. And Nina's being sent to London to stay with her Aunt Bee, an intertidal archaeologist, who lives on a converted barge on the Thames. She's also a keen mud larker, combing the river mud for fascinating, long-forgotten articles from past lives. Nina arrives with an Attitude. Her parents have never left her behind before. It takes time for her to settle in, helped by the MudPuddlers, a local group of enthusiastic amateur mud larks, and especially by Molly, an elderly MudPuddler living on a nearby barge. Molly draws Nina into the magic and mystery of the ancient river and its treasures. When she finds herself stranded in time, in the Blitz in 1940, Nina and a very unwilling fellow traveller, Tom, become runaways, fumbling their way across wartime England, desperate to return to London. Will they ever see their families again?
Accidental Czar: The life and lies of Vladimir Putin by Andrew S. Weiss and Brian “Box” Brown $58
A graphic novel of the life of the Russiaqn leader. In the West's collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe and in Ukraine. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? And how much of Putin's tough-guy persona is a calculated performance? Andrew S. Weiss, a former White House Russia expert, and Brian "Box" Brown seeks to show how Putin has successfully cast himself as a cunning, larger-than-life political mastermind—and how the rest of the world has played into the Kremlin's hands by treating him as one.
>>Look inside.
Illegitimate Authority: Facing the challenges of our time by Noam Chomsky and C.J. Polychroniou $26
In these wide-ranging interviews, Chomsky addresses the urgent questions of this tumultuous time, speaking to the rapidly deteriorating quality of democracy in the United States and rising tensions globally. Noam Chomsky examines the crumbling of the social fabric and the fractures of the Biden era, including the halting steps toward a Green New Deal, the illegitimate authority of the Supreme Court, in particular its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19. Chomsky also untangles the roots of the War in Ukraine, the diplomatic tensions among the United States, China, and Russia, and considers the need for climate action on an international scale. Illegitimate Authority exposes those who wield power in their own self-interest and plots framework for how we can stand together and fight against injustice.
The Verdigris Pawn by Alysa Wishingrad $15
The heir to the Land should be strong. Fierce. Ruthless. At least, that's what Beau's father has been telling him his whole life, since Beau is the exact opposite of what the heir should be. With little control over his future, Beau is kept locked away, just another pawn in his father's quest for ultimate power. That is, until Beau meets a girl who shows him the secrets his father has kept hidden. For the first time, Beau begins to question everything he's ever been told and sets off in search of a rebel who might hold the key to setting things right. Teaming up with a fiery runaway boy, their mission quickly turns into something far greater as sinister forces long lurking in the shadows prepare to make their final move. But it just might be Beau who wields the power he seeks — if he can go from pawn to player before the Land tears itself apart.
Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano $38
An involving and ultimately hopeful graphic novel about two young people on different continents whose lives are set on new courses by climate change. Yuki lives in an increasingly deserted Inuit township in Nova Scotia. One day she sets out into the wilderness of the Arctic tundra planning to photograph a rare grolar bear (a terrifying grizzly-polar crossbreed created by climate change) — if she can prove it's a grolar, she can protect it from being shot. With only her faithful dog for company and adrift on a fragment of melting glacier, she finds herself being stalked across the changing wilderness by a starving grolar bear, with only her wits and her harpoon to keep her alive. Sami lives in a fishing village on the Bay of Bengal. But because of the ever-rising ocean level, each day is a struggle to survive. One night, Sami sets out to return to his old, submerged family home, alone. He takes a deep breath and dives beneath the moonlit waters, hoping to find his past. But a cyclone is coming…
>>Look inside.
>>From the same team: Illegal.
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
Is memory the cement of your identity? Are we in danger of a new world order facilitated by nostalgia?
Georgi Gospodinov’s wholly remarkable and enjoyable novel TIME SHELTER (translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel) has just been awarded the 2023 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE.
In this compelling novel of ideas, large concepts and fierce insights are carried on a generous tide of humour and human warmth, resulting in a memorable and thought-provoking reading experience.
When Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ to treat dementia patients by recreating previous decades in minute detail, the simulacra become so convincing that more and more healthy people seek to use the clinic as a ‘time shelter’ to escape the horrors of our present, and memory itself becomes a threat to our future.
What the judges said: “Time Shelter is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear? Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us.
In scenes that are burlesque as well as heartbreaking, he questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative. But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison. It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world.
It is a novel that invites reflection and vigilance as much as it moves us, because the language – sensitive and precise – manages to capture, in a Proustian vein, the extreme fragility of the past. And it mixes, in its very form, a great modernity with references to the major texts of European literature, notably through the character of Gaustine, an emanation from a world on the verge of extinction.
The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free.
The past is only ever a story that is told. And not all storytellers have the talent of Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel.”
>>Your copy.
NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS
>>Read our latest NEWSLETTER to find out what we’ve been reading and recommending; about new arrivals, fresh out of the carton; and to find out the winning books in the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
19.5.23
The Beat of the Pendulum by Catherine Chidgey {reviewed by THOMAS}
What are you looking at?
Nothing. I’m not looking at anything.
Up there in the corner?
No, I’m concentrating. Trying to.
What on?
I’m writing a review of this Catherine Chidgey book.
You’re writing a review today? Why? It's not even deadline day. You’ve never written reviews before deadline day before. I like the cover.
It’s by Fiona Pardington. The photograph.
What is it?
A moth’s wing, or a butterfly’s. It’s probably some reference to Nabokov. He was a lepidopterist. I don’t know what, though. Nabokov not being a writer I particularly appreciate.
Why is it called The Beat of the Pendulum?
That’s a reference to Proust. Something he wrote about writing novels. It’s in the epigraph. The writer as the manipulator of the reader’s experience of time. The writer as able to make the reader experience time as such, by speeding it up. Or by slowing it down, I suppose. Proust might be mistaken on this, though.
What?
I am interested in the differential of the reader’s and the characters’ experience of time. The writer’s inclusion or exclusion of detail controls the reader’s awareness and makes the book move at a varying pace, that’s what detail is for, slowing down, speeding up, leaping over swathes of time that would have been experienced by the characters, if they weren’t fictional, a kind of hypothetical time, so to call it, but inaccessible to the reader because those moments are one step deeper into fiction than the text reaches.
Sounds more like a concertina than a pendulum.
Yes. The book should be called The Squeeze of the Concertina. I’m not sure readers are necessarily aware, consciously, of the difference between text time and narrative time, notwithstanding Proust, though they might well be.
What has this got to do with the book? It’s just a transcript of all the conversations the author overheard or that she was involved in. Is it even a novel?
Just? Have you read this book?
No. But [N.] read it. Or read some of it. Or a review. Or talked to someone who had read it.
Or some of it. Or a review.
Yes.
And said?
That it was self-indulgent.
I don’t agree with that. At least, it is less self-indulgent than most novels. I mean, what kind of person, other than a novelist, would be so presumptuous as to expect others to spend hours of their time witnessing their make-believe?
But people like doing that.
That’s beside the point.
And the point is?
The point is that this book turns the tables on the author, subjects her to the very kinds of scrutiny that most novels are constructed to deflect, if I can damn all writers with one blow, or at least the kinds of writers that write the kind of make-believe that the ‘people’ you referred to earlier like to indulge in.
There are other kinds?
So in a way this novel is a kind of literary gutting inflicted upon the author by the rigours of the constraint she has chosen, Knausgaard without the interiority.
It’s like Knausgaard?
No. It’s more a kind of extension of the Nouveau roman project outlined by Robbe-Grillet: a turning-away from the tired novelistic props of plot, character, meaning, a verbal ‘inner life’, inside-out, and all that.
Robbe-Grillet wanted a novel made only of objects, surfaces, objective description. This book doesn’t have any of those.
Hmm. Yes. This book has cast off all those. It’s even more rigorous. There are only words, spoken by people about whom we know nothing but what the words tell us, or imply. We are immersed in language, it is our medium, or the medium of one strand of our consciousness. Our sensory awareness and our verbal awareness are very different things.
Are you giving a lecture here?
I suppose this book, by removing both the referents for language and the matrix of interpretation, or context, the conceptual plinths that weigh down novels, is testing to what extent speech is any good at conveying anything by itself.
Conceptual plinths?
There aren’t any. The book reminds me, a little, of Nathalie Sarraute, The Planetarium perhaps, where the novel is comprised only of voices. In this book the reader does the same sort of work to ‘build’ the novel around the words.
Is that fun?
Fun? Well, actually, yes, this book is very enjoyable to read. I thought I would read a bit, get the idea, and then take some pretty large running stitches through it, so to speak, but, even though nothing much happens in the way of plot, it is just an ordinary life, after all, the book is hugely enjoyable, and frequently very funny, you want to read every bit, because it so perfectly captures the way people say things, the way thought and language stutter on through time. The book is takes place entirely in the present moment, a present moment regulated by language. By the beat of the sentence. What is said is unimportant. Relatively unimportant.
It doesn’t matter what happens?
Why should anyone care about that? Apart from the characters, so to call them.
She spent a year spying on people and writing down whatever they said, whether she was in the conversation, probably quite private conversations, or things she overheard people saying? How could she do that?
How could she not do that? A novelist is always spying on other people, not to overhear what people say but how they say it, not to find out information but to find out how people approach or are affected by or transfer information.
You don’t think a novelist is predatory of plot, then? Or scavenging for plot?
You can’t hear or see plot. There’s no such thing, objectively. So I suppose you can’t steal one, only impose one. The realist novel, or the so-called realist novel, as a form, makes the most outrageous of its fantasies, its fallacies, in the area of plot. I think that’s unjustified.
But people like plot.
Yes.
Yes, I suppose plot has little to do with objective reality.
So to call it. Yes. In fact, coming back to what you said before about objectivity. Dialogue is the only objective form of writing. Description is prone to error, to the interposition of the viewer to the viewed, and no-one would pretend that interiority was anything but an unreliable guide to the actual…
No-one as in not even you?
…which is its richness, I suppose. But no-one would dispute the saying of what is said.
No-one as in not even you?
Verbatim is actuality, or, I mean, resembles actuality, at least structurally. Verbatim creates an indubitable immediacy for the reader, which is very seductive, and clocks time against speech.
Why write conversation?
Conversation is propulsion. It is rocket fuel for a stuck writer, for any writer. It gets the writer out of the way of the text and lets the characters take responsibility for its progression. Conversation gives at least the illusion of objectivity. Conversation draws the reader into the illusion of ‘real time’.
Even if it’s not.
No. Irrelevant, though.
But this novel, The Beat of the Pendulum, purports to be a record of things actually said, in the real world.
Yes, I believe it.
How is that a novel?
All novels are a kind of edited actuality, some more swingeingly edited than others. Otherwise they wouldn’t be believable.
She’s edited this?
Well, obviously there’s been some sort of selecting process going on, some choosing. A year’s worth of “I’m putting on some washing. Is there anything you want to add to the load”/”There are some socks on the floor in the bedroom, if you wouldn’t mind.” might get a bit tedious.
But is not out of keeping with the project.
Well, no. I suppose not. But then it wouldn’t be a novel. Literature is potentised by exclusion rather than by inclusion. What makes this book a novel is the rigour of its form. It is an experiment in form. A laboratory experiment, if you like.
You said this book is funny. Where does the humour come from?
Scientific rigour is indistinguishable from humour.
The world is a relentless funfair?
If you look at it dispassionately. And a relentless tragedy. There are some very memorable and enjoyable passages, revelatory I would call some of them.
Such as?
There is a long passage, maybe a dozen pages, which just records the sales pitch of a sales assistant showing Catherine and her husband a carpet shampooing machine. The use, or misuse, of language is just so well observed, it’s hilarious and tragic. Likewise the patter used by Fiona Pardington when taking Chidgey’s portrait, or there’s the compound pretension and insecurity of the conversations in the creative writing classes Chidgey tutors, or the attempt to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to an inattentive child. Humour often comes from the simultaneous impact of multiple contexts upon language.
I thought humour comes from noticing the world as it actually is. That’s why humour is often cruel.
Or all the medical appointments, or the woman overheard in a waiting room talking about her jewellery. “I’m a silver person but my three daughters are gold people,” or something like that. Chidgey reveals the distortions, the structural flaws and inconsistent texture of the verbal topographies we wander through.
Hark at him.
And the way words act as hooks or burrs that accrete details to entities in ways sufficiently idiosyncratic to make them specific.
So you get to know the characters in this book? Even though nobody’s named.
No, not really. At least, not closely. Surprisingly, perhaps. But then an overdefined personality, or ‘character’ is a definite flaw that fiction, even — sometimes — good fiction, but certainly — always — bad fiction, is prone to fall into. What we call identity is really just a grab-bag or accretion of impressions and tendencies, and multiple voices, including incompatible impressions and contradictory tendencies and conflicting voices. We are much less ourselves than we pretend we are.
Speak for yourself.
Attachment to what we, for convenience, call persons, is something imposed upon actuality and is not something inherent in it. Chidgey’s book is not involving in the way we sometimes expect novels to be involving, there’s no story, or any of those other appurtenances, but there is both a fascination and a shared poignancy that comes with this cumulative evidence of the feeling that actual life is slipping away, with each beat of the pendulum, its loss measured out in words.
Each squeeze of the concertina.
The moments whose residue is on these pages will never return. The words both immortalise them and mark their evanescence. It’s both an anxiety and a release from anxiety.
So our anxiety about our vulnerability magnifies our vulnerability?
That’s a fairly accurate observation. That’s what we use words for.
Ha. The book is arranged on a day-by-day basis through the year.
Yes.
You’re supposed to read only what’s on today’s date, then, for a year.
Haha. That would be a bit religious. Yes, you could.
That would be an experiment in reading.
It’s been done.
But not in a novel.
I don’t know.
What are you doing?
I’m putting my computer away.
You’re not going to write the review?
All this talking has used up the time I was going to write it in.
Sorry.
Don’t say that.
Sorry.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, our situation, two fictional characters engaged in a fictional conversation about an objective novel comprising only actual, ‘real-life’, material.
What are you saying?
We’re both fictional, authorial conceits if you like. Mind you, you are rather more fictional than I am. Someone might mistake me for an actual person.
But you’re not?
Not on the evidence of our conversation.
Book of the Week: Catherine Chidgey's latest inventive, acute and entertaining novel THE AXEMAN’S CARNIVAL has just been awarded the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acord Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Narrated by Tama, a magpie who very cleverly 'does all the voices' and mimics even an author's relationship to their story and characters, the novel treats life in the backblocks of rural Aotearoa as a scenario in which humans fail to suppress their inner faults and play out their ambivalences towards each other and toward the so-called natural world.
>>All hail the Book of the Year.
>>Each book is a different creature.
>>Book of the Week: Bird of the Year.
>>Life on the farm.
>>Pecky reviews the book.
>>An excellent conversation with Sara Baume (author of Seven Steeples).
>>"There's a fire under me."
>>The New Zealand 12" Championship.
>>Read Stella's review of The Wish Child.
>>Read Thomas's review of The Beat of the Pendulum.
>>Remote Sympathy.
>>Quardleoodleardlewardledoodle #1
>>Quardleardleoodlewardledoodle #2
>>Other winners in the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
>>Your copy of The Axeman's Carnival.
NEW RELEASES (19.5.23)
Click through to find out more — and to purchase your copies!
August Blue by Deborah Levy $40
”If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.”
Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live? Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.
”August Blue is an enigmatic novel. It’s sparsely written, with evocative sentences, yet crisp ideas. Readers of Levy’s other novels will recognise the themes of mothers and daughters (Hot Milk), of heat as an oppressor as well as an escape (Swimming Home), and enigmatic actions (The Man Who Saw Everything), but will see a change in the telling. Levy seems to draw her memoir style (from her 'Living Autobiography' trilogy) into this novel, creating a fiction that has few boundaries” —Stella
>>Read Stella’s entire review.
>>How Deborah Levy can change your life.
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan $23
Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman’s life at the racetrack—the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner’s circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the “particular language” of “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody”—with economy and integrity. Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a remarkable feat of synthesis. As Scanlan puts it, “I wanted to preserve—amplify, exaggerate—Sonia’s idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self.” Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.
“Magical.” —Lydia Davis
“Scanlan’s inventive debut novel documents a woman’s hardscrabble yet jubilant life and her dedication to working with racehorses. Shaped from interview transcripts with a real-life trainer named Sonia (no last name given), Scanlan’s vignettes carry readers across the arc of Sonia’s life...but the most beautiful moments are quiet ones, in which Sonia processes the choices she and others have made, and of the consequences she faces in a field dominated by men. With this sharp and lovely tribute to a singular woman, Scanlan continues to impress.” —Publishers Weekly
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Dominant Animal.
Ink on Paper: Printmakers of the Modern era edited by Peter Vangioni $55
Revolutionised by the introduction of the linocut, early to mid twentieth-century printmaking is one of the most progressive and dynamic periods in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. This exquisitely illustrated book features ambitious and delightful etchings, lithographs, wood-engravings and linocuts by some of the country’s finest artists.
– Engaging introduction to the establishment of printmaking in Aotearoa by Peter Vangioni
– Short biographical texts on each artist.
– Full page colour illustrations of more than 100 artworks.
– Etchings, lithographs, wood-engravings and linocuts drawn from collections around the country.
– Beautifully designed hardcover book with dust jacket and marker ribbon.
>>Look inside!
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to station by Redmer Yska $50
Guided by Mansfield's journals and letters, Redmer Yska traces her restless journey in Europe, seeking out the places where she lived, worked and died. Along the way, he meets a cast of present-day Mansfield devotees who help shape his understanding of the impressions Mansfield left on their territories and how she is formally (and informally) commemorated in Europe. In Katherine Mansfield’s Europe, Yska takes us to the villas, pensions, hotels, spas, railway stations, churches, towns, beaches and cities where Mansfield wrote some of her finest stories. Hauntingly, these are also places where she suffered from piercing loneliness and homesickness, rooms in which she endured illness and extreme physical hardship, windows from which she gazed as she grappled with her mortality. With maps and stunning photography, this engaging and well-researched book richly illuminates Katherine Mansfield’s time in Europe and reveals her enduring presence in the places she frequented.
”Redmer Yska, once again, brings his sharp eye, his wry personal take, to the facts and legends of Katherine Mansfield. In A Strange Beautiful Excitement, he showed how we can no longer truly understand her apart from the city that was first hers, and then his own. Now, with her stories and legends in hand, he traces how in Europe she survives in places that were deeply important to her, and where still she trails devotees and alternative facts. This book is a delight — never solemn, always alert to even the faintest whispers, among buildings and memories and her swathes of slightly evangelical 'true believers.'“ —Vincent O’Sullivan
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman $38
Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution. Compelling, beautifully written and genuinely moving, echoing the fragmentary and reflective works of writers like Barthes and Cioran, this is a story that has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema and revolution.
”Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is not a sorrowful kill-your-heroes recanting. It’s much more interesting than that – a freewheeling, hopscotching study of the Fassbinder allure and an investigation of Penman’s younger self…It’s a book about a film-maker but also, hauntingly, about the way our tastes and passions change over time.” —Anthony Quinn, Observer
>>I don’t just want you to love me.
>>It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track.
A Mountain to the North, A Lake to The South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by László Krasznahorkai (translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) $38
The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him. This novel by International Booker Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai — perhaps his most serene and poetic work — describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area, making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.
”Krasznahorkai throws down a challenge: raise your game or get your coat ... the intensity of his commitment to the art of fiction is indisputable ... exhilarating, even euphoric.” —Hari Kunzru
”Laszlo Krasznahorkai writes prose of breathtaking energy and beauty. He has elevated the novel form and is to be ranked among the great European novelists.” —Colm Toibin
”The universality of Krasznahorkai's vision rivals that of Gogol's Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.” —W.G. Sebald
”This is a book preoccupied with infinity. Krasznahorkai’s project, it seems, is to thwart the passing of time through a program of looking. It takes millions of years of chance occurrences to make a bird in its perfect machinery and just a moment for it to be destroyed, impossible to be remade.” —Laura Preston, The Believer
>>A garden in this wretched world.
>>The infinite mistake.
>>Other books by Krasznahorkai.
Nocturnal Apparitions: Essential stories by Bruno Schulz (translated by Bill Stanley) $28
The stories in this collection are rich, tangled, and suffused with mystery and wonder. In the narrowing, winding city streets, strange figures roam. Great flocks of birds soar over rooftops, obscuring the sun. Cockroaches appear through cracks and scuttle across floorboards. Individuals careen from university buildings to dimly lit parlour rooms, through strange shops and endless storms. Crowded with moments of stunning beauty, the 15 stories in his collection showcases Schulz's darkly modern sensibility, and his essential status as one of the great transformers of the ordinary into the fantastical: August, A Visitation, Birds, Pan, Cinnamon Shops, The Street of Crocodiles, Cockroaches, The Gale, The Night of the Great Season (from Cinnamon Shops); The Book, The Age of Genius, A July Night, My Father Joins the Firefighters, Father's Final Escape (from Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass); Undula— Schulz's recently discovered first published story. Excellent new translations.
”One of the most original imaginations in modern Europe.” —Cynthia Ozick
Ducks: Two years in the oil sands by Kate Beaton $70
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, a tight-knit seaside community. After university, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coast Canadians who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Katie will be far more than she anticipates. Arriving in Fort McMurray, Katie finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. As one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. For young Katie, her wounds may never heal. Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
>>Look inside!
>>How to pay off your student loans.
>>Humour and humanity in the oilfields.
>>”I need to tell you this.”
Elixir: In the valley at the end of time by Kapka Kassabova $50
In the valley of the Mesta, one of the oldest inhabited river valleys in Europe, where the surrounding forests and mountains are a nexus for wild plant gatherers, Kapka Kassabova finds a story with vast resonance for us all. Elixir is an unforgettable exploration of the deep connections between people, plants and place. Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism, and experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope. The people of the valley are keepers of a rare knowledge, not only of mountain plants and their properties, but also of how to transform collective suffering into healing.Immersive and enthralling, at its heart Elixir is a search for a cure to what ails us in the Anthropocene. It is an urgent call to rethink how we live - in relation to one another, to the Earth and to the cosmos.
”The mark of a good book is that it changes you. I've rarely been so aware of an internal change being wrought, word by word, as I have these past days immersed in Kapka Kassabova's alchemical prose. She had me under her spell from page one.” —Guardian
”Her ability to bring out the best in her subjects is born of a genuine horror at the unsustainability of the ways we live and the toll they are taking on places such as the Mesta valley. But Elixir is not a lecture: like the forests and fells it inhabits, it is by turns dark and mysterious and beautiful. Ecologically minded writing can often tell too much and show too little, but Kassabova sensibly lets the landscape and locals do the talking. —Financial Times
This Is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes) $38
Set in and around the city of Veracruz in Mexico, This Is Not Miami delivers twelve devastating stories that spiral from real events. These cronicas — a genre unique to Latin American writing, blending reportage and fiction — probe the motivations of murderers and misfits, compelling us to understand or even empathise with them. Melchor is like a ventriloquist, using a range of distinctive voices to evoke the smells, sounds and words of this fascinating world that includes mistreated women, damaged families, refugees, prisoners and even a beauty queen.As in her hugely acclaimed novels Hurricane Season and Paradais, Fernanda Melchor's masterful stories show how the violent and shocking events that make the headlines are only the surface ruptures of a society on the brink of chaos."
”Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage, and has the skill to pull it off.” —Samanta Schweblin
>>The house on El Estero.
The Russo-Ukranian War by Serhii Plokhy $40
On 24 February 2022, Russia stunned the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on the family and friends who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the outbreak of the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider outcomes. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a conflict that has burned since 2014, and that, with Russia's attempt to seize Kyiv, exploded a geo-political order that had been cemented since the end of the Cold War. With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and down in the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the conflict, from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics. Based on decades of research and his unique insight into the region, he argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's demonstration of unity and strength, has presented a profound challenge to Putin's Great Power ambition, and further polarized the world along a new axis.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris $32
Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents — whether Muslim, Croat or Serb — push the makeshift barriers aside. Zora, an artist and teacher, is focused on her family, her students, her studio in the old town. But when violence finally spills over, she sees that she must send her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind. As the city falls under siege and everything they loved is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Inspired by real-life accounts of the longest siege in modern warfare, only thirty years ago, Black Butterflies is a breathtaking portrait of disintegration, resilience and hope.
”In this compelling and convincing debut novel, Morris brilliantly evokes a world slipping, day by day, under the surface of the opaque waters of war. Dark and yet starkly beautiful, Black Butterflies is a narrative of how violence scars the soul of a city and its inhabitants. It is at once a testament to the victims and survivors of the Siege of Sarajevo, to the power of art and to Morris's skills as a storyteller, all the more keenly felt for the subtlety with which they are deployed.” —Aminatta Forna
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Love Me Tender by Constance Debré (translated by Holly James) $28
When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him. She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance's approach is monastic and military — she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night. A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.
”'Committed to truth-telling, no matter how rough, but also intriguingly suspended in a cloud of unknowing and pain, Love Me Tender is a wry, original, agonizing book destined to become a classic of its kind.” —Maggie Nelson
”A deadpan, tensile thread of a voice: calm, Camusian, comic, stark, relentless, and totally hypnotic.” —Rachel Kushner
”In cruel, brilliant sentences that tighten around the truth like teeth, a fierce character emerges; a new kind of rebel in a queer masterpiece.” —Holly Pester
>>A conversation about the exit.
100 Things to Know about Architecture by Louise O’Brien, Dalia Adillon and Leanne Daphne $33
Learn all about the world of architecture in only 100 words! This book explores the most iconic buildings from around the world as well as the history of architecture, from basic huts to incredible skyscrapers. From columns to pyramids, each of the carefully chosen 100 words has its own 100-word long description and colourful illustration, providing a fascinating introduction to amazing architecture from throughout history. From the familiar to the jaw-dropping, the medieval to ultra-modern, this is an inspiring look at some of architecture’s greatest developments. With a clean, contemporary design, each word occupies a page of its own. A large striking illustration neatly encapsulates the accompanying 100 words of text. A fascinating introduction to cool buildings in a fun and accessible format, this is the perfect gift for aspiring architects or curious young minds!
>>Look inside!
A selection of books from our shelves.
Find out more:
The OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS recognise some of the outstanding books published in Aotearoa in the last year.
Read what the judges have to say about the winners of each section, and then click through to secure your copies.
JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION
The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
“The Axeman’s Carnival is a novel that has been clasped to New Zealanders’ hearts. It is narrated by the unforgettable Tama, a fledgling magpie taken in and raised by Marnie on the Te Waipounamu high country farm she shares with champion axeman husband Rob. Without anthropomorphism, Tama is constantly entertaining with his take on the foibles and dramas of his human companions. An underlying sense of dread is shot through with humour and humanity. Chidgey’s masterful writing explores the diversifying of rural life, the predicament of childlessness, the ageing champ, and domestic violence. She provides a perspicacious take on the invidious nature of social media and a refreshingly complex demonstration of feminist principle. The Axeman’s Carnival is unique: poetic, profound and a powerfully compelling read from start to finish.”
MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY
Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) (Auckland University Press)
“Alice Te Punga Somerville’s collection, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised, voyages out like a waka seeking new ground, visiting four areas of life: language in ‘Reo’, identity in ‘Invisible Ink’, work in ‘Mahi’ and love in ‘Aroha’. Readers are challenged but crucially invited in to accept that challenge and reach a new understanding of what it is to be a Māori woman scholar, mother and wife in 2022, encountering and navigating uncomfortable and hostile spaces. Always Italicise shines for its finely crafted, poetically fluent and witty explorations of racism, colonisation, class, language and relationships. A fine collection, establishing and marking a new place to stand.”
BOOKSELLERS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION
Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand by Nick Bollinger (Auckland University Press)
“With its homage to the look and feel of a countercultural tract, Jumping Sundays is a triumph of production and design. The cover alone is one of the best of the year and signals the visual excellence that follows: vibrant endpapers, distinctive typography and bountiful images on an appropriately uncoated stock. Yet Jumping Sundays is more than just a well-designed book. Drawing on archival research and rich personal narratives, Nick Bollinger has written a compelling account of an epoch-making period, linking international trends to the local context in a purposeful-yet-playful way. A joy to read and to hold, Jumping Sundays is a fantastic example of scholarship, creativity and craft.”
GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD
The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi by Ned Fletcher (Bridget Williams Books)
“The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi is a meticulously constructed work of scholarship that provides surprising and essential analysis of Te Tiriti. It will shift and inform debates about the intentions of those who constructed and signed the Treaty and how we interpret it today. Though it is weighty, Ned Fletcher’s book leads readers through a series of clear and well-evidenced hypotheses. It provides colourful and necessary detail about the characters and context involved in the creation of the English text of Aotearoa’s founding document. Fletcher’s comprehensive examination sheds new light on the document's implications and contributes fresh thinking to what remains a very live conversation for all of us that call this country home.”
BEST FIRST BOOK AWARDS
HUBERT CHURCH PRIZE FOR FICTION
Home Theatre by Anthony Lapwood (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Pākehā) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
“Home Theatre, a collection of interlinked short stories, is unfailingly inventive. Narratives move between the twentieth and twenty-first century, with strong characterisation and genuine voice. The stories are humane and warm at the same time as being cerebral and challenging. Anthony Lapwood writes skilfully in all genres, ranging smoothly from domestic stories to science fiction to love stories to historical fiction, and sometimes all four at once. He demonstrates a keen interest in technology, both contemporary and of the past. Lapwood’s writing is sophisticated and of great promise.”
JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY
We’re All Made of Lightning by Khadro Mohamed (We Are Babies Press, Tender Press)
“Khadro Mohamed’s We’re All Made of Lightning takes us to distant lands, Egypt and Somalia, in heightened sensory language as she grieves for her homeland. Heart-breaking vulnerability and anger are revealed after a man had taken a knife and sliced straight through the sky on the March 15 attacks. Time, memory, dreams and reality are fluid and woven into lyrical poems and prose poems that consider what she would take if she were to go back to where she came from.”
JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION
Kai: Food Stories & Recipes from my Family Table by Christall Lowe (Bateman Books)
“Kai has everything you’d expect from an internationally recognised food photographer: elegant and enticing images, topped with well-placed illustrations and the compelling use of colour. But it is the substance of the book that shines. Whānau stories and recipes provide the reader with a wider insight into te ao Māori, creating a homage to food that is both grounded in tradition yet modern. Kai is the Edmonds cookbook for our time.”
E.H. MCCORMICK PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION
Grand: Becoming my Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin Random House)
“This exquisite debut masterfully weaves together the threads of Noelle McCarthy’s life, and her relationship with her mother, in a memoir that connects with truths that unite us all. Poignant and poetic language renders scenes with honesty and colour. Intimate, but highly accessible, the fragility and turbulence of the mother-daughter relationship is at times brutally detailed. Despite this, Grand is an uplifting memoir, delicate and self-aware, and a credit to McCarthy’s generosity and literary deftness.”
Three by Ann Quin
Boredom is a sub-optimal mode, he thinks, but it is at least a functional mode compared with the revulsion it conceals, boredom at least connects one end of the day to the other, boredom is doubtless detrimental but it is by definition tolerable, let us all hope for boredom. That is not a good way to start his review, he thinks, it has some bearing on the book but it is not a good introduction to the book. Two is a situation of stasis, he thinks, three is dynamic, three is the catalyst that reveals the harms hidden in two, the harms that mathematics suppressed mathematics reveals, or not mathematics, physics perhaps, or chemistry, more likely. This also is not a good way to start. Well, he thinks, the review is far enough through not to worry any longer about starting it, a bad start is at least a start, that is something, I can adjust the performance using the choke, or perhaps the throttle, I need to find out the difference between these two obstructions, he thinks, these two forms of respiratory impediment, our relationship with engines is a violent one, he thinks, and this thought stalls the review. There is no access to the interior save through performance, he thinks, restarting, there is perhaps only performance, who can know, a middle class couple converse, the words pass between them but also bounce off their surroundings, language is a force-field, he thinks, a sonar, and a conversation is the pattern of disturbance, the pattern of interference, produced by two emitters, or should that be transmitters, of language. In this book, he thinks, Quin reproduces, well actually produces, that disturbance, those two voices, the Ruth voice and the Leon voice, as they run together as one entity, caught on the page, as if there is anything about a novel that is not on the page. In the Ruth-and-Leon sections of the novel, these verbal slurries, that is not the word, are both Ruth’s and Leon’s, caught on the framework of descriptions as bald and precise and mundane as stage directions, they are stage directions in the past tense, so hardly directions, stage descriptions perhaps. We learn that S, a younger, working-class woman who had lived with them, has committed suicide by drowning, Quin’s fate eventually incidentally, she left a note, but they still hope it might have been an accident. Are they guilty? In S’s room they find some tapes she has recorded, and her journals, and these are transcribed, if that is the word, inscribed is more accurate perhaps but we have to play the fiction game so transcribed is the better word, in other sections of the novel, but Ruth and Leon do not find either the absolution nor the indictment they both hope for and fear in these tapes and these journals, the tapes and the journals merely complicate the picture, add other layers of performance, leave more unsaid than said. The more that is unsaid, the greater the weight of what is unsaid, the stronger its gravity, the more distorted the said, the said, even in its utter mundanity, points always at the source of its distortion. As the book progresses, though progresses is not the word, there is no progress in Quin, we read also a tape made by Ruth and a diary written by Leon as, respectively, Leon and Ruth gain access to them, they take access, if that is the way to put it. There is no progress but the tension increases, tension in the past, if that which is in the past can be said to increase, each mundanity is freighted, that is not the word, with the catalytic action of each one upon each other two, a sexual static that builds and cannot discharge but reveals ultimately the fundamental destructive incompatibility not only of Ruth and Leon but of any combination of Ruth and Leon and S, and, perhaps, of any persons whatsoever, if Quin held this misanthropic view, perhaps she did. The instance of sexual violence eventually revealed is no surprise, but its awfulness floods backwards through all that precedes it in the book. Boredom is all that holds the horrible at bay, but the horrible is no less horrible for that.