Read our 345th NEWSLETTER and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending, about some wonderful new books, and about an exciting way to add some excellent fiction from Aotearoa to your shelves.
1 September 2023 (the first day of Spring!)
The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer
It did not read like a love story, he thought, but it was a love story. It did not even read like a story, not that he likes stories, but it was a story. And he still liked it. It was not just a stream of invective, though it certainly was a stream of invective, and he has nothing against streams of invective, especially literary streams of invective, quite the reverse, he likes them, he even, and he wonders if the word is correct, collects them, if it is possible to collect streams in anything other than a lake. A lake of invective, perhaps, that doesn’t sound right. Fiction always is an essay in time, or on time, though neither sounds right, the act of reading is a linear act and the act of writing is a linear act, no matter how clipped and disordered that act may be in either case, no matter how you cut the strands, all fiction at base is an offence against time, an offence whence springs the hope and splendour of fiction, he thought. There are two strands in this story, he thought, though he wondered why he called it a story, the time of the telling and the time of all that presses upon the telling from the past. The novel, let him call it that, consists entirely of a monologue spoken, if it is even spoken, by a young German woman to a Dr Seligman, a rant of Bernhardian dimensions or proportions, neither of these words seem right, vulgar, surprising, hugely funny, ultimately sad. He could feel the spoilers coming on. Dr Seligman does not speak, or if he speaks he speaks between the paragraphs and his words are not recorded. He is like the auditor in Beckett’s Not I, not speaking but by his silence the enabler of the saying of all that is said, without him the tremendous disburdening, if that is a word, of the voice could not occur, without this receptive silence there would be no story. We might think at first that Dr Seligman might be a psychoanalyst, but he is not a psychoanalyst, nor even a counsellor, though she was sent to a counsellor, Jason, after threatening her workmate with a stapler, of all things, and fair enough, a counsellor who did not keep silent, who could not play the auditor, who shut her down by speaking. “When we are actually forced to talk about ourselves, things always get so awkward, because there is really very little to talk about. … People like Jason only live off making others feel bad about themselves by pretending that they know the way when in the end they will drown just like everyone else,” she says. Dr Seligman is not a psychoanalyst, though he could be to the body what a psychoanalyst is to the mind, whatever that is, a body is more personal than a mind, after all, if indeed there is anything personal at all about a mind, history is an offence on a body by a body, all the rest is stories, and here come some spoilers and it is not too late, even now, even if you have read this far, reader, to stop reading, he thought, I will accept not complaints if you continue, at least no complaints in this regard. What, though, is sayable and what is not sayable? When the Jewish Dr Seligman does not throw her out after her initial provocation-test recounting invented sexual fantasies involving Hitler, if a fantasy can be invented or can be anything but invented, the hurdle at which Jason fell, he begins to gain her trust and she begins to disburden herself to him of her unhappiness, her discomfort, since childhood, with her identity, or, rather, with the identity imposed upon her as all identities are imposed. “And I think that in a way that’s all we are: other people’s stories. There’s no way we can ever be ourselves,” she says, demonstrating, incidentally, how her monologue changes register so often on a comma, passing from vulgar to reflective within a sentence, if not back again as well. Since childhood she has been repelled both by her mother’s body and by her own, she says. At this point, he thought, he might compare the splendid Volckmerian rant with the splendid Bernhardian rant, each filled, he might say, with loathing, each skewering the rot in society, if you want rot on a skewer, each exposing, among other things, the indelible mark of Nazism upon a nation. The Bernhardian rant, as it progresses, though, he thought, rings more wrong, if that is the right way to put it, that is Bernhard’s genius, the narrator’s loathing is seen to be self-loathing, the ills of the world have their bastion within, so to speak, but the Volkmerian rant, as it progresses, rings more right, he thought, that doesn’t sound right, and this is more disturbing, even, what begins as self-loathing spreads out and shows us what is wrong with the world in which the loather sits and soaks, or whatever. All crimes are crimes of identity, he thought, a provocation of his own that he doesn’t really know how to think about, though perhaps he is right. We get everything wrong. “That’s where we differ from animals: with very few exceptions they always look the part, like perfect representations of their species, dignified and in just the right shape.” Bit by bit the monologist’s story is revealed, and we learn of her relationship with K, a relationship that broke all the various taboos with which identity is ring-fenced, though what the difference is between ring-fenced and plain fenced, he does not know, at least in this instance, metaphors aren't fussy. The pact was to remain impersonal, to play out their frustrations and harm upon each other, to use up the harm, to reflect and to become the other in the mirror, but when K. says, “Be with me always,” the monologist, call her Sarah, monologist is a stupid word, if it is even a word, ends the relationship forthwith. When she later hears of K.’s suicide, she completes the journey to deciding to become him, I told you it was a love story, though not the sort you expected, which is why she is delivering her monologue to Dr Seligman, a plastic surgeon who “is fitting a German woman with a Jewish cock,” you were warned about the spoilers, a process paid for with Sarah’s inheritance from her grandfather, the stationmaster at the last stop before Auschwitz. The Holocaust lies at the root of harm. Volckmer lambasts what she sees as the German delusion is having ‘dealt with’ the Holocaust by ensuring “that we remained de-Nazified and full of respect. But we never mourned; if anything, we performed a new version of ourselves, hysterically non-racist in any direction and negating difference wherever possible. Suddenly there were just Germans. No Jews, no guest workers, no Others. And yet we never granted them the status of human beings again or let them interfere with our take of the story.” The victims remain victims, their myriad stories still overwritten by a single story outside their control, Jews still trapped in the German national myth, still othered to the extent that they are Jewish, those losses, those bodies annulled still not seen by the Germans as their own bodies, not properly mourned as their own bodies, writes Voclkmer, or Volckmer seems to write, at least to him, the distance between the story and the body is a scale to measure shame. Guilt is a ritual, he thinks, though he has not yet thought the thought to its end, a ritual that seems to address but actually conceals shame, to address is to preserve, after all, but what else is there to be done? “It takes several minds to be beautiful,” says Sarah, writes Volckmer, and, he thinks, when the desire to be otherwise has more power than identity, when we lose our footing and begin to swim, can he never purge himself of these metaphors, when we submit to or we welcome the urgent undoing of what we are or are seen to be, if there is a difference between them, then, he thinks, though it is not him who thinks the thought, he merely reports what is thought, the thought thinks itself, we can be many things at once or no things, open to whatever. Sarah remarks, writes Volckmer, there comes a time when “someone has split you into two versions of yourself.” This chimes with Bachmann, he thinks, though chimes is not the right word, when she wrote, in Malina, “I am not one person, but two people standing in extreme opposition to one another, which must mean I am always on the verge of being torn in two. If they were separated it would be livable, but scarcely the way it is.” It is hard to find what is livable, he thinks.
Books of the Week. This week we are featuring two very good books published to mark the Katherine Mansfield centenary:
1. In All Sorts of Lives, Clare Harman re-examines the life of Katherine Mansfield through the lenses of ten of her stories, written at different stages in her trajectory, and reveals a writer and a person driven to remake both literature and the ways in which she might exist in the world.
2. In Katherine Mansfield's Europe: Station to Station, Redmer Yska, guided by Mansfield's journals and letters, 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 throughout Europe.
Apply the code “100” when checking out for 20% off either or both of these excellent books. Promotion ends 5 September.
Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai by Michaela Keeble with Kerehi Grace, illustrated by Tokerau Brown
Thomas read me a story today. It was lively. The text sprang off the page. The colour palette and illustrations were bright and full of movement. It was surprising. Unexpected questions arose. And each page was a delightfully diverse interaction with a mind of its own. It was Aotearoa in its language, small details, images, and topical concerns. It made me smile, and agree. It was authentically child-centric. This picture book is written by the author and her child. The connections between family, friendships, mythology, and history, meld and bounce off each other in the way a child’s mind works — jumping around with energy and certainty juxtaposed with questions and curious doubts. I love this. It’s fresh, full of humour, important questions, and honesty. Bravo Gecko Press. Ka rawe tenei! And this daring and delightful treasure is Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai.
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.
Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai by Michaela Keeble with Kerehi Grace, illustrated by Tokerau Brown $30
”My name is Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai. You can call me Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai.” In this completely outstanding and hugely enjoyable picture book, Paku Manu Ariki talks directly to the reader, drawing on the stories that spin around him—his father’s mātauranga, his mother’s politics, his many pet birds, and his best friend who is taller, even though he’s younger. The book is born from the experience of growing up in a strong Māori whānau in a country and wider world that offers a conflicting version of what is right and of value. Paku Manu Ariki is trying to understand his role in his family, community and the larger world. His preoccupation is who is the boss—his nanna at the marae, his older siblings, or any number of atua? His steadfast dad, his Pākehā mum, the ‘leader of the free world’, or Paku Manu Ariki himself? Paku Manu bumps up against authority, trying to reconcile the kind and just rules of nanna and the unjust power of leaders he sees every day on the TV. Thoughtful, funny and confronting, Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai is about the hustle for belonging, and our place in the epic spiral of space, time and culture.
>>The author introduces the book.
>>Look inside!
>>Other curiously god books from Gecko Press.
Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li $35
A new collection of short stories written over a decade, spanning loss, alienation, aging and the strangeness of contemporary life. A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she's lost. A professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li's stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and grand mysterious forces — death, violence, estrangement — come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen. Li is an alchemist of opposites: tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and yet acutely aware of just how much we cannot know.
”Li is extraordinary — a storyteller of the first order. She inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel.” —Junot Diaz
>>Read the title story.
Melancholy I—II by Jon Fosse (translated from Norwegian by Damion Searles and Grethe Kvernes) $40
Melancholy I-II is a fictional invocation of the nineteenth-century Norwegian artist Lars Hertervig, who painted luminous landscapes, suffered mental illness and died poor in 1902. In this feverish narrative, Jon Fosse delves into Hertervig’s mind as the events of one day precipitate his mental breakdown. A student of Hans Gude at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Hertervig is paralyzed by anxieties about his talent and is overcome with love for Helene Winckelmann, his landlady’s daughter. Marked by inspiring lyrical flights of passion and enraged sexual delusions, Hertervig’s fixation on Helene persuades her family that he must leave. Oppressed by hallucinations and with nowhere to go, Hertervig shuttles between a cafe, where he endures the mockery of his more sophisticated classmates, and the Winckelmann’s apartment, which he desperately tries to re-enter – a limbo state which leads him inexorably into a state of madness.
”Fosse has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity.” —New York Times
>>As if punished.
>>Introduce yourself to Lars Hertervig.
>>It writes itself.
The Forgotten Prophet: Tāmati Te Ito and his Kaingārara Movement by Jefffrey Sissons $50
Tāmati Te Ito Ngāmoke led the prophetic Kaingārara movement in Taranaki from 1856. Te Ito was revered by tribal leaders as a prophetic tohunga matakite; but others, including many settlers and officials, viewed him as an ‘imposter’, a ‘fanatic’. Despite his influence and leadership, Te Ito’s historical importance remains largely unrecognised today. By the time war broke out in 1860, Te Ito and his followers had established a school and a court system in Taranaki. Striving for the ‘fulfilment of the divine order’, the Kaingārara movement initiated the ‘Taranaki iconoclasm’, discarding tapu objects associated with atua (ancestral spirits, which often took the form of reptiles) into massive bonfires. Te Ito was a visionary adviser to Te Ātiawa chief Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke, and played a crucial role in the conflicted region, both before and after the wars of the 1860s. Initially perceived as a rival to the Parihaka leaders, Tohu Kākahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai, he eventually joined the Parihaka community.
Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s invisible life by Anna Funder $40
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own. When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why — and how — was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer — and what it is to be a wife.
"Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. And this in a narrative that grips the reader and unfolds through some of the most consequential moments — historical and cultural — of the twentieth century.” —Geraldine Brooks
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman $30
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.
Ngā Kupu Wero edited by Witi Ihimaera $37
From over 60 Maori writers, Nga Kupu Wero brings together essays, articles, commentary and creative nonfiction on the political, cultural and social issues that challenge us today. From colonisation to identity, from creativity to matauranga Maori, this anthology explores the power of the word.
A New Way to Bake: Re-imagined recipes for plant-based cakes, bakes and desserts by Philip Khoury $60
In A New Way to Bake, Philip transforms the traditional building blocks of baking by using only natural, plant-based ingredients. A New Way to Bake uncovers a brief history of baking before setting out the Plantry, where the main ingredients and their functions are explained. Full of delicious bakes, from Apple Pie to Banana Bread, to Lamingtons and Tiramisù, there are sweet treats for any occasion. Recipes are broken down into digestible steps, with explanations as to why steps are important, and tips along the way too. Plus, there are even QR codes to videos and other resources help navigate through the recipes. Baking has hitherto often been a challenge for those who don’t want to use eggs and butter — no longer!
>>Look inside.
>>Vrioche!
Time Song: Searching for Doggerland by Julia Blackburn $45
How can we think ourselves back in time? Julia Blackburn has always collected things that hold stories about the past, especially the very distant past — mammoth bones, little shells that happen to be two million years old, a flint shaped as a weapon long ago. Time Song brings many such stories together as it tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC. Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of Doggerland. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who seems to be about to wake from a dream, even though he has lain in a peat bog since the start of the Iron Age. Now in paperback.
>>The old time, the deep time.
>>Look inside.
The Visitors by Jane Harrison $37
On a steamy, hot day in January 1788, seven Aboriginal men, Elders representing the nearby clans, gather at Warrane. Several newly arrived ships are in the harbour. The men meet to discuss their response to these Visitors. All day, they talk, argue, debate. Where are the Visitors from? What do they want? Might they just warra warra wai back to where they came from? Should they be welcomed? Or should they be made to leave? The decision of the men must be unanimous — and will have far-reaching implications for all. Throughout the day the weather is strange, with mammatus clouds, unbearable heat, and a pending thunderstorm. Somewhere, trouble is brewing.
”A remarkable achievement of First Nations storytelling. We live in a time when truths need to be told and heard — this is a generous offering, a story that challenges and ultimately rewards us.” —Tony Birch
”A work of soaring imagination and breathtaking ambition. Jane Harrison upends all our black-and-white assumptions about what happened on that fateful January day in 1788 when eleven tall ships sailed into a safe blue harbour that people already called home. Surprisingly funny, cheeky and tragic by turns, this remarkable novel is bold, brave and unforgettable.” —Clare Wright
>>Harrison has written a play of the same idea.
Preventable: How a pandemic changed the world, and how to stop the next one by Devi Sridhar $37
Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart. Will we never learn?
“The sensational story of how a disaster was turned into a catastrophe, with the clarity, precision and humanity that you would expect from one of the most important voices of reason of the COVID era. A brutally compelling reminder that if voices like Devi's had been listened to, so many more could have lived.” —Owen Jones
I never imagined that I would be a great fan of pies, but Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s pastry is perfect every time (ditto her focaccia bread recipes) — just the right proportions and clear instructions for getting the right texture for your dough. In Ostro, the Leek and Potato Pie is now a regular dish (and it doesn’t matter what cheese you have — I have used cheddar, feta, a combo of parmesan, and others, and it’s always delicious and well-received). This photo essay features a recipe from her second book, A Year of Simple Family Food.
The pumpkin pie is surprisingly light — with a flakey buttery pastry — and tasty (herbs and spices, as well as filling). And it looks excellent — that wonderful orange glow. Simple and budget-conscious ingredients. For this version, I reduced the butter content without losing any integrity in the pastry (it fluffed up beautifully as it cooked) and used walnuts in place of pinenuts. The earthy flavour of these nuts was a perfect accompaniment to the pumpkin. The garden hasn’t delivered the free-sprouting mint yet, so the herb choice for last night was oregano — a gift of a very large sprig that just keeps giving — which has added aromatic depth to our winter dishes this year. Not sure whether you want to make a pie from scratch? We highly recommend Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s cookbooks. Her recipes have revolutionised our savoury pastry making.
Listen to a story from I, Object:
Published by Volume Editions — Buy the book
Image: Stella Chrysostomou.
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
>>>Browse our graphic novels
Use the code “100” for 20% off either or both of these excellent books published to mark the KATHERINE MANSFIELD centenary. Click through to find out more:
ALL SORTS OF LIVES: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything by Claire Harman
KATHERINE MANSFIELD’S EUROPE: Station to Station by Redmer Yska
(You might also be interested in these other books by or about K.M.)
Enter the code READ LOCAL when checking out for a 20% discount on all Aotearoa fiction.
Promotion ends 5 September 2023. Applies to in-stock items only.
Read our #344th NEWSLETTER and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending.
25 August 2023
Postcard Stories by Richard von Sturmer does all those things that books should. From the moment you spy the cover — a group of Filipino dancers in brightly checked frocks arranged in front of a smoking volcano — your curiosity will be piqued. It will also confound you a little and ultimately hook you in, not once, but several times over, as you investigate what it is. Richard von Sturmer has chosen 100 postcards from his collection, arranged them into thematic groups and added text (prose and verse), creating narrative dimensions that resonate on multiple levels. Postcard Stories is a gem of a book — charming, curious, and just a little strange. In his introduction, von Sturmer talks about his collecting habits, and his attraction to the unusual or odd. “My own interest in postcards lies elsewhere, in a more eccentric and even subversive realm where the postcard is appreciated for itself, for its own oddness, which transcends whatever scene or image it may represent.” He sees postcards as a portal to places and times, thinking of them as “cells in a giant, universal brain” and as “postcard dreamscapes”. Postcard Stories gives us an opportunity to share in these dreamscapes.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part consists of postcard sequences (16 in total) with a corresponding verse. Each sequence is a group of four distinct postcards that von Sturmer feels resonate with each other — they are linked by a common element or theme. For example, in sequence 5, four postcards all containing monuments — statues — tell a story of escape and discovery. There are landscape images of deserts and roads to seemingly nowhere resonating together even as they are pulled from different places on the globe. There are strange groups of people participating in what might be tourist activities, and ancient wonders sitting alongside industrial haunts. The verse that accompanies these postcard sequences is sparse and cleverly composed, the narrative building between image and text constantly drawing us in, altering our perspective, our way of seeing. In the second part, von Sturmer has selected some individual postcards that stand alone in their oddness. Here he adds short prose pieces that let us look again at the images and notice so much more. In the final section, there is a short homage to postcard publisher John Hinde who would tell his photographers, “You can’t have enough sunsets.” Postcard Stories is initially delightful and witty, but it is ultimately this and more. It is an endlessly curious book that takes you into a realm of imagination and narrative playfulness. In these dreamscapes, you will find much to occupy your mind (and eye).
Bordering on Miraculous by Lynley Edmeades and Saskia Leek (Kōrero series)
How does a word reveal its meaning at the same moment as it becomes strange to us, he wondered. Or should that be the other way round, how does a word become strange to us at the same moment as it reveals its meaning. Same difference, though he was a little surprised. No closer to an answer in any case. Words, experiences, thoughts, the same principle seems to apply, he thought, or certainly its inverse, or complement, or opposite, or whatever. Familiarity suppresses meaning, he thought, the most familiar is that for which meaning is the least accessible, for which meaning has been obscured by wear until a point of comprehensibility has been attained, a point of dullness and comfort, a point of functional usefulness, if that is not a tautology, a point of habituation sufficient for carrying on with whatever there is to which we are inclined to carry on, if there is any such thing to which we are so inclined. Perhaps ‘meaning’ is not the right word. Or ‘strange’. Or the others. I should maybe start again and use other words, or other thoughts, or both, he thought. All philosophical problems can be solved by changing the meanings of the words used to express them, he had somewhere read, or written, or, more dangerously, both. All that is not the same or not exactly the same as to say that the simplest thing carries the most meaning but is too difficult to think about so we complicate it until we can grasp it in our thoughts, at the moment that its meaning is lost, the moment of comprehension, he thought. Again this strange use of the word ‘meaning’, whatever he meant by that, he was no longer sure. The everyday is that to which we are most habituated, that of which we are the most unaware, or the least aware, if this is not the same thing, to help us to survive the stimulation, he thought, a functional repression of our compulsion to be aware, but this comes at the cost of existing less, of being less aware, of becoming blind to those things that are either the simplest or the most important to us or both. Our dullness stops us being overwhelmed, awareness being after all not so much rapture as terror, not that there was ever much difference. Life denuminised, that is not the word, flat. How then to regain the terrible paradise of the instant, awareness, without risking lives or sanity? How to produce the new and be produced by it? These are not the same question but each applies. They are possibly related. Perhaps now, he thought, I should mention this book, Bordering on Miraculous, a collaboration between poet Lynley Edmeades and painter Saskia Leek, as there appear to be some answers here or, if not answers, related effects that you could be forgiven for mistaking for answers even though there are no such things as answers. Near enough. Poetry seems sometimes capable, as often here, of briefly reinstating awareness, as does the discipline of painting, as does the presence of a baby as it simultaneously wipes your mind. And alters time. What a relief, at least temporarily, to lose what made you you, he thought, or remembered, or imagined that he remembered. What a relief to be only aware of that which is right now pressing itself upon you, or aware only, though only aware is the more precise choice. “Which is more miracle: the things / moving through the sky or the eyes that move / to watch them” asks the poet, looking at a baby looking, he assumes. Such simplicities, the early noticings of babies, infant concepts, are the bases of all consciousness, he ventured, all our complexities are built on these. The first act of comprehension, he thought, is to divide something from that which it is not. “A border is / as a border does.” This book, the poems and the paintings in this book, continually address this primal impulse to give entities edges or to bring forth entities through their edges. All knowledge is built from this ‘bordering’, he thought, but it is always fragile, arbitrary, subject to the possibility of revision, more functional than actual. The second act of comprehension is to associate something with something that it is not (“One cannot help but make associations,” the poet writes), but it is never clear to what extent such associations are inherent in the world or to what extent they are mental only, the result of the impulse to associate, he thought. Not that this matters. Everything is simultaneously both separating and connecting, it is too much for us to sustain, we would be overwhelmed, we reach for a word, for an image, for relief. We pacify it with a noun. To some extent. To hold it all at bay. But also perhaps to invite the onslaught, he wondered, perhaps, he thought, the words release what the words hold back, perhaps these words can reconnect while simultaneously holding that experience at bay. Not that that makes any sense, or much. “One / cannot help but make / nouns,” the poet writes, but there is always this tension, he thinks, between accomplishment and insufficiency in language, never resolved, the world plucking at the words and vice-versa: “Something is there that doesn’t love a page.” “It is this kind of ordinary straining / that makes the margins restless.” The most meaningful is that which reaches closest to the meaninglessness that it most closely resembles. He has thought all this but his thoughts have not been clear, he has lost perhaps the capacity to think, not that he ever had such a capacity other than the capacity to think he had it. He feels perhaps he has not been clear but this beautiful book by Edmeades and Leek is clear, these poems and these paintings address the simplest and most difficult things, the simplest are the most difficult, and vice-versa, this conversation, so to call it, between a poet and a painter, reaches down to the bases of their arts, he thought, to the primalities of consciousness, have I made that word up, a gift to us from babies, perhaps the babies we once were. It is not as if we ever escape the impulses we had as babies. A baby comes, the world is changed. “Goodbye to a future / without this / big head / in it.”
A book about everything ordinary, but there are birds! A Bird Day is a complete delight. Close your eyes and imagine you are a bird child. What would your day be like? Where would you go for some afternoon fun? And, when dinner is dished up would you be rolling your eyes and saying, “Not, again!” Maybe if it’s flies! Lena and Bo are siblings. We meet them on the first pages playing in the ditch beside the road. They’re playing chicken. It’s very dangerous. Luckily they can fly away quickly. When it’s time to eat, their mother reminds them to wash their beaks — the flies are ready. Dad’s not too keen on this ordinary meal. “Flies, again,“ says Papa. “You cook then,” says Mama.” He’ll be cooking up a feast later as long as the afternoon gathering goes well. Pop back a page and you’ll see that Papa has been relaxing listening to bird music while Mama has been hard at work putting the food on the table. These subtle pecking orders and ordinary family relationships are nicely explored through the illustrations and these dovetail perfectly with the engaging text. So what do birds do for fun? Well, chicken, and then there’s fainting. Falling out of a tree is a great lark for a creature with excellent wings. We all like to be daredevils especially when we know we are safe. In the afternoon they hunt for mosquitos and worms. When they need a rest Lena and Bo sit down and pretend their legs are fatter, thinner, or not there at all. Like any good sibling, Lena scares her little brother; but only a little bit. Papa’s making dinner. Yum, mosquitos. Mama doesn’t like mosquitos, but there are plenty of worms. Another excellent addition to the work of Eva Lindstrom, author and illustrator of My Dog Mouse and Everyone Walks Away.
We now have the wonderful Gecko Press books listed under their own category on our website.
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Michael Hofmann) $40
The much-anticipated new novel from this fine and thoughtful writer is set in the years straddling the fall of the Berlin Wall. East Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.
”In this granular and, at times, shockingly intimate narrative of an all-consuming love affair that ultimately turns abusive, Jenny Erpenbeck has written an allegory of her nation, a country that has ceased to exist — East Germany. No writer on the world stage can make the texture and details of individual lives articulate so seamlessly and unobtrusively the way humans are subjects of, and subjected to, history. The ending is like a bomb thrown into your room — you'll be reeling for days and weeks to come.” —Neel Mukherjee
>>The turbulence of history.
>>Returning to East Berlin.
>>Reading and rereading.
>>Read our reviews of several others of Erpenbeck’s books.
The Flavour Thesaurus: More flavours by Niki Segnit $43
The first volume of Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus has a special place on our kitchen bookcase, and we consult it often, either because we are wondering how ingredients can go together (or not) in something we are about to make, or just because Segnit’s wit, wisdom and snide comments make the book endlessly dippable and a good way to spend those few minutes waiting for the dish to be ‘done’. Segnit introduces us to an ingredient and then ‘cross-references’ it with a whole range of other ingredients, describing the effects and resonances of that combination or flavour collision. Deeply researched and packed with notes, The Flavour Thesaurus is the perfect guide to cooking something exactly the way you want it to be, whether you are a kitchen novice or an experienced chef. It is also a way of avoiding disasters (or at least of going into them with your eyes open). We have had the first volume for years, and now we are delighted with the second volume, which adds another 92 mostly plant-based flavours and over 800 entries — double the delight!
>>The Flavour Thesaurus (1).
>>The Flavour Thesaurus: More flavours (2).
>>Segnit’s Lateral Cooking is also a brilliant and original aid to understanding and innovating food.
Great Liberty by Julien Cracq (translated from French by George MacLennan) $38
In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: "In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation." Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled ‘The Habitable Earth’ presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring the Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction. Great Liberty is a liminal work that exists on an unmapped borderline. This is the first appearance of this key work in English translation.
>>Some other books published by Wakefield Press.
This Other Eden by Paul Harding $37
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discovered an island where they could make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain there, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbors — a pair of sisters raising three Penobscot orphans; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their nocturnal brood; the prophetic Zachary Hand To God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who carves Biblical images in a hollow tree. Then comes the intrusion of "civilisation" — eugenics-minded state officials determine to ‘cleanse’ the island, and a missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities' institutions or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah's Ark. Full of lyricism and power, This Other Eden explores the hopes and dreams and resilience of those seen not to fit a world brutally intolerant of difference. A beautiful hardback.
”The Pulitzer prize-winning author's gifts have found their fullest expression. This Other Eden impresses time and again because of the depth of Harding's sentences, their breathless angelic light>” —Obsercer
”This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times.” —Guardian
Granta 163: Best of young British novelists $33
Every ten years, Granta dedicates an issue to the twenty most significant British novelists under forty. In this issue Granta announces the fifth generation of the Best of Young British Novelists. This cohort was selected by judges Tash Aw, Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, Helen Oyeyemi and Sigrid Rausing. Featured are: Graeme Armstrong, Jennifer Atkins, Sara Baume, Sarah Bernstein, Natasha Brown, Eleanor Catton, Eliza Clark, Tom Crewe, Lauren Aimee Curtis, Camilla Grudova, Isabella Hammad, Sophie Mackintosh, Anna Metcalfe, Thomas Morris, Derek Owusu, K Patrick, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Saba Sams, Olivia Sudjic and Eley Williams.
>>’Doubtful Sound’ — Eleanor Catton’s piece included in this issue.
>>Meet the class of 2023 (and a few alumni).
A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the dark heart of the city by Edward Chisholm $28
A waiter's job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door... is hell. Edward Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter is the perfect summer read. It takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and right into its glorious underbelly. He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you're fighting your colleagues for tips. Colleagues - including thieves, narcissists, ex-Legionnaires, paperless immigrants, wannabe actors and drug dealers - who are the closest thing to family that you've got. It's physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesn't matter because you're in Paris, the centre of the universe, and there's nowhere else you'd rather be in the world.
”This astonishing book describes a cruel, feral existence and is worthy of standing on the shelf next to George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London (1933) as another classic about human exploitation.” —Daily Mail
>>What’s it really like?
Leina and the Lord of the Toadstools by Júlia Sardà (illustrator), Myriam Dahman, Nicolas Digard $30
Leina owns the only boat in town - she ferries townsfolk over to the forest where they chop trees and hunt animals. But everyone in the town fears the forest and not everyone who goes in comes back out again. When Leina's friend, Oren, doesn't return, she goes on a mission to find him. In the forest she meets the mysterious Mr Spadefoot who introduces himself as The Lord of the Toadstools. Mr Spadefoot is strange and magical and Leina suspects that he knows where she can find Oren. She accepts his invitation for dinner in his underground palace and there she discovers the secret of the forest and the mystery of the missing townsfolk. Featuring the lush and wondrous illustrations of Júlia Sardà, who also illustrated The Wolf’s Secret.
>>Look inside!
>>Those illustrations are wonderful!
The Last Days of Roger Federer, And other endings by Geoff Dyer $25
How and when do artists and athletes know that their careers are coming to an end? What if the end comes early in a writer’s life? How to keep going even as the ability to do so diminishes? In this ingeniously structured meditation, Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last works of writers, painters, musicians, and sports stars who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. With playful charm and penetrating intelligence, he considers Friedrich Nietzsche’s breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan’s reinventions of old songs, J. M. W. Turner’s proto-abstract paintings of blazing light, Jean Rhys’s late-life resurgence, John Coltrane’s final works. Ranging from Burning Man to Beethoven, from Eve Babitz to William Basinski, from Annie Dillard to De Chirico, Dyer’s study of last things is also a book about how to go on living with art and beauty — and the sudden rejuvenation offered by books, films and music discovered late in life. Dyer has blended criticism, memoir, and badinage of the most serious kind into something entirely new. The Last Days of Roger Federer is a summation of Dyer’s passions, and the perfect introduction to his sly and joyous work. Now in paperback (but also still available as a pleasing hardback).
“Perhaps the most bafflingly great prose writer at work in the English language today,” —Tom Bissell
>>Those shelves!
Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A sister’s search for justice by Cristina Rivera Garza $37
On the dawn of 16 July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, Cristina Rivera Garza's sister, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of femicide. She was a twenty-year-old architecture student who had been trying for years to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. A few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana made a definitive decision: at the height of her winter she had discovered that, as Albert Camus had said, there was an invincible summer in her. She would leave him behind. She would start a new life. She would do a master's degree and a doctorate; she would travel to London. But his decision was that she would not have a life without him. Returning to Mexico after decades of living in the United States, Cristina Rivera Garza collects and curates evidence — handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, voice recordings and architectural blueprints 3 to defy a pattern of increasingly normalised, gendered violence and understand the life lost. What she finds is Liliana: her sister's voice crossing time and, like that of so many disappeared and outraged women in Mexico, demanding justice.
”Warning: Cristina Rivera Garza is an explosive writer. A dexterous creator of atmospheres, with a powerful style, an evocative and indomitable language.” —Lina Meruane
>>Reshaping the conversation about femcide.
>>How can these stories be told?
>>”To write is to create empty space.”
>>Thomas reviews two other books by Cristina Rivera Garza.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett $35
In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.
”Those who want fiction to soothe, bolster and cheer will love Tom Lake.” —Guardian
>>”Quiet and reassuring.”
Now I Am Here by Chidi Ebere $38
In Now I Am Here, we begin at the end. The armies of the National Defence Movement have been crushed and our unnamed narrator and his unit are surrounded. Prepared for defeat at the hands of the enemy and with only his sins for company, he turns to confession. As he recounts the events leading to his disastrous finale, we learn how this gentle man is gradually transformed into a war criminal, committing acts he wouldn't have thought himself capable. Chidi Ebere's debut is a reflection on how good people can do terrible things — precipitated by circumstances and the violence of war. Unflinching and thought-provoking, Now I Am Here resonates far beyond the individual story of our narrator.
>>By any means necessary.
Wine by Meg Bernhard $23
While wine drunk millennia ago was the humble beverage of the people, today the drink is inextricable with power, sophistication, and often wealth. Bottles sell for half a million dollars. Point systems tell us which wines are considered the best. Wine professionals give us the language to describe what we taste. Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction, purveyor of pleasure, pain, and memory - wine has never been contained in a single glass. Drawing from science, religion, literature, and memoir, Wine meditates on the power structures bound up with making and drinking this ancient, intoxicating beverage.
”Meg Bernhard's Wine is a beautiful gem of a book, thankfully free of what we find in so much wine writing. This wine book is anything but typical. Bernhard covers a lot of ground in a short number of pages with her unique mix of memoir, travel writing, natural history, sensory science, and reporting on the social issues surrounding wine. But the beating heart of this book is Bernhard's experiences working at Spanish wineries and in the vineyards of Castilla-La Mancha and Catalonia, which she memorably brings to life.” —Jason Wilson
>>Other books in the excellent ‘Object Lessons’ series.
Book of the Week: TSUNAMI by Ned Wenlock
This excellent graphic novel from Paekakariki-based illustrator, animator, and comic maker Ned Wenlock deals with bullying, being an outsider, and that awkward transition from childhood to adulthood with raw honesty and clarity.
Meet Peter, a target for the school bullies. His commitment to truth and being right isn’t always the best fit for your final days of primary school. Being twelve is never easy and, for Peter, life is just too much. Peter’s parents are too busy bickering to notice his despair, his nemesis Gus and his cronies are on his case, and there’s a new girl at school just as much a misfit as him. But she’s a badass, and it’s difficult for Peter to navigate her motives. It all feels overwhelming to Peter — like a tsunami is coming and he isn't sure he can stop it.
Told in Ned’s unique and beautifully pared-down style, Tsunami is a taunt page-turner, a coming-of-age story, and nuanced examination of teenage alienation and the unpredictable consequences of our actions.
Another example of superb publishing from Earth’s End.
”Heartbreaking, acutely and devastatingly observed, and distinctively drawn.” —Thomas
The first volume of Niki Segnit’s FLAVOUR THESAURUS has a special place on our kitchen bookcase, and we consult it often, either because we are wondering how ingredients can go together (or not) in something we are about to make, or just because Segnit’s wit, wisdom and snide comments make the book endlessly dippable and a good way to spend those few minutes waiting for the dish to be ‘done’. Segnit introduces us to an ingredient and then ‘cross-references’ it with a whole range of other ingredients, describing the effects and resonances of that combination or flavour collision. Deeply researched and packed with notes, The Flavour Thesaurus is the perfect guide to cooking something exactly the way you want it to be, whether you are a kitchen novice or an experienced chef. It is also a way of avoiding disasters (or at least of going into them with your eyes open). We have had the first volume for years, and now we are delighted with the NEW second volume, which adds another 92 mostly plant-based flavours and over 800 more entries — double the delight!
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
POETRY QUARTER: Celebrate National Poetry Day (August 25th) with a stack of new poetry books. Use the code STANZA when checking out for an inspiring 25% discount on all poetry books. (Promotion ends on 27 August. In-stock items only). >>Start choosing!
Read our #343rd NEWSLETTER and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending — and about our POETRY QUARTER promotion.
18 August 2023
Sphinx by Cat Woodward
Each poem in this collection pits its voice both against silence and against the deluge of other voices suspended above it, or surrounding it, waiting for an opportunity to smother it. Every force is met with an equal and opposite force, or a baffling of that force that absorbs and reconstitutes and reclaims the force as its own, and under its own terms, terms that repudiate even the concept of force. The poems press against their surfaces, either bursting their forms or turning back upon themselves, entering the spaces they have left, increasing their weight and, concomitantly, the depth of their approach, increasing their intensity and also the release that that intensity enables through spaces opened up under pressure. The words and the impact of the words seldom occur simultaneously, the impact coming later, or, shockingly, somehow preceding the words. Similarly, the poems are often somehow geared so that the humour and the blades rotate in opposite directions, each impacting when least expected and from behind. The poems often create or explore a breach in the habits of subject/object relations: to be aware of something is to be that thing, to be swamped, overwhelmed, possessed by that thing, to think something is likewise to be that thing, to be swamped, overwhelmed, possessed. But somehow, through facing the threat directly, we find release enough through the heart of the image, to find emptiness and loss where the presence of the subject is most intense, to find release at the core of presence. Associative leaps leave behind the experience that induced them, pushing experience back into the past by the force of the leap, both retaining and denying the experience that induced them. Often drawing on folkloric elements and pulling at a strand of poetic animism that runs back through English nature poetry to medieval times, Woodward creates poems that have a referential hum of ambiguous valency, either mock-pagan and mock-transpersonal or pagan and transpersonal, only to have these polarities continually and playfully reversed. Each symbol outweighs its referent and replaces it, becoming a non-symbol. Each part replaces the whole and becomes no longer a surrogate for that whole but a whole in its own right, casting the body from which it has wrested itself free into a horizon, a backdrop, a context. There are hurts behind these works, whether of personal or existential nature it is irrelevant to speculate, and the poems reach out to cruelty, but often tenderly, with the tenderness with which one would deliberately and sustainedly press one’s hand or soft flesh down upon a knifeblade. At other times an anger surprises an image and draws a weapon unexpectedly from an idyll. Wherever an image comes from, it quickly becomes a source of fascination and also problematic, a threat to exactly the extent that it commands attention. It is necessary to face and enter the image, to turn the image inside out by passing through it, to overthrow and recalibrate (and Woodward does this so well) the lazy associations upon which poetry so often founders. Here dirty is neat and clean is messy and the bad thing is the neatest thing of all. The poems are aurally tight, at once exactly too much and just enough. There are no unnecessary words: each does its work of anger or of tenderness, of clarity and the disavowal of clarity. The poems simultaneously tighten and release, invite and repel, speak (and silence speech) with both tenderness and hatred. The reader (or hearer) is rewarded with a mixture of certainty and rejection, of wonderment and mockery. These poems are “an instruction guide to obtainable sobbing”, a shortcut to the bottom of the lake, a communing that will not be trivialised as communication.