NEW RELEASES (7.7.23)

New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.

Lioness by Emily Perkins $37
”You know how we say we devoured a story, and also that we were consumed by it? Eating and being eaten. It was like that with Claire, for me.” From humble beginnings, Therese has let herself grow used to a life of luxury after marrying into an empire-building family. But when rumours of corruption gather around her husband's latest development, the social opprobrium is shocking, the fallout swift, and Therese begins to look at her privileged and insular world with new eyes. In the flat below Therese, something else is brewing. Her neighbour Claire believes she's discovered the secret to living with freedom and authenticity, freeing herself from the mundanity of domesticity. Therese finds herself enchanted by the lure of the permissive zone Claire creates in her apartment a place of ecstatic release. All too quickly, Therese is forced to confront herself and her choices just how did she become this person? And what exactly should she do about it? The long-awaited novel (it has been eleven years since The Forrests!) from one of Aotearoa’s most notable writers.
>>Can a woman change her life?
>>A million unseen things.

Matariki by Gavin Bishop $16
When the Matariki cluster rises, each of the nine stars represent the promise of the year ahead. This stunning board book will guide our youngest tamariki through each star’s meaning, with simple, evocative words in te reo Māori and English, and with bold, engaging artwork. Mānawatia a Matariki! Happy Matariki!
>>Look inside!

The Pole, And other stories by J.M. Coetzee $40
Six stories exploring moral and emotional quandaries, often with wry humour. In the lead story, 'The Pole', set in Spain, concert pianist Witold attempts to play out a romantic fantasy with local music devotee Beatriz, who is considerably younger and whose marriage has gone cold. In person and in their correspondence, he is persistent, she resistant, but curious. It doesn't end quite as she might have imagined. The redoubtable character of Elizabeth Costello, now in her seventies, appears in four stories, engaging in philosophical discussions about death, motherhood and ethics with her adult children, in particular her son John. In the last story, 'The Dog', a young woman confronts a vicious dog- '"Curse you to hell!" she says. Then she mounts her bicycle and sets off up the hill.'
”To be hilarious about Heidegger is quite an achievement, but J.M. Coetzee pulls it off in one of these stories. Others, written in his beautifully limpid prose, raise profound questions about love, romantic and unromantic, growing old, and how we relate to animals. A marvellous collection that will delight and surprise you.” —Peter Singer
”Freed from literary convention, Mr Coetzee writes not to provide answers, but to ask great questions.” —Economist

The Skull: A Tyrolian folktale by Jon Klassen $36
In a big abandoned house, on a barren hill, lives a skull. A brave girl named Otilla has escaped from terrible danger and run away, and when she finds herself lost in the dark forest, the lonely house beckons. Her host, the skull, is afraid of something too, something that comes every night. Can brave Otilla save them both? Klassen’s artwork is better than ever, and the book is a beautifully produced hardback, with lovely paper stock.
>>Look inside (and see what the skull is frightened of)!

The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell) $25
Veronica is late, and Julian is increasingly convinced she won't ever come home. To pass the time, he improvises a story about trees to coax his stepdaughter, Daniela, to sleep. He has made a life as a literature professor, developing a novel about a man tending to a bonsai tree on the weekends. He is a narrator, an architect, a chronicler of other people's stories. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Julian finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life — of their lives together. What combination of desire and coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will the future — and possibly motherless — Daniela think of him and his stories? Why tell stories at all?
”When I read Zambra I feel like someone's shooting fireworks inside my head.” —Valeria Luiselli
>>Other books by Alejandro Zambra.

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley $38
In another visceral and involving novel, Daisley portrays the brutal effects of war on two New Zealand brothers. The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up. They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though. Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there.
”Stephen Daisley writes with the potent economy of a short-story writer, and he triumphs with this visceral account that will linger in your mind long after the last page.” —North & South

A Line in the World: A year on the North Sea coast by Dorthe Nors (translated from Danish by Caroline Waight)               $40
There is a line that stretches from the northernmost tip of Denmark to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland in the south-west. Dorthe Nors, one of Denmark's most acclaimed contemporary writers, grew up on this line; a native Jutlander, her childhood was spent among the storm-battered trees and wind-blasted beaches of the North Sea coast. In A Line in the World, her first book of non-fiction, she recounts a lifetime spent in thrall to this coastline — both as a child, and as an adult returning to live in this mysterious, shifting landscape. This is the story of the violent collisions between the people who settled in these wild landscapes and the vagaries of the natural world. It is a story of storm surges and shipwrecks, sand dunes that engulf houses and power stations leaching chemicals into the water, of sun-creased mothers and children playing on shingle beaches. Nicely written. 
"A beautiful, melancholy account of finding home on a restless coast. In Dorthe Nors's deft hands, the sea is no longer a negative space, but a character in its own right. I loved it." —Katherine May, author of Wintering
>>The shortest night of the year.

What an Owl Knows: The new science of the world’s most enigmatic birds by Jennifer Ackerman $40
For centuries, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented over 30,000 years ago, in the Chauvet cave paintings in southern France, and our enduring awareness and curiosity of their forward gaze and nearly silent flight has cemented the owl as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, foresight and intuition. But what, really, does an owl know? Though our infatuation goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to study these birds in great detail. While more than 270 species exist today, and reside on every continent except Antarctica, owls are far more difficult to find and study than other birds - because while not only cryptic and perfectly camouflaged, owls are most active in the dark of night. Joining scientists on this maddening and elusive treasure hunt, Jennifer Ackerman brings alive the rich biological history of these animals and reveals the remarkable scientific discoveries into their brains and behaviour. She explores how, with modern technology and tools, researchers now know that owls talk all night long - without opening their bills. That their hoots follow a series of complex rules, allowing them to express needs and desires. That owls duet. They migrate. They use tools. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows, some dine on scorpions. Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls, and dives deep too into why this bird endlessly inspires and beguiles us.
>>What we can learn from owls.

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt $37
Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.
>>(Unheroic).

I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner $35
"I was sleeping in what might reasonably be described as a ditch, though I tried not to think of it in those terms for morale reasons." Robert Skinner arrives in the city, searching for a richer life. Things begin badly and then, surprisingly, get slightly worse. Pretty soon he’s sleeping rough and trying to run a literary magazine out of a dog park. His quest for meaning keeps being thwarted, by endless jobs, beagles, house parties, ill-advised love affairs, camel trips and bureaucratic entanglements. I’d Rather Not is about work, escape and that something more we all need.
”This book is like a big, properly made gin and tonic drunk outside in a garden on a perfect Saturday afternoon.” —Cate Kennedy
”No one writes better when the stakes are lower.” —Sam Vincent
>>Sunshine through the cracks in the wall.

Material World: A subtsantial story of our past and our future by Ed Conway $40
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. They built our world, and they will transform our future. These are the six most crucial substances in human history. They took us from the Dark Ages to the present day. They power our computers and phones, build our homes and offices, and create life-saving medicines. But most of us take them completely for granted. In Material World, Ed Conway travels the globe — from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe, to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan, to the eerie green pools where lithium originates — to uncover a secret world we rarely see. Revealing the true marvel of these substances, he follows the mind-boggling journeys, miraculous processes and little-known companies that turn the raw materials we all need into products of astonishing complexity. As we wrestle with climate change, energy crises and the threat of new global conflict, Conway shows why these substances matter more than ever before, and how the hidden battle to control them will shape our geopolitical future.
”Lively, rich and exciting, and full of surprises. Underlines that to understand global geopolitics, you need to understand natural resources and geology.” —Peter Frankopan

This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham $28
Sometimes you need to delve into the past, to make sense of the present   Alice had not expected to spend most of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: is Y2K going to be a thing? Y2K was not a thing. But there were worse disasters to come. Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague. Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury Set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the last hundred years becomes something else altogether. Now in paperback.
”This Devastating Fever is thrillingly audacious fiction. Sophie Cunningham’s entwined subjects are profound — Leonard Woolf and colonialism, the crises of the present day, the challenges of creative work — and she writes commandingly and inventively about them all. The result is an extraordinary novel.” —Michelle de Kretser
'This is a great novel of enduring significance and enormous beauty.’ – Sydney Morning Herald
>>Click!
>>Grace in the trying.

Horizons: A global history of science by James Poskett $32
A radical retelling of the history of science that foregrounds the scientists erased from history. In this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe. The blinkered Western gaze focusing on individual 'genius' — Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - was only one part of the story. The reality was an utterly global, non-linear pattern of cross-fertilisation, competition, cooperation and outright conflict. Each rupture in history carved fresh channels for global exchange. Here, for the first time, Poskett celebrates how scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific were integral to this very human story. We meet Graman Kwasi, the African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria; Hantaro Nagaoka, the Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom; and Zhao Zhongyao, the Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter. Now in paperback.

The Bear House by Meaghan McIsaac $24
Moody Aster and her spoiled sister Ursula are the daughters of Jasper Lourdes, Bear Major and high king of the realm. Rivals, both girls dream of becoming the Bear queen someday, although neither really deserve to, having no particular talent in... well, anything. But when their Uncle Bram murders their father in a bid for the crown, the girls are forced onto the run, along with lowly Dev the Bearkeeper and the half-grown grizzly Alcor, symbol of their house. As a bitter struggle for the throne consumes the kingdom in civil war, the sisters must rely on Dev, the bear cub, and each other to survive — and find wells of courage, cunning, and skill they never knew they had.

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks $37
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London where she was born and raised. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide — a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry. But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape. When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her first to Bristol — where she is caught up in a criminal gang and the police riots sweeping the country — and then to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
Short-listed for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Event Factory by Renée Gladman $38
A ‘linguist-traveler’ arrives by plane to Ravicka, a city of yellow air in which an undefined crisis is causing the inhabitants to flee. Although fluent in the native language, she quickly finds herself on the outside of every experience. Things happen to her, events transpire, but it is as if the city itself, the performance of life there, eludes her. Setting out to uncover the source of the city's erosion, she is beset by this other crisis—an ontological crisis—as she struggles to retain a sense of what is happening. Gladman’s novels about the invented city-state of Ravicka, a foreign ‘other’ place are fraught with the crises of contemporary urban experience, not least the fundamental problem of how to move through the world at all.
”More Kafka than Kafka, Renee Gladman's achievement ranks alongside many of Borges' in its creation of a fantastical landscape with deep psychological impact." —Jeff VanderMeer
"In Renee Gladman's extraordinary Event Factory, the world in all its languaged variousness adumbrates a 'yellow-becoming' map for our deepest internal spelunkings, a map we don't dare do without as we negotiate, along with our intrepid narrator, the world of Ravicka, the sprawling city, where, we might say, to borrow from Gladman, 'nothing happens, nothing happens, then everything is 'said' to happen . . .' and where we might also say, to borrow from Beckett, the magnifying and minifying mirrors have been shattered and the body has, yes, 'vanished in the havoc of its images.'" —Laird Hunt
"Gladman is more fantasist than estranging analyst. The quality of her dreaming, its interior abstraction, is exquisite. Its wonder lies in how closed its shutters are to any mundane world, how far back the lanes and alleyways of its imagining recede from the proper nouns and pedestrianisms of our lives." —n+1
"The Ravikian novels exalt the primacy of language to further imaginative possibility, which dominant and oppressive regimes would shut down. Gladman's writing cleaves to the luminous. It slips through the gaps in our thinking to pluralise, queer, subvert, and mobilise. These books are strange but, through a bright and deft poetic obliquity, they shine an incomparable light onto our contemporary moment." —The White Review

VOLUME BooksNew releases
EXTINCTION by Thomas Bernhard — reviewed by Thomas

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard (translated by David McLintock) {reviewed by Thomas}

“When I take Wolfsegg and my family apart, when I dissect, annihilate and extinguish them, I am actually taking myself apart, dissecting, annihilating and extinguishing myself. I have to admit that this idea of self-dissection and self-annihilation appeals to me, I told Gambetti. I’ll spend my life dissecting and extinguishing myself, Gambetti, and if I’m not mistaken I’ll succeed in this self-dissection and self-extinction. I actually do nothing but dissect and extinguish myself.” In the first of the two relentless paragraphs that comprise this wonderfully claustrophobic novel, the narrator, Murau, has received a telegram informing him that his parents and brother have been killed in a car accident. While looking at some photographs of them at his desk in Rome, he unleashes a 150-page stream of invective directed personally at the members of his family, both dead and living. Murau is alone, but he addresses his rant to his student Gambetti in Gambetti’s absence or recounts, however accurately or inaccurately, addressing Gambetti in person at some earlier time. Gambetti, in either case, is completely passive and non-contributive, and this passivity and non-contribution acts — along with Murau’s over-identification with his ‘black sheep’ Uncle Georg, an over-identification that sometimes confuses their identities — as a catalyst for Murau’s invective, as an anchor for the over-inflation of Murau’s hatred for, and difference from, his family. Without external contributions that might mitigate Murau’s opinions, his family appear as horrendous grotesques, exaggerations that here cannot be contradicted due to absence or death. Being dead puts an end to your contributions to the ideas people have of you: stories concerning you are henceforth the domain entirely of others and soon become largely expressions of their failings, impulses and inclinations. We can have no definite idea of ourselves, though: we exist only to others, unavoidably as misrepresentations, as caricatures. Murau states that he intends to write a book, to be titled Extinction: “The sole purpose of my account will be to extinguish what it describes, to extinguish anything that Wolfsegg means to me, everything that Wolfsegg is, everything. My work will be nothing other than an act of extinction.” Murau has not been able to even begin to write this account because his hatred gets in the way of beginning, or, rather, what we soon suspect to be the inauthenticity of his hatred gets in the way of beginning. There is no loathing without self-loathing. As Murau’s invective demonstrates, there can be no statement that is not an overstatement: every statement tends towards exaggeration as soon as it is expressed or thought. By exaggeration a statement exhausts its veracity and immediately begins to incline towards its opposite, just as every impulse, as soon as it is expressed, inclines towards its opposite. Only a passive witness, a witness who does not contradict but, by witnessing, in effect affirms, Gambetti in Murau’s case, allows an otherwise unsustainable idea to be sustained. In the second half of the book, Murau returns to Wolfsegg in Austria for the funeral of his parents and brother. Until this point, Murau’s ‘character’ has been defined entirely by his exaggerated opposition to, or identification with, his ideas of others, but when he is brought into situations in which others have a contributing role, Murau’s portrayal of others and of himself in the first section is undermined at every turn. Without the ‘Gambetti’ prop, he is responded to, and, in response to these responses, he overturns many of his opinions — about his parents, his brothers, his sisters, his mother’s lover, the nauseatingly perfectly false Spadolini that Murau had hitherto admired, and about himself - and reveals his fundamental ambivalence, an ambivalence that is fundamental to all existence but which is usually, for most of us, almost entirely suppressed by praxis, by the passive anchors, the Gambettis to which we affix our desperate attempts at character. We resist — through exaggeration — indifference and self-nullification. “We’re often led to exaggerate, I said later, to such an extent that we take our exaggeration to be the only logical fact, with the result that we don’t perceive the real facts at all, only the monstrous exaggeration. I’ve always found gratification in my fanatical faith in exaggeration, I told Gambetti. On occasion I transform this fanatical faith in exaggeration into an art, when it offers the only way out of my mental misery, my spiritual malaise. Exaggeration is the secret of great art, I said, and of great philosophy. The art of exaggeration is in fact the secret of all mental endeavour.” In this second part, Murau reveals his connection with Wolfsegg and his suppressed feelings of culpability in what it represents. “I had not in fact freed myself from Wolfsegg and made myself independent but maimed myself quite alarmingly.” Separation, or, rather, the illusion of separation, is only achieved by ‘art’, that is to say, by exaggeration, by the denial of ambivalence, by the denial of complicity, by suppression: a desperate negative act of self-invention. Once his hatred of his sisters, and of his parents and brothers, has been undermined by his presence and contact with others at Wolfsegg, and without a Gambetti or Georg in his mind to sustain this hatred, the underlying reason for his hatred, a fact that he has suppressed since his childhood as too uncomfortable, the fact that has made “a gaping void” of his childhood, of his whole past, the fact to which he was a passive witness, a complicit witness, namely that Wolfsegg hid and sheltered Nazi war criminals after the war (Gauleiters and members of the Blood Order, who now attend the funeral of Murau’s father) in the so-called ‘Children’s Villa’ (which “affords the most brutal evidence that childhood is no longer possible. All you see when you look back is this gaping void. You actually believed that your childhood could be repainted and redecorated, as it were, that it could be refurbished and reroofed like the Children’s Villa, and this in spite of hundreds of failed attempts at restoring your childhood.”), can now be faced, and, on the final page of the book, at last in some way addressed. Murau also attains the necessary degree of remove to write Extinction before his own death, either from illness or, more likely, suicide. This, his last, is the only Bernhard novel I can think of in which the protagonist makes anything that resembles an effective resolution. 

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
Book of the Week: STANDING HEAVY by GauZ' (translated by Frank Wynne)

The legacies of French colonial history and the resulting fractures in Parisian society, along with the conformism and competitiveness of last-stage Capitalism are explored with great verve and humour in this sharply satirical novel in which an Ivorian immigrant working as a security guard in a department store observes the impact of vast social pressures on the miniscule particulars of everyday life. GauZ’’s supple text is filled with recognisable observations on the ‘human condition’ (so to call it), and also provides a context and texture that helps us to understand the current unrest in France.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
THE WORDS FOR HER by Thomasin Sleigh — reviewed by Stella

The Words for Her by Thomasin Sleigh — reviewed by Stella

They are there, but they are not. They are ‘gone’. They are gaps. Gaps in the photographs. Unseen by your phone. They have changed. Think this sounds surreal? It’s compelling. If you are going to read one novel this year, make it this one. The Words for Her is a master class in blending intriguing and intelligent ideas about images and words with the realist grit of surviving as a solo parent in a small provincial town; complete with a twist of dystopia and societal collapse. The collapse, a chaotic slow-motion act, is triggered by people disappearing; that is, their images disappearing. No longer uploadable, missing from their social media profiles, leaving gaps in family photographs, no longer present — no record — at social gatherings. This is a story of a mother protecting her daughter, of the power of words to create a picture, and of the intense relationship we have with the recorded, particularly digital, image. Out-sourcing our memory is possibly the crime of our times. How many times a day do we reach for our phone? How many photos do you have stored in the cloud or on file of family, friends, or yourself? How entrenched are we in the idea of who we are through the images of ourselves? If you couldn’t record yourself or your loved ones, would you feel bereft? In The Words for Her, Jodie is uneasy. She senses something lurking within her, playing at the corners of her mind. But is it a terrible thing? That she has a gift for description has helped more than one person in her life. For her friend, Miri, it released her from a bad relationship; disappearing gave her the opportunity for a new life. For her blind father, Jodie’s ‘colouring’ brings the world to life through intricate wordplay. This is so clever to read in a work of literature. For this is what reading does — creates images where we can wander. Jodie will protect Jade, her daughter, even if it means 'going out'. But can she? As danger lurks closer, someone knows what she can do, this mother has to make a choice from which there may be no return. The first time they notice a gap is while watching the news — the presenter fades away, her hands gripping the edge of the desk until they too go. The camera pans away. At first, it is strangers, then people related to someone you know, then celebrities, and then it will be someone close to you. As more people go 'out', the division between the Gaps and the Presents beds in. If you are 'present', you feel compelled to prove it. Billboards go up everywhere with smiling ‘present’ people. The Gaps seek out their own kind as they are shut out of society. There’s a shame to being 'gone', and practical problems. No longer scannable. No image on your driver’s license. Your newborn is ‘invisible’. Thomasin Sleigh brings us a wealth of ideas — even as you are carried impulsively and enjoyably forward with the plot — which are intriguing, complex (yet not inaccessible), and thought-provoking. This is my favourite kind of novel, one which layers ideas and story-telling where both the quotidian and the speculative edge against each other to reveal our present with a fresh, intelligent perspective.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
NEW RELEASES (30.6.23)

New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.

Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol $37
It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable ‘Justice League’ of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, "a vagabond from history, a runaway from time," can be saved by sex, love, and books.
"Bibliolepsy, despite all the couplings and uncouplings, is not a love story, or at least not a typical love story involving a man or a woman. It is, as the title implies, about an obsessive, overpowering love of books. For those of us who have gotten down on our hands and knees to thoroughly search bargain book bins, we will find our fervor echoed in the character of pale, biblioleptic Primi, and find Bibliolepsy dizzyingly eloquent, slightly disturbing, but ultimately strangely comforting." —Luis Katigbak, The Philippine Star
>>We never see ourselves as others see us.

Home Reading Service by Fabio Morábito (translated by Curtis Bauer) $26
After a traffic accident, Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and disabled. Stripped of his driver's licence and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he leads a dull, lonely life, chatting occasionally with the waitresses of a local restaurant or walking the streets of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the ‘City of Eternal Spring’ is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking. At first, Eduardo seems unable to connect. He movingly reads the words of Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, and more, but doesn't truly understand them. His eccentric listeners — including two brothers, one mute, who moves his lips while the other acts as ventriloquist; deaf parents raising children they don't know are hearing; and a beautiful, wheelchair-bound mezzo soprano — sense his detachment. Then Eduardo comes across a poem his father had copied by the Mexican poet Isabel Fraire, and it affects him as no literature has before. Through these fascinating characters, like the practical, quick-witted Celeste, who intuitively grasps poetry even though she never learned to read, Morabito shows how art can help us rediscover meaning in a corrupt, unequal society.
"First, the tempting promise of an almost existential discovery, then bewilderment, subtle humor, and then everything in this story that seemed small and simple strikes back with extraordinary resonance. What a pleasure it always is to read Morabito." —Samanta Schweblin
>>Poetry can be dangerous.

Granta 162: Definitive narratives of escape $33
Raymond Antrobus on performer Johnnie Ray, Marina Benjamin on playing professional blackjack, Chanelle Benz on searching for a homeland, Annie Ernaux (tr. Alison L. Strayer) on what affairs can help us bear, Richard Eyre on his grandfathers, Des Fitzgerald on losing his brother, Caspar Henderson on the sounds in space, Amitava Kumar on India today, Emily LaBarge on PTSD, Michael Moritz on antisemitism in Wales, TaraShea Nesbit on coping with a miscarriage, Roger Reeves on visiting a former site of slavery, Xiao Yue Shan on Iceland. Fiction by Carlos Fonseca (tr. Megan McDowell), Maylis de Kerangal (tr. Jessica Moore) and Catherine Lacey; photography by Kalpesh Lathigra; in conversation with Granta, Cian Oba-Smith, introduced by Gary Younge, and Aaron Schuman, introduced by Sigrid Rausing. Plus a poem by Peter Gizzi.

Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki $25
Izumi Suzuki had ideas of how things might be done differently, ideas that paid little heed to the laws of physics, or the laws of the courts.  In this new collection her skewed imagination is applied to some classic science fiction and fantasy tropes.  A philandering husbands receives a bestial punishment from a wife who'd kept her own secrets; time-travelling pop music aficionados stir up temporal bother when their nostalgia carries them away; idle high school students find themselves dropped into a adventure in another dimension, but aren't all that impressed; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars;  Emma, the Bovary-like character from Terminal Boredom's 'Forgotten', lands herself in another bizarre romantic pickle. From the author of Terminal Boredom.
>>Twisted precision.
>>A writer from the future.
>>Punk rock sci-fi.

They Call It Love: The politics of emotional life by Alva Gotby $40
Comforting a family member or friend, soothing children, providing company for the elderly, ensuring that people feel well enough to work; this is all essential labour. Without it, capitalism would cease to function. They Call It Love investigates the work that makes a haven in a heartless world, examining who performs this labour, how it is organised, and how it might change. Gotby calls this work ‘emotional reproduction’, unveiling its inherently political nature. It not only ensures people's well-being but creates sentimental attachments to social hierarchy and the status quo. Drawing on the thought of the feminist movement Wages for Housework, Gotby demonstrates that emotion is a key element of capitalist reproduction. To improve the way we relate to one another will require a radical restructuring of society.
>>How do you know you are loved?

Scream (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Michael J. Seidlinger $23
When you are born, the first thing you do is scream. Be it a response to fear, anger, sadness, or happiness, the scream is a declaration of being alive. The metal vocalist cupping the microphone blares out a deafeningly harsh scream. The drill instructor screams out commands to their soldiers. And then there's the bloodcurdling screams we know from horror films. A scream has many meanings, but it is an instinctive and reflexive action that, at its core, reveals raw emotion.Investigating popular and alternative cultures, art, and science, Michael J. Seidlinger tracks the resonance of the scream across media and literature and in his own voice.
>>Other ‘Object Lessons’.

The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls $37
The Gospel of Orla is the coming-of-age story of a young girl, Orla, and the man she meets who has an astonishing and unique ability. It is also a road novel that takes us across the north of England after the two flee Orla's village together. Here the mysteries of faith charge full bore into the vagaries of contemporary mores. A humorous, wise, deeply human and sometimes breathtaking work of lyrical fiction.
"The Gospel of Orla is written with immense control and precision so that the voice of the protagonist emerges as alive, individual and memorable. Eoghan Walls manages to make every single emotion Orla feels — every thought, response and action — utterly convincing and fresh and original." —Colm Toibin

Jena, 1800: The Republic of Free Spirits by Peter Neumann (translated by Shelley Frisch) $40
At the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. In the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in Jena. This village of just four thousand residents soon became the place to be for the young and intellectually curious in search of philosophical disruption. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then an elder statesman and artistic eminence, the leading figures among the disruptors — the translator August Wilhelm Schlegel; the philosophers Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling; the dazzling, controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel, married to August; the poet and translator Dorothea Schlegel, married to Friedrich; and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis — resolved to rethink the world, to establish a republic of free spirits. They didn't just question inherited societal traditions; with their provocative views of the individual and of nature, they revolutionised our understanding of freedom and reality.

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt $30
Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and humane portrait of a father's Parkinson's Disease, and a daughter forged by grief. Opening and closing with elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and compulsively probing the body's animal endurance and appetites, along with the metamorphoses of long illness, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt's distinctive lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice. In this collection Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising — these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love.
Winner of the 2023 Stella Prize.

‘A Bloody Difficult Subject’: Ruth Ross, te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the making of history by Bain Attwood $60
Ruth Ross is hardly a household name, yet most New Zealanders today owe the way they understand the Treaty of Waitangi — or te Tiriti o Waitangi as Ross called it — to this remarkable woman’s path-breaking historical research. Taking us on a journey from small university classes and a lively government department in the nation’s war-time capital to an economically poor but culturally rich Māori community in the far north, and from tiny schools and cloistered university offices to parliamentary committees and a legal tribunal, Attwood enables us to grasp how and why the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand law, politics, society and culture has been transformed in the last seven decades. A frank and moving meditation on the making of history and its advantages and disadvantages for life in a democratic society, A Bloody Difficult Subject is a surprising story full of unforeseen circumstances, unexpected twists, unlikely turns and unanticipated outcomes.

Malta: Mediterranean recipes from the islands by Simon Bajada $50
Over 65 recipes from the archipelago between Italy and the North African coast. Exploring his own family heritage, author Simon Bajada captures Maltese food for the home cook, with recipes including ftira, a sourdough bread drenched in tomato, tuna and olives; aljotta soup, a flavour-packed brew of fish and garlic; and pastizzi, a deliciously addictive pastry.
>>Look inside!

Pregnancy Test (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Karen Weingarten $23
In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologists-the majority of whom were men-control over information about women's bodies.However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
>>Other ‘Object Lessons’.

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New fiction by Afghan women edited by Lyse Doucet and Lucy Hannah $28
"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream." A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet. A petition writer reflects on his life as a dog lies nursing her puppies. A tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is a landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women. Eighteen writers — from the country’s two main linguistic groups Pashto and Dari — tell stories that are both unique and universal — stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity and cultural traditions.
"This book reminds us that everyone has a story. Stories matter; so too the storytellers. Afghan women writers, informed and inspired by their own personal experiences, are best placed to bring us these powerful insights into the lives of Afghans and, most of all, the lives of women. Women's lives, in their own words — they matter." —Lyse Doucet

Into the Forest: A Holocaust story of survival, triumph, and love by Rebecca Frankel $40
In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods — through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids — until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him — and to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life.

The Forevers by Cjris Whitaker $20
They knew the end was coming. They saw it ten years back, when it was far enough away in space and time and meaning. The changes were gradual, and then sudden. For Mae and her friends, it means navigating a life where action and consequence are no longer related. Where the popular are both trophies and targets. And where petty grudges turn deadlier with each passing day. So, did Abi Manton jump off the cliff or was she pushed? Her death is just the beginning of the end. With teachers losing control of their students and themselves, and the end rushing toward all of them, it leaves everyone facing the answer to one, simple question... What would you do if you could get away with anything? A gripping YA novel.

The Germ Lab: The grusome story of deadly diseases by Richard Platt and John Kelly $23
A comprehensive history of diseases, infections, plagues, and pandemics for young readers. The Germ Lab features case histories of specific epidemics and pandemics, including Covid-19, ‘eyewitness’ accounts from the rats, flies, ticks and creepy-crawlies who spread the most deadly viruses, plus plenty of fascinating facts and figures on the biggest and worst afflictions. Discover how bacteri, viruses and parasites are beaten through the work of scientists and the development of vaccinations.

VOLUME BooksNew releases
WHISK — Cookbooks at Volume

Kai for Matariki. It’s mid-winter and Matariki is approaching. It’s a time to connect with whānau and friends. And what better way to celebrate than to share food? Whether you are laying down a hāngī, looking for a hearty winter treat, or a vegan feast, you’ll be sure to find something special in our selection of Aotearoa cookbooks.

In Kai, you’ll find the perfect match of story and food. The award-winning title celebrates the gathering of food and the gathering of people. Award-winning food photographer Christall Lowe invites you to join her whanau table and experience an abundance of mouthwatering dishes, a veritable feast for the eyes and for the stomach. Kai is a passionate homage to a life deeply rooted in food, where exquisite flavours weave seamlessly with cherished food memories.

Hiakai is an outstanding cookbook. Monique Fiso is a modern-day food warrior, taking Māori cuisine to the world. Ranging between history, tradition and tikanga, as well as Monique's personal journey of self-discovery, it tells the story of kai Māori, provides foraging and usage notes, an illustrated ingredient directory, and exquisite recipes that give this ancient knowledge new life. Hiakai offers up food to behold, to savour and celebrate.

European-inspired vegan food from Flip Grater, musician and owner of iconic plant-based delicatessen, Grater Goods in Christchurch. The Grater Good highlights food that is truly delicious and about indulgence, yet happens to be good for you and the planet. The recipes in this book are unfussy, unpretentious and shareable. Flip encourages you to gather around tables, break bread and leave a ton of crumbs like the French do.

In her third book, My Darling Lemon Thyme: Every Day, Emma Galloway offers you quick and easy recipes, using readily available ingredients and simple techniques. All the recipes are vegetarian and gluten-free recipes you can trust, for every season, every day. Perfect for busy family life. Nourishing and flavour-filled dishes alongside tips and tricks for your home kitchen.


Left to right — internal pages from Kai, Hiakai, The Grater Good, Every Day.
(Click on the images to advance.)

VOLUME BooksWHISK
DANCE PRONE by David Coventry — reviewed by Stella

Our theme for Volume Focus this week is music; specifically music in novels. Of the eight we selected from our shelves, I’ve read and reviewed four of them. The most recent, Deborah Levy’s August Blue, probably the most well-known David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, and two very different, but both brilliant, novels Dance Prone and The Chimes from Aotearoa authors David Coventry and Anna Smaill. The Chimes I read back in 2015 when I interviewed Smaill for the Arts Festival. Her debut novel is highly memorable and if you haven’t read it, you should pop it on the top of your list. If you have, good news — she has a new book out in November! Dance Prone was published in that weirdest of years, 2020. So if you missed it, here’s my review:

Dance Prone by David Coventry

Remember those gigs when your body was a sledgehammer slamming itself any which way and your aural senses were overwhelmed in the best hedonistic way; where the dance floor was small and cramped, where sometimes you ducked a fist and danced on. The opening lines of David Coventry’s novel, Dance Prone, gives us the viewpoint of Con, the lead singer of a post-punk band in mid-80s America watching the chaos unfold. Con is up for it, pushing to the edge of control, looking for perfection in chaos with his band, Neues Bauen. Yet like Coventry's first novel, The Invisible Mile, the setting isn’t exactly the theme. His brilliant debut took out the best first book at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2016, was picked up for international publication, and translated into numerous languages. Dance Prone is just as brilliant. It’s an affecting novel about trauma, memory and its fallout where language, pace, and tension are expertly pitched and the chaotic music scene notches the decibels up to a level to absorb you in this world. Though it’s not all high-intensity. The reflective passages, descriptions of people and place keep us anchored; and the dark humour keeps us amused, even when the psychological aspects of Con’s story threatens to flood our senses. We meet Con over several distinct periods in his life (between the 80s when he is a young man and 2020 when he is in his early 50s) as he intersects with his past band-mates and re-engages, or attempts to, with pivotal incidents. Not far in, we are beset by a shocking incident. It is wholly unexpected to the reader as it is to Con. Suddenly violence is very near and very real. This incident sets off a trigger of actions and inactions from Con and a crazy reaction from Tone, his Kiwi bandmate. As Tone recovers in hospital and the band tours the dives and front lounges of fans, Con finds himself split in two — before and after, and bereft of explanation and knowledge. Here we start to dig into the themes of denial and memory or the erasure of fact. In the desert, appropriately, at an indie music gig complete with existential philosophy, this all comes to a head. As the story moves back and forth in time, the action and telling unfolds alongside Con’s awareness. As he hides from the truth, the truth is hidden from the reader. What happens in Phoenix is only revealed by a scratchy video of the band’s last gig seen by Con in Marrakech in 2019 where he is searching for Tone, now living in the remote mountains with a group of artist-activists. Add to this a sweet romance, some great riffs on bands, the indie scene and philosophical rants, seemingly senseless behaviour, and cravings for artistic perfection and you have a deft and nuanced novel. And Coventry can write. Each sentence places you where you want to be, each conversation adds another dimension and the plot unfolds with a tension that keeps the bowstring taut and rewards with the aim of the arrow. Intelligent, intimate, and raw Dance Prone is stunning.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
THE COST OF LIVING by Deborah Levy — reviewed by Thomas

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy {reviewed by Thomas}

“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards,” observed Søren Kierkegaard, quoted by Deborah Levy in this account of her struggle for the re-establishment of intellectual freedom and literary momentum in the period following her "escape from the shipwreck” of her marriage and death of her mother. What seems like blundering is only blundering because one is out of the rut to which one had been assigned, because moving forwards while facing backwards is necessarily tentative, because “a new way of living” comes at a cost that cannot be prepaid. Levy quotes Heidegger: “Everyone is the other and no one is himself,” but her aim, in her life and in her writing, is to get “as close to human subjectivity as it is possible to get.” Moving towards the “vague destination of a freer life,” Levy moves with her daughters to a tower block where the heating and the water function sporadically, where her neighbour berates her for parking her electric bicycle in front of the building to unload her shopping and where the practical details of life become more problematic, more graspable, more contestable, more real. The Cost of Living is  full of details that eschew meaning other than their function as points upon which the whole mechanism of “living” can pivot and flex and find new forms. Levy’s near neighbour offers her a garden shed in which to write, and, as she furnishes it around herself, “it was there that I began to write in the first person, using an *I* that is close to myself but is not myself.” The non-writing life of a writer provides perspective for the writer exactly to the extent that it limits the writer’s production. There can never be an easy (and thereby fatal) accommodation between the literary and quotidian demands upon a writer’s time and energies, but it is exactly this unease, this ambivalence of contesting primacies, that can generate the sort of thought — call it frustration — that can, at best, make life freer and literature more urgent. Meaning, in literature or in life, is always a matter of structure and never of content. The Cost of Living makes no claim to profundity because it excludes profundity from the list of useful things. It is tentative and ambivalent and inconclusive because thought is always unfinished (if it were finished it would cease to be thought). Levy extends de Beauvoir’s observation that gender (among other things) is performative, and wonders how she can move away from what we could call a pre-scripted life to what we could call a de-scripted life. “Everything,” she observes, “is connected in the ecology of language and living.” To write in the first person, whether in fiction or memoir, is to perform a subjectivity that must always sit both uncomfortably close to and uncomfortingly distant from the *I* that writes. A text, regardless of its mode of generation, enters the performance of its reception and is immediately at the mercy, so to call it, of the prevailing modes of that performance. A text will only be effective to the extent that it is neither absorbed nor ejected by that performance. Rachel Cusk, in her novel Kudos has her narrator observe of another writer, Luis (Cusk’s stand-in for Knausgaard): “Unusually perhaps for any man, he has been honest about his own life. … Though of course if he were a woman he would be scorned for this honesty, or at the very least no one would care.” Levy has been, it seems, unvarnishedly honest about her own life and The Cost of Living stands as a memorable challenge to the still-prevailing modes of reception that presume a performance of gender (among other things) that Levy and Cusk both analyse and dismiss.  

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
Book of the Week: AUGUST BLUE by Deborah Levy

With its subtle exploration of contrasting doubles, of freedom and constraint, of art and life, of family and society, 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, of heat as an oppressor as well as an escape, and enigmatic actions, 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.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
NEW RELEASES (23.6.23)

New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.

Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai (translated from Japanese by Polly Barton) $38
Housewife Natsumi leads a small, unremarkable life in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes on trips to the supermarket, visits friends and gossips with neighbours. Tracing her conversations and interactions with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her own infernally buzzing internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything and nothing happens. With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante and Lucy Ellmann, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist and critic Mieko Kanai – whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan – is a disconcerting and radically imaginative portrait of selfhood in late-stage capitalist society.
”I began to wonder whether I had always thought this way, whether this book was making me aware of the true nature of my mind for the first time. Such is the mesmerizing wonder of Kanai’s prose, as translated by Polly Barton.” — Claire Oshetsky, New York Times
”In the vertigo lurking at the depths of a very ordinary life, Mieko Kanai succeeds in uncovering the tranquillity and cruelty that exist side by side.’” —Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
”Mild Vertigo is an immersive, uncanny narrative held taut over eight chapters that contrasts existing and living, seeing and viewing. An enthralling horror story about tedium that pushes the reader tight up against the unmanageable moments of everyday life and the domestic.” — David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On
>>Detective anguish.
>>Browse our other translated fiction.

Portrait Tales by Jean Frémon (translated by John Taylor) $38
”As far back as Plotinus, who warned against that ugly custom of leaving an image of one’s appearance behind us, we have ceaselessly given ourselves over to the urge to parry death with the image.” —Jean Frémon. Fables, memories, things he’s read, things he’s seen, transposed or made up, the stories gathered in this slim volume have the portrait, portraitists and the portraitees as common themes. Frémon takes the reader around the world, hopping through art history, as facts and personal memories are retold with imaginative flair for the telling detail: from an impossible portrait of Jesus in 50 AD, which somehow brings J.L. Godard into the picture, to the 14th c. Ottoman Empire, to China’s Qing Dynasty, the Italian Renaissance, French Rococo, and Louise Bourgeois’s mirrors, these historiettes expound the paradoxes, the necessity, and the dangers of seeking truthfulness in art. With gentle but unmistakable irony, they highlight the intricate connexion between art and power.
”Jean Frémon is a wholly singular artist, a writer who lives in the radiant zone where poetry, philosophy and storytelling meet.” —Paul Auster

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende $40
Allende’s powerful new novel draws parallels between the experiences of refugees almost a century apart, and asking what sacrifices parents will make to save their children. Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is six years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht the night their family loses everything. As her child's safety seems ever-harder to guarantee, Samuel's mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin. Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita's mother.
>>History repeates itself.
>>From black list to front list.

The Plague: Living death in our times by Jacqueline Rose $38
What do you do with death and dying when they can no longer be pushed to the outer limits of your lived experience or dismissed from your conscious mind? How do you live with death or rather how do you ‘live death’ when death comes too close, seeming to enter the very air you breathe? The Plague is a collection of essays guiding us from the Covid-19 pandemic through to the war in Ukraine in order to imagine a world in which a radical respect for death might exist alongside a fairer distribution of the earth’s wealth. ‘Living death’ will appear as something of a refrain, a reminder that to think of death as an avoidable intruder into how we order our lives, especially in the West, is an act of defiance that is doomed to fail. In the thought of the philosopher Simone Weil, who plays a key role in the book, only if we admit the limits of the human, will we stop vaunting the brute illusion of earthly power. Insightful and important.
”A surfeit of elegance and intelligence.” —Ali Smith
“One of the most original and intellectually sophisticated minds at work today.” —Eimear McBride
”As a literary scholar and psychoanalytic thinker, Rose has long insisted that we pay close attention to the subterranean fears, fantasies, and narratives that structure our most pressing sociopolitical problems.” —Merve Emre
>>To die one’s own death.

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
>>Other books by or on Mansfield.
>>Leave All Fair.

Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil $24
All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it's time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When their father brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away against his will. Furious at her father's betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she tracks down Orr. Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex-work activism — and find each other before a fantastical transformation fractures their family forever.
"Michelle Ruiz Keil's writing is achingly beautiful, her books deep, thought-provoking, and magical. She doesn't flinch from the raw pain of teens coping with rough stuff-from abuse and neglect to identity issues and neurodivergence-but transforms them (sometimes literally) through magical realism, into haunting and luscious modern fables that are still grounded and gritty in all the best ways. A mosaic of Greek tragedy, punk rock, Shakespeare, social conscience, folklore, and mysticism, Summer in the City of Roses glitters even as its sharp edges cut and draw blood." —Laini Taylor

Kai: Food stories and recipes from my family table by Christall Lowe $60
The gathering of food and the gathering of people to share a meal are at the heart of Māori family life. Award-winning food photographer Christall Lowe invites us to join her whanau table and experience for ourselves an abundance of mouthwatering dishes, a veritable feast for the eyes and for the stomach. Kai is a passionate homage to a life deeply rooted in food, where exquisite flavours weave seamlessly with cherished food memories. Winner of the Judith Binney Prize for Illustrated Non-Fiction (best first book) in the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
>>Look inside!
>>See other Ockham winners.
>>Browse other cookbooks.

Africana: An encyclopedia of an amazing continent by Kim Chakanetsa $40
Learn about the astonishing history of the continent, as the birthplace of the very first human beings, through rich historical civilisations such as the ancient Egyptians, the Benin Empire and the Kingdom of Kush, up to the development of the dynamic cities of the modern day. Africana explores: the visual cultures and artwork from across Africa, including the the printed cottons of Guinea and the mud cloth of Mali; figures from African history and modern-day change makers; the landscapes and wildlife of the continent, ranging from the deserts of the north, the rainforests of the central regions and the savannahs of the south. Beautifully presented, with a stunning copper foil-detailed cover, this large-format book is packed with maps, timelines and much, much more to open your eyes to the beauty and brilliance of this diverse continent.
>>Look inside!

Air by Monica Roe $20
Twelve-year-old Emmie is working to raise money for a tricked-out wheelchair to get serious about WCMX, when a mishap on a poorly designed ramp at school throws her plans into a tailspin. Instead of replacing the ramp, her school provides her with a kind but unwelcome aide — and, seeing a golden media opportunity, launches a public fundraiser for her new wheels. Emmie loves her close-knit rural town, but she can't shake the feeling that her goals — and her choices — suddenly aren't hers anymore. With the help of her best friends, Emmie makes a plan to get her dreams off the ground — and show her community what she wants, what she has to give, and how ready she is to do it on her own terms.  

The Snakehead: An epic tale of the Chinatown underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe $40
Patrick Radden Keefe reveals the inner workings of Cheng Chui Ping, aka Sister Ping's complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and an exploration of the ironies of immigration in America. From the author of the revelatory Empire of Pain.
>>Hell and high water.

Romans Magnified by David Long $33
Zoom in to discover what life was like for Ancient Romans in this innovative and interactive illustrated title that takes you right into their fascinating world! Learn how the Romans lived — from the seven hills to the Colosseum and beyond. Using the free magnifying glass, seek out incredible facts about ancient Rome in this search-and-find adventure, packed with over 200 things to spot. Children will love discovering a typical Roman market, meeting fearsome gladiators and seeing what a temple, school and villa were like, with authentic detail and cutaway scenes. The artwork bursts with hidden detail and bustles with action, and detailed factual text will tell you everything you need to know about the different areas of Roman life. Come with a magnifying glass.
>>Look inside.

VOLUME BooksNew releases
SELFIES by Sylvie Weil — reviewed by Thomas

Selfies by Sylvie Weil (translated from French by Ros Schwartz) — reviewed by THOMAS

The hands holding the book in the painting by Markus Schinwald, and the black curtains between which they protrude, are painted in such a way as to make the viewer suspect that they are looking at a painting, or a part of a painting, by some Old Master, and the viewer, upon researching further, feels a little cheated to find that the artist is still alive. Had we perhaps confused even the name Markus Schinwald with that of some minor Germanic Old Master — perhaps a painter of agonising crucifixions, memento mori and surgically accurate Sts. Sebastians — which would have given this painting, in which the person holding the book into the light is effectively bodiless, concealed behind curtains, a disconcertingly suppressed reference to physical suffering? Maybe we should not feel cheated. Maybe it is the reference to the reference, by way of our confusion, that gives the painting, for us, its meaning. 
*
In the picture I didn't end up taking of myself I am sitting in an elderly armchair, the pile of its plush worn to the ghost of its original pattern on the arms and upper back. Beside me is a rather spindly green table upon which sits a vase of stocks, wilted at their tops, and a small empty coffee cup, a lip-mark of coffee at its rim. The sideboard behind me is stacked with books, and the fading light falls from my right onto the book I hold at an odd angle as if trying to postpone the moment in which I will have to get up and switch on a light. I am wearing an ancient green jersey comprised mostly of darning, and my head is thrust awkwardly forward over the oddly angled book, which I seem to be on the verge of finishing. Its title can be read despite the shadow: Selfies by Sylvie Weil. 
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The thirteen exquisite pieces of memoir that comprise Selfies each begin with a description of an actual artwork, a self-portrait by a woman ranging from the thirteen century to today. This ekphrasis is followed by a description of a (possibly hypothetical) self-portrait by Weil which echoes or resonates with the historical work and provides a means of access to the third section of each piece, a more (but variously) lengthy examination of one of the more significant or uncomfortable aspects of Weil’s life. This tripartite structure demonstrates how viewing art can unlock new levels of understanding of our own lives, and how the communication of a stranger’s moment by means of a surface invariably stimulates the viewer’s memory to read that moment in terms of moments from the viewer’s own life, moments pressing at the surface of consciousness from the other side, so to speak. Viewing is remembering. The rigour and delicacy Weil demonstrates in viewing the artists’ works allows her to apply a similar set of criteria to her own memory-images, resulting in a remarkably nuanced set of realisations to be accessed and conveyed, potentially provoking a similar deepening of access in a reader to her or his own memories. Weil’s prose, pellucidly translated from the French by Ros Schwartz, gauges subtle shifts of tone, frequently shifting our understanding of situations or persons before any knowledge about them is attained. The awful American mathematician with whom Weil had a love affair, her son’s mother-in-law, the close friend of her mother’s, the unsympathetic owners of a “Jewish” dog, are all revealed as having complex and often ambiguous relationships with the surfaces they present. Weil’s sentences, at once so straight-forward and so subtle, can move both outwards and inwards at once, operating at various depths simultaneously, as when Weil describes responses to her adult son’s mental breakdown: “I reply politely to friends who say: ‘I wouldn’t be able to cope if something like that happened to my son.’ I didn’t tell them that it could happen to anyone. And that they would cope, as people do. They’d have no choice. I don’t reply that they deserve to have it happen to them. Deep down, I agree that it is unlikely to happen to them. Not to them.” Precision often leads us to the verge of humour, as when Weil describes “the remains of a smile abruptly cut short, as if by the sudden and unexpected arrival of a dangerous animal.” The ‘Self-portrait as an author,’ springing from a description of a 1632 self-portrait of Judith Leyster seen as an advertisement for her portrait commissions (a commercial imperative), is a devastatingly perfect, almost Cuskian account of the people who visited Weil’s signing table at a literary festival. The book is full of images, or moments, details, that implant themselves in the mind of the reader and continue to resonate there in a way similar to the reader’s own memories. What is the purpose of self-depiction? “Everyone takes selfies,” Weil observes. “It’s a way of going unnoticed,” but at the same time each selfie is a form of searching, an attempt to locate oneself, somehow, in the circumstances that comprise one’s life. Memory is the only way we have to attempt to make sense of these moments. 

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
WHISK — Cookbooks at Volume

THE JEWISH COOKBOOK Leah Koenig — reviewed by STELLA

Sold on Challah! And some other delights…

Some cookbooks on your bookcase become favourites and The Jewish Cookbook has become one of my go-to’s since the start of 2023. Every year, for a few now, I plan a birthday celebration around a particular cuisine and this year it was a Jewish feast. Bagels for lunch, an aubergine dish for dinner (à la Ottolenghi), and challah for breakfast. The challah was so delicious, it has become one of our household’s favourite semi-sweet special breads. Here are this week’s loaves. One is a three-plait, the other a four. I haven’t tried a six-plait yet, but anything could happen. The dough is straightforward to make with a good consistency making it easy to knead and shape. It took a little longer to rise, thanks to the cooler seasonal kitchen, but it was worth the wait. I love the combination of oil, eggs, and a little sugar. It’s lighter than a buttery brioche ( and easy to make) but still just as delicious. I’m a fan of a sesame seed topping, but it’s good plain or with poppy seeds for a flavorsome contrast. And the result — on the cooling rack — was quickly sliced for a warm late-afternoon snack. It keeps well, and if it does get a bit stale it’s excellent for French toast.

The Phaidon Cookbooks are renowned for their broad coverage, and in The Jewish Cookbook you will find everything from breakfast to dinner, cakes and dessert, drinks and condiments. The five bagel recipes will keep you attempting to decide which you like the best, and the wonderful variety of fritters and latkas will have you happily standing by your frying pan flipping.
The contributions from chefs, foodies, cafes and restaurants bring contemporary twists and personal takes, as well as the international breadth and diversity so intrinsic to Jewish cuisine. (If you want a Jewish cookbook that explores this diverse cuisine and history in more detail, Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food was recently reissued and we usually have it in stock) . And the editor of this collection, Leah Koenig, blends it all together wonderfully. So get your bundt tin ready for kugelhopf, get a pot out for borscht, and add sahlab to your winter drinks — it’s a milky drinkable pudding from the Middle East with a splash of vanilla and rosewater, topped with cinnamon and nuts. Warming, sweet and tasty.

VOLUME BooksWHISK, Review by Stella