Read our #350th NEWSLETTER. Find out about our Bookshop Day competition, the Nobel Prize in Literature, our Literary Carousel of savings and discoveries, and choose some excellent new books!
6 October 2023
The Other Name (Septology I—II) by Jon Fosse (translated from Nynorsk by Damion Searle)
and I see myself sitting and reading the thick blue book of two parts, not that thick, actually, and I have reached that point in the book, though it is not in fact a point in the book for there is nothing in the book that would mark such a point, but rather a point in my reading of the book, which just happens to be around page seventy-five, that I came to realise that the book is written entirely in one sentence, one slow, patient, uninterrupted flow of words, no, I think, that is not correct, the book is written in two parts, though each begins with the word And, but neither part ends, each rather just leaves off, so it would not be correct that the book is written in one sentence, or in two sentences, one for each part, but rather in no sentences, one, or two, slow, patient, uninterrupted flow, or flows, of words, that much at least I got right, I think, just the kind of thing I like, but done with such virtuosity and with such little display of virtuosity that I had not realised until page seventy-five or thereabouts that there are no full stops to be found in this book, or no full stop, I am uncertain if this absence should be singular or plural, possibly both, this Jon Fosse and his translator Damion Searls having built these words without one misstep, or missomething, the metaphor seems mixed and I has not even realised that it was a metaphor, I must be more careful, capturing the flow of thought, so to call it, and speech, realistically, seemingly of the narrator, a middle-aged painter named Asle, living, I am almost tempted to put, as such people do, in a small town in western Norway, driving in the snow to and from a city on the western coast of Norway, the city of the gallery which shows, which is a euphemism of sorts for sells, his paintings, but also the city in which lives a middle-aged painter named Asle, resembling both in looks and clothing, if clothing is not part of looks, the narrator, the narrator narrating in the first person and this other Asle, the alter-Asle if you like, this alter-Asle to the thoughts and memories of whom the narrator-Asle has extraordinary access, though there is no evidence of any reciprocal mechanism, we are, I am sure, never given an instance of the alter-Asle even being aware of the existence of such a person as the narrator, this aler-Asle, being confined to the third person, and, I wonder, what sort of trauma confines a person to an existence only in the third person? presumably a trauma, I think, this alter-Asle being also an alcoholic and a person who “most of the time, doesn’t want to live any more, he’s always thinking that he should go out into the sea, disappear into the waves,” but not doing so because of his love for his dog, there is, I think as I am reading, some relationship between the two Asles, well, obviously there is, my thought, or the thought I have, being that the alter-Asle is the actual Asle and the narrator-Asle is the Asle that the alter-Asle-who-is-actually-the-actual-Alse would have been if he was not the Asle he became, which, I think, I have made sound a bit confusing, and the opposite of an explanation, not that that matters, on account of whatever trauma, or whatever it is that I speculate is a trauma, that confined him to a third-person existence, the characters being one character, all characters being one character as they are in all books, I speculate, though in this book The Other Name, almost all the characters have, if not the same name, almost the same name, which tightens the knot somewhat, if I can be forgiven another metaphor, though I will not forgive myself for it at least, I will try to avoid, I think, thinking of the relationships between these persons-who-are-one-person, or, in any rate, describing the relationships between these persons-who-are-one-person, in any way other than a literary way, whatever that means, nothing, I think, the person that Asle could have been sees the Asle that Asle became, though Alse cannot know him, the person that Asle could have been rescues Asle when he has collapsed in the snow and takes him to the Clinic and to the Hospital, and takes the dog to look after, who knows, though, if the third-person Asle, the one I was calling the alter-Asle until that became too confusing, at least for me, survives, neither we nor the first-person Asle know that, but after the first-person Asle goes to the city and rescues the third-person Asle from the snowdrift, how could he know where to find him, I wonder, he begins, in the second part of the book, to have access to some deeply buried memories of the Asle that perhaps they once both were, memories all in the third person, for safety, I think, memories firstly of Asle’s and his sister’s disobedience of their parents in straying along the shore and to the nearby settlement, a narrative in which threat hums in every detail, a narrative in which colour impresses itself so deeply upon Asle that, I think, he could have become nothing other than a painter, a narrative that seems searching for a trauma, for a misfortune, a narrative assailed by an inexplicable motor noise as they approach the settlement but which resolves with a misfortune that is anticlimactic, at least for Asle, a trauma but not his trauma, what has this narrative avoided, I wonder at this point, what has not been released, or what has not yet been released, I wonder, Fosse is a writer who writes to be rid of his thoughts, I think, just as his narrator says, “when I paint it’s always as if I’m trying to paint away the pictures stuck inside me, to get rid of them in a way, to be done with them, I have all these pictures inside me, yes, so many pictures that they’re a kind of agony, I try to paint away these pictures that are lodged inside me, there’s nothing to do but paint them away,” and, yes, when the narrator lies in bed at the end of the book and is unable to sleep, he does recover the memory, a third person memory, the memory of the trauma that split the Asles and trapped one thereafter in the third person, the memory that explains the awful motor noise that intruded on the previous narrative of disobedience as the children approached the locus of the trauma, and, I think, all the sadness of the book leads from here and to here
Bookshop Day is a time to celebrate your bookshop and the books that we find and recommend for you. We take pleasure in introducing new books to you, finding the books you want, and going the extra mile for those special customer requests. At VOLUME we are knowledgeable, and our many years of bookselling experience speaks for itself. Our interest in literature is unquenchable. Bookshop Day is also a time to reflect on the literary ecosystem of Aotearoa. It's small and mighty, with passionate authors, publishers, and booksellers who, against the odds, make superb books appear and land in your hands. Many work long hours for little recompense, and every sale makes a difference. This Bookshop Day I'm recommending my two favourite books — so far — this year from two very special New Zealand publishers. From Gecko Press: the daring and delightful Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai. From Lawrence & Gibson: The Words For Her. This collective of authors not only publish their books, they make them!
As we say at VOLUME, buying interesting books makes interesting books happen.
P.S. A small plug for our own writing/publishing endeavours for 2023: Just out, Thomas's Some Things Wrong — it will take you to another layer of consciousness! And in its second print run, my own I, Object.
And thanks for your ongoing support!
This week we are featuring the books of the remarkable Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who has developed a method he calls 'slow prose' to explore the depths and subtleties of memory and experience and to grapple with the complex predicaments of human existence, language, time, and personhood. His prose is hypnotic, looping, emotionally resonant, philosophical, and often also funny. Fosse has just been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.
>>It's not me who's seeing.
>>The mystical realist.
>>Giving voice to the unsayable.
>>Biobibliography.
>>A search for peace.
>>Pure prose.
>>Frames and levels.
>>Revisions and the ear.
>>A new name.
>>Where to start.
>>Septology (also available as The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name).
>>Thomas reviews The Other Name.
>>Melancholy 1—2..
>>Trilogy.
>>Aliss at the Fire.
>>Scenes from a Childhood..
>>A Shining.
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq (translated from French by Penny Hueston) $45
Plagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines the next day. In Sleepless, she recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly writers – ‘as if writing were not sleeping’ – Ovid, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Franz Kafka, Georges Perec and others. With her inimitable humour, she describes her dealings with a somnologist and her attempts to find a remedy – trying sleeping pills, cannabis, alcohol, bedtime rituals, acupuncture, yoga, hypnosis, psychoanalysis, a gravity blanket and a range of sleep-aid devices. Darrieussecq considers bedrooms, beds, clinophilia (‘the tendency to remain in a prone position without sleeping for prolonged periods of time’), her need to be alone in bed, those without beds, the homeless, refugees, trauma and capitalism’s role in sleeplessness, our constant wakefulness online, the forest as a hypnagogic zone and how our relationship with animals is connected to our sleep, or lack of it. Ranging between autobiography, clinical observation and criticism, Sleepless is a graceful, inventive meditation and an innovation in form.
”Marie Darrieussecq invites us on an extended patrol of the corridors of Hotel Insomnia in the company of the ghosts of the famous sleep-deprived, then turns to the story of her own intimate tussle with sleep that will not come. Amid the torrent of publications in the new sleep science, this is the only book I know that concedes to sleep its proper majesty and its own dark poetry.” —J. M. Coetzee
”On the page Sleepless is fragmentary, footnoted and studded with photos and illustrations. It’s panoramic in its survey of insomniac literature, and also softly intimate where it touches on the author’s own life. In its range and genre it’s unpindownable. Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work. All her familiar acuity, humour, humility and intensity are evident in Sleepless.” —Samantha Harvey, Guardian
”Darrieussecq shows convincingly that the socioeconomic organization of twenty-first-century life conspires to rob us of sleep. It is that, in the eyes of capitalism, sleep is a ‘structural attention deficit’ that impedes ‘non-stop-connectivity’ and the possibility of being open for value extraction and commodification twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For her readers, whether they are insomniacs or not, Sleepless is a meditation on a condition that is more widespread than is generally acknowledged, and impinges, at least philosophically, even on those who do not have it.” —Ryan Ruby, Times Literary Supplement
>>Waking up to Kim Hill.
>>Sleep as another awakening.
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein $40
In her accomplished and unsettling second novel, Sarah Bernstein explores themes of prejudice, abuse and guilt through the eyes of a singularly unreliable narrator. A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the community’s suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. She feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property. Inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill. (Hardback) Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”Study for Obedience is an absurdist tale about how a stranger’s arrival in an unnamed town slowly unearths deep undercurrents of xenophobia, and it feels very like an allegory for the rise of ideological radicalism today. It is also a stirring meditation on survival. It has the uncanny charm of feeling like both a historical work – with its pastoral settings, petty superstitions, and suspicious villagers – and something bracingly modern. In this way it very cleverly, and with great irony, draws a link between a past we’d like to believe is behind us and our very charged present. The humour here is dry as a bone, very Bernhard-esque; it is obliquely and surprisingly funny.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Bernstein paints from a palette of dread. This masterly follow-up to her debut acts as a meditation on survival, the dangers of absorbing the narratives of the powerful, and a warning that the self-blame of the oppressed often comes back to bite.” —Observer
>>The question of innocence is a complicated one.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Coming Bad Days.
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo $48
Chetna Maroo's tender and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself — and squash. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. (Hardback) Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”Western Lane is a mesmerising novel about how silence can reverberate within a family in the aftermath of grief. The story unfolds on a squash court; the reader quickly learns how sport can act as a balm for the living. It is also about sisterhood, and about the love that remains after a devastating loss. The language in this novel is truly something to be savoured. Western Lane contains crystalline prose that also feels warm and tender, which can be a difficult balance to strike. Bereavement is something which we will all experience one day in some shape or form, and the complexity of familial dynamics is another universal theme which Western Lane explores with great sincerity and depth of feeling.” —Booker judges’ citation
”The work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.” —The Guardian
>>Focussed attention.
>>Read an extract.
Star 111 by Lutz Seiler (translated from German by Tess Lewis) $45
November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father’s car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations. And it’s with them that Carl, trained as a bricklayer, finds himself an initiate of anarchy, of love, and above all of poetry. Star 111, musical and incantatory, tells of the search for authentic existence and also of a family exploded by political change which must find its way back together.
”There aren't many books that can be cited as the missing link between Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries and Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, and still fewer that could live up to the comparison, but Lutz Seiler (with impeccable assistance from Tess Lewis) makes it look easy. Star 111 is a brilliant, immersive, sometimes funny, slyly moving book with a main character who walks through the new reality he finds himself in like an astronaut exploring alone beneath a strange, harsh, beautiful sun.” —Will Ashon
”The presence of objects have is no doubt one of the most extraordinary things about Star 111. Everything is unique, everything has a price, everything is respected because it is the fruit of work or of making. Nothing is thrown away, everything kept. What if the objects have a soul? Read Star 111 (the title is the name of an East German transistor radio) and understand the real value of an object.” —Cecile Dutheil de la Rochere
>>Read a sample.
The Observologist: A handbook for mounting very small scientific expeditions by Giselle Clarkson $40
An observologist is someone who makes scientific expeditions, albeit very small ones, every day. They notice interesting details in the world around them. They are expert at finding tiny creatures, plants and fungi. They know that water snails glide upside down on the undersurface of the water; not all flies have wings; earthworms have bristles; butterflies taste with their feet. The Observologist puts over 100 small creatures and features of the natural world under the microscope, piquing our curiosity with only the most interesting facts. Subjects range from slugs, ants and seeds, fungi and flies through to bees and bird poop. But this is no everyday catalogue of creatures. It is an antidote to boredom, an encouragement to observe our environment, with care and curiosity, wherever we are. Facts combine with comics, detailed illustrations, science and funny stories in this unique, warm and fascinating account of the small things all around us. Completely wonderful.
>>Look inside!
Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay $37
The new short story collection from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of The Animals in That Country. A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship plows through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men. With her trademark humor, energy, and flair, McKay offers hallucinogenic glimpses of places where dreams subsume reality, where childhood restarts, where humans behave like animals and animals talk like humans.
”Amidst a pile of shed skin and fur, McKay moulds a kaleidoscopic and horrifyingly real portrait of life at the fringes. By turns gritty, surreal, and absurd, Gunflower isn’t afraid to weigh flesh on the scales of our own judgments, a delicate balancing act between life and death, connection and disconnection. Perhaps part Kelly Link and Ottessa Moshfegh, McKay delivers an assured follow-up to The Animals in That Country in her own singular voice that zeroes in on our anxieties and existential crises with deft and often poetic flair.” —Sequoia Nagamatsu
>>Given up on book clubs?
>>Read Stella’s review of The Animals in That Country.
The Forgotten Forest: In search of the lost plants and fungi of Aotearoa by Robert Vennell $40
Deep in the forest, in places you would never think to look, are some of the most remarkable creatures. Overlooked and unsung, this is the forgotten forest: a world of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms and giant mosses, where slime moulds travel the forest in search of prey and ancient lichens live for thousands of years. A beautifully illustrated guide to the spectacular oddities of the forests of Aotearoa, by the author of The Meaning of Trees and Secrets of the Sea. Fascinating, surprising, and mysterious.
>>Look inside!
Constance Barnicoat: A cool head and a sharp pen by Annabel Schuler $30
Nelsonian Constance Barnicoat (1872-1922) was sassy, strong, opinionated, brave, meticulous, and very intelligent. She should be celebrated as a leading journalist of her time, but she is unknown to most people. While she was born and brought up in New Zealand, Constance Barnicoat wrote for publications around the world, having learned her craft in London from the pioneer of modern journalism, W. T. Stead. Annabel Schuler came across Constance’s story five years ago and wrote a brief article about her achievements for a historical journal. People wanted to know more, so she dug deeper into Constance’s writing, her climbing, her grit in a man’s world, and her unflagging work ethic. In A Cool Head and a Sharp Pen readers will learn about Constance Barnicoat’s career as a multi-lingual journalist firstly in England, then based in Switzerland during World War I. Her contacts included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Georg F. Nicolai and, back in New Zealand, politicians such as Richard John Seddon and Sir Francis Dillon Bell. If that was not enough, she claimed several ‘firsts’, climbing some of the most treacherous mountain peaks of Europe as her form of relaxation.
Earth & Fire: Modern potters, their tools, techniques and practices by Kylie Johnson and Tiffany Johnson $80
From clay to kiln and all the techniques between, this is an introduction to the craft and techniques of working with ceramics by ceramicists. Visit the studios of established ceramicists who are making waves in the art world, of midcareer potters who work diligently at their craft daily and make a living from their work, as well as those who turn to clay for relaxation and a hobby. With a focus on techniques and processes, Earth and Fire captures the diversity of ceramics and how clay doesn't just get under your fingernails; it gets under your skin.
>>Look inside!
Rintaro by Sylvan Mishima Brackett and Jessica Battilana $70
This cookbook, from one of San Francisco's most acclaimed restaurants, translates the experience of a Tokyo izakaya to the home kitchen. Crowd-pleasing foods like curry rice, tonkatsu, and yakitori, eaten most often at lunch counters and in home kitchens, live alongside sashimi, fresh bamboo shoots, and other dishes that are usually considered part of a more elevated Japanese cooking tradition and not often covered in cookbooks. Through clear instruction, abundant photography, and delicious recipes, Rintaro demystifies Japanese food for home cooks with over 70 recipes for rice, simmered dishes, homemade udon, and grilled foods.
>>Look inside!
>>Visit Rintaro!
What Is Antiracism? And why it means anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani $40
What is ‘racial capitalism’ and how do we overcome it? This sharp, slim, revelatory book argues that we misunderstand contemporary capitalism if we miss the centrality of racism to neoliberalism.
From David Harvey to Wendy Brown, the leading scholars of neoliberalism's rise treat racism as an ornamental feature of recent capitalist politics — an ugly ornament, to be sure, but not one that is central to neoliberalism. In crisp, accessible prose and via descriptions of some key moments of modern history in the US (like the Black Power movement) and the UK (like Enoch Powell's introduction of neoliberal ideas in parliament), Arun Kundnani argues that this misapprehension of the role of race in neoliberalism contributes to the Left's inability to build a successful movement connecting race and class.
Kallocain by Karin Boye (translated from Swedish by David McDuff) $26
Leo Kall is a zealous middle-ranking scientist in the totalitarian World State who has just made a thrilling discovery: a new drug, Kallocain, that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. At last, criminality will be dragged out into the open and private thought can finally be outlawed. But can the World State be trusted with Kallocain? For that matter, can Kall himself be trusted? Written as the terrible events of World War II were unfolding, Karin Boye's classic dystopian novel speaks more clearly than ever of the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance.
"The world of the Swedish writer Karin Boye's little-known 1940 novel, Kallocain, is a close cousin to those depicted in We and Brave New World. The women characters in many classic twentieth-century dystopias tend to be flat, mere foils to male protagonists. But in Kallocain it is the inner lives of women that come to illustrate both the state's power over its citizens and their own power to resist." —The New Yorker
>>Reimagining the dystopian novel.
The Book that No-One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade and Tor Freeman $23
Have you ever thought about how it feels to be a book? To be left under a whiffy pant pile or shelved, forever collecting dust? To have your pages bent backwards or your spine BROKEN? What if you don't have a sparkly unicorn or dragon adorning your cover — who will pick you out of the bookshop then? This is the story of the sadly neglected Book That No One Wanted To Read — Can its destiny change when it finally meets the right reader? Spoiler alert: yes.
”Very funny, with brilliant illustrations. It should be called The Book That Everyone Wanted To Read." —Nadia Shireen
>>Look inside (what fun!).
Celebrate your bookshop with books!
Many thanks for all the wonderful entries in our Bookshop Day competition. Entrants sent us a photograph of a book or books they had purchased from VOLUME. Bookshop Day was celebrated on 7 October (but the appreciation of your independent bookshop (and its appreciation of you) continues all year round).
The winner of the six-month VOLUME Reading Subscription was Tania Norfolk, who is seated beside the tower of books she has purchased from us.
Have a look at the other entries we received ! (Click on the images to see them in full.)
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
Read the winner of the 2023 BOOKER PRIZE! Read the other excellent books on the short list! Although full of hope, humour and humanity, the books address many of 2023’s most pressing concerns: climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms. They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future.
Click through to buy your copies! Read the books! Tell us what you think!
THE WINNER OF THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE:
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
A mother faces a terrible choice, in Paul Lynch’s exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a society on the brink. On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her doorstep. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police want to speak with her husband. Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society — assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together.
”Prophet Song follows one woman’s attempts to save her family in a dystopic Ireland sliding further and further into authoritarian rule. It is a shocking, at times tender novel that is not soon forgotten. It is propulsive and unsparing, and it flinches away from nothing. This is an utterly brave performance by an author at the peak of his powers, and it is terribly moving. Prophet Song has one of the most haunting endings you will ever read. The book lives long in the mind after you’ve set it down.” —Booker judges’ citation
”I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years. The comparisons are inevitable — Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy — but this novel will stand entirely on its own.” —Colum McCann
”It was gripping and chilling, and terribly prescient — a novel with a darkly important message about this particular moment in time.” —Sara Baume
>>Radical empathy.
>>Read an extract.
THE OTHER SHORT-LISTED BOOKS
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
In her accomplished and unsettling second novel, Sarah Bernstein explores themes of prejudice, abuse and guilt through the eyes of a singularly unreliable narrator. A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the community’s suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. She feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property. Inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill.
”Study for Obedience is an absurdist tale about how a stranger’s arrival in an unnamed town slowly unearths deep undercurrents of xenophobia, and it feels very like an allegory for the rise of ideological radicalism today. It is also a stirring meditation on survival. It has the uncanny charm of feeling like both a historical work – with its pastoral settings, petty superstitions, and suspicious villagers – and something bracingly modern. In this way it very cleverly, and with great irony, draws a link between a past we’d like to believe is behind us and our very charged present. The humour here is dry as a bone, very Bernhard-esque; it is obliquely and surprisingly funny.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Bernstein paints from a palette of dread. This masterly follow-up to her debut acts as a meditation on survival, the dangers of absorbing the narratives of the powerful, and a warning that the self-blame of the oppressed often comes back to bite.” —Observer
>>The question of innocence is a complicated one.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Coming Bad Days.
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's spellbinding novel celebrates the hopes, dreams and resilience of those deemed not to fit in a world brutally intolerant of difference. Inspired by historical events, This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island: an enclave off the coast of the United States where castaways — in flight from society and its judgment — have landed and built a home. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey arrives on the island with his Irish wife, Patience, to make a life together there. More than a century later, the Honeys’ descendants remain, alongside an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. Then comes the intrusion of ‘civilization’: officials determine to ‘cleanse’ the island. 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.
”It’s rare to encounter a work of historical fiction that is at once so lyrical and so empathetic. While many readers will be struck by Harding’s inimitable voice, many more will also be drawn to his beautifully etched portraits of the inhabitants of Apple Island. Though set in the past, it’s impossible to ignore the novel’s contemporary resonance, especially in its exploration of how those in power, convinced of their righteousness, abuse others whose identities and way of life don’t conform to their own.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Masterful. 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.” —The Guardian
>>Mostly written on post-it notes.
>>Read an extract.
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Chetna Maroo's tender and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself — and squash. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
”Western Lane is a mesmerising novel about how silence can reverberate within a family in the aftermath of grief. The story unfolds on a squash court; the reader quickly learns how sport can act as a balm for the living. It is also about sisterhood, and about the love that remains after a devastating loss. The language in this novel is truly something to be savoured. Western Lane contains crystalline prose that also feels warm and tender, which can be a difficult balance to strike. Bereavement is something which we will all experience one day in some shape or form, and the complexity of familial dynamics is another universal theme which Western Lane explores with great sincerity and depth of feeling.” —Booker judges’ citation
”The work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.” —The Guardian
>>Focussed attention.
>>Read an extract.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
A patch of ice on the road, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil — can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under — but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker. His exasperated wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike. Meanwhile, teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And 12-year-old PJ, in debt to local sociopath ‘Ears’ Moran, is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away. Yes, in Paul Murray’s brilliant tragicomic saga, the Barnes family is definitely in trouble. So where did it all go wrong? And if the story has already been written — is there still time to find a happy ending?
”The Bee Sting is the very funny, sad and truthful story of the Barnes family, set in contemporary Ireland and written with considerable wit and compassion. The characters are unforgettable. They persist with hope and are capable of startling moments of love and generosity, despite their myriad flaws and problems. Imelda Barnes is a wonderful creation — initially we see her exterior waspishness and materialism but as the book progresses, Murray skilfully reveals the family secrets which have led them all to their present situation. Imelda’s response to the hardship of her childhood is at once courageous, self-deluding and entirely human.” —Booker judges’ citation
”It can't be overstated how purely pleasurable The Bee Sting is to read. Murray's brilliant new novel, about a rural Irish clan, posits the author as Dublin's answer to Jonathan Franzen . A 650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment, The Bee Sting oozes pathos while being very funny to boot. Murray's observational gifts and A-game phrase-making render almost every page — every line, it sometimes seems — abuzz with fresh and funny insights. At its core this is a novel concerned with the ties that bind, secrets and lies, love and loss. They're all here, brought to life with captivating vigour in a first-class performance to cherish.” —The Observer
>>A possible future.
>>Read an extract.
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm. Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it. As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew — they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?
”In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, Escoffery effortlessly conducts the various voices, contradictory in their perspectives, their dreams and desires, while wrestling with the age-old immigrant dilemma — who are my people and where do I belong? As with the best fiction, all of life is here in unflinching detail: the vagaries of capitalism, our yearning for a safety net, international migration, the American Dream, the fragility of existence, climate change, catastrophic misunderstandings and the road not taken." —Booker judges’ citation
>>”Humour is a coping mechanism used by people aware of their powerlessness.”
>>Read an extract.
Whenever you buy a book...
—you are helping to make a world that contains such a book possible;
—you are helping an author to write the sorts of books you like to read (and a publisher to publish those books (and a bookshop to make those books available to you));
—you are helping your bookshop survive;
—you are supporting the expertise of booksellers, who will lead you to new books (our newsletters, reviews and literary bulletins, for example, are only possible because of the books you buy);
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—you will be exercising your engagement with your world — but also your independence within that world — through reading your book;
—you will be building a reservoir of good reading, ready to use whenever you want it.
Buying interesting books makes interesting books possible.
Bookshop Day (7 October) gives us a chance to think about the importance of bookshops to the lives we'd like to lead — and to make those lives more plausible.
Read our #349th NEWSLETTER.
29 September 2023
99 Interruptions by Charles Boyle
1. I sit down to write a review of Charles Boyle’s 99 Interruptions, but I no sooner put finger to keyboard than I urgently need the right word to describe the book’s appealing smallness. Is it a duodecimo or a sextodecimo, I wonder. I count the leaves, check the binding, trawl the internet. This is an out-of-date question, I realise eventually, and not really an interesting question anyway.
2. To any given task the potential interruptions are infinite, but they do seem to fall into two categories: interruptions with an external source (family members, a cat fight in the back garden, a caller from Porlock) and interruptions with an internal source (useless questions about book format, random alerts from some malfunctioning mental appointments calendar, concerns about the underlying cause of various pains, the endless rephrasing of an imperfect conversation). Not that I really think there is a distinction between an internal and an external, I don’t believe in either after all, but it helps to halve infinity sometimes.
3. I will just interrupt the practical demands of my life to read this book, I thought, but the practical demands of my life, so to call them and so to call it, repeatedly interrupt my reading, even though the book is short. Two sets of interruptions grapple with each other over my attention. There are perhaps only interruptions (and interruptions to the interruptions).
4. Sometimes the interruptions come even before whatever it is that they interrupt, in which case they are perhaps not interruptions to that activity but interruptions to the preconditions of that activity, to the preparations that are I suppose themselves some sort of activity but not identifiable as any activity in particular. Is most of my life these days lived in this state of velleity?
5. The first time I sat down to read read this book, 99 Interruptions, I was interrupted by finding a surprising quotation on the first page I came to, and then by finding that I had to check the source and context of that quotation.
6. Without interruptions there is no story, Boyle shows. The interruptions are the story. An interruption disrupts the natural tendency to oversimplification (which is indistinguishable from nonexistence).
7. An interruption is the assertion of the particular against the pull of the general and the abstract. It is the prime quality of fiction.
8. An interruption breaks a continuum and causes two realities to mingle. I frequently find this irritating but at least my irritation is real irritation.
9. Is the fragment the only authentic contemporary literary form?
10. Boyle remarks that, although most fiction is written in the past tense, a reader or critic invariably relates the narrative to someone else as happening in the present, “as if everything … is still happening and there’s no end in sight.” I hadn’t thought about this before, and thinking about it now is interrupting my progress through the book.
11. Fiction interrupts time by the introduction of a completely other thread of time, allowing the reader to jump between the two as inclination or interruption dictates. Before it is anything else, fiction is a sin against time, an interruption or eruption.
12. In most situations I tend to feel that my presence is an interruption of whatever would otherwise be the case. This is probably not a very healthy way to think, but I cannot find a way in which it is not true.
13. I am actually writing a review, if you can call it that, but I am interrupted by that little repeated stifled sound coming from the headphones that S is wearing so that I am not interrupted by the music she is listening to. I won’t interrupt what she is busy doing over there on account of this; it is about time I accepted that the membrane between writing and real life (so to call it) is always entirely permeable. No wonder I never get anything done.
14. Would it be possible to welcome every interruption into the work itself? To create a work entirely of interruptions? (Like Boyle’s!)
15. Be that as it may (does this construction even make sense?), the work is ultimately interrupted by its deadline.
Acutely observed and beautifully written, Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes explores the enduring effects of racism (relevant anywhere); questions about time, memory and loss; and the particular effects of these on the shapes and potentials of Black lives. Presented as a series of 248 ‘notes’ on her own life, on art and culture, and on the society in which she lives, the book is a perfect blend of form, art, passion and acuity.
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Backwaters by Emma Ling Sidnam $38
Laura is tired of being asked where she's really from. Her family has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for four generations, and she's ambivalent at best about her Chinese heritage. But when she's asked to write about the Chinese New Zealander experience for a work project, Laura finds herself drawn to the diary of her great-great-grandfather Ken, a market gardener in the early years of the British colony. With the help of her beloved grandpa, Laura begins to write a version of Ken's story. She imagines his youth in Guangzhou and his journey to a new land-unaware that soon, spurred on by a family secret that comes to light, she will go on her own journey of self-discovery, sexuality and reckoning with the past. A tender, nuanced novel about the bittersweet search for belonging.
Winner of the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize.
”The past and present carry out intimate conversations in this compelling and beautiful work. The rhythms of modern city life speak with the deep histories of Chinese lives in Aotearoa in ways that give a sense of walking backwards into the future. Sidnam's magnificent novel shows us that the past is living, evolving and all around us. It is an absolute joy to read.'“ —Pip Adam
>>The story of my body, which refuses to co-operate.
Encounters Across Time by Judith Binney $18
”Story telling is an art deep within human nature.” A timely collection of writings on history, from one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most distinguished scholars. These essays bring forth important questions for New Zealand history about autonomy, restoration and power that continue to reverberate today. They also serve as a pathway into the rigorous and imaginative scholarship that characterised Judith Binney's acclaimed historical writing.
Contents: ‘Māori Oral Narratives, Pākeha Written Texts’; Songlines from Aotearoa’; ‘Encounters Across Time’: Hostory and Memory’; ‘Stories Without End’.
The 101st BWB Text! To celebrate, buy the texts at a special price!
Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade (translated from Portuguese by Katrina Dodson) $37
An exciting new translation of the modernist Brazilian epic Macunaíma. This landmark novel from 1928 has been hugely influential. It follows the adventures of the shapeshifting Macunaíma and his brothers as they leave their home in the northern Amazon for a whirlwind tour of Brazil, cramming four centuries and a continental expanse into a single mythic plane. Having lost a magic amulet, the hero and his brothers journey to São Paulo to retrieve the talisman that has fallen into the hands of an Italo-Peruvian captain of industry (who is also a cannibal giant). Written over six delirious days — but the fruit of years of study — Macunaíma magically synthesizes dialect, folklore, anthropology, mythology, flora, fauna, and pop culture to examine Brazilian identity. This translation by has been many years in the making, and includes an extensive section of notes providing essential background information for this remarkable work.
”Katrina Dobson’s translation, employing a colloquial American diction with palpable African American and Deep South overtones, gives Macunaíma a consistent, credible voice in English. She inhabits and breathes life into the novel as though she were a revenant from the Brazilian jungle of a century ago…It is not only Brazil’s complexity that Mário de Andrade captures, but that of the Americas as a whole, and to some extent that of the entire modern world.” — Times Literary Supplement
”Over the course of seventeen chapters and an epilogue, violent parables and raunchy parodies nestle within one another to create a dazzling and chaotic Luso-tropical Holy Grail epic… Perhaps through Dodson’s masterful work, Andrade will finally be widely read alongside Joyce, Woolf, and Kafka, and Brazilian modernism will be cemented in a canon that has largely excluded authors from Latin America. —Meg Weeks, The Baffler
>>The hero with no character.
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery $33
In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm. Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it. As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew — they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, Escoffery effortlessly conducts the various voices, contradictory in their perspectives, their dreams and desires, while wrestling with the age-old immigrant dilemma — who are my people and where do I belong? As with the best fiction, all of life is here in unflinching detail: the vagaries of capitalism, our yearning for a safety net, international migration, the American Dream, the fragility of existence, climate change, catastrophic misunderstandings and the road not taken." —Booker judges’ citation
>>”Humour is a coping mechanism used by people aware of their powerlessness.”
Te Awa o Kupu edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong $37
An important new collection of poetry and stories by over eighty contemporary Māori writers, both established and emerging.
A companion volume to Ngā Kupu Wero.
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue $38
In 1805, at boarding school in York, England, two fourteen-year-olds meet — an orphan heiress, sent from India to England at six, and a gifted troublemaker. Anne Lister would go on to be a gifted diarist, famous the world over. But in the early nineteenth century she met Eliza Raine, someone who would change her life for ever.
"Donoghue's affection for the savvy, strange Lister is obvious, and the author makes her teenage couple's partnership both deeply serious and wonderfully naive, but the reader knows from the first page that their infatuation won't last, and the novel is ultimately a tender, sad account of first love." —Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic
>>Other books about Anne Lister.
>>Gentleman Jack.
Technofeudalism: What killed Capitalism by Yanid Varoufakis $40
No one noticed when capitalism died. Perhaps we were too distracted by the implosion of global finance, or the rise of populism, or the demise of the planet — or all of those cute cats on Instagram. But gradually, quietly, a yet more exploitative new system has taken hold — techno-feudalism. Written in the form of a letter to his late father, who first taught him about the power of new technologies to shape human history, Yanis Varoufakis explains how Big Tech has effected an invisible but fundamental transformation in all our lives. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Mad Men to Karl Marx, he explains how the key ingredients of capitalism — profit and markets — have both been replaced. And he exposes the hidden connection between your personal data and the transformative power of 'cloud capital' which means that without our realising it, we are all working every day for the tech giants, for free.
Harrow by Joy Williams $25
”How do you get geriatric eco-terrorists into a book and make it sound believable, ironic, outrageous, and compelling? When your main protagonist is a ten-year-old with a jaundiced view of the world, but also a surprising innocence, how are we convinced that this could be a future reality? Joy Williams makes us believe because she’s a genius. Harrow, her recent novel, is a sideways dystopia, very strange and difficult to follow — not because it’s pretentious or overly literary but because the end of the world (as we know it) will be confusing, blindingly obvious, and surprisingly full of unexpected consequences. As you read this review, you will notice the inconsistencies — how can it be this, but also that? How can you have a 10-year-old protagonist surviving crossing America alone but somehow be okay — picked up and harnessed by the goodwill of others — even if this is fleeting? How can, and why, do terminally ill geriatrics who can’t seem to get along (there are plenty of petty squabbles at the abandoned conference centre/resort) have a plan (of destruction — we will get to that later) that forces them to be bound together by a mutual ideology? Well, it works because Joy Williams is a brilliant writer and she’s angry, even as she darkly exploits us humans and uses our foibles to create characters who will stick on you. And that’s how it is — Harrow gets under your skin and just when you’re confused the lightbulb clicks on and it’s so bright, you hope you’ll be in the dark again. Darkness may be preferable to the future.” —Stella
Now in paperback!
>>Read the rest of Stella’s review.
My Art Book of Adventure by Shana Gozansky $35
”The latest in a charming series of board books for pre-schoolers. This series introduces the very young to a range of fine art images alongside relevant childhood experiences. Exploring their world, going on a picnic, being a baby, sleeping and dreaming. The book is designed to appeal and be practical for youngsters with its firm pages, only one or two images per page (there are 35 artworks) and short, sweet texts.” —Stella
>>Look inside!
>>Other books in the series.
The Handover: How we gave control of our lives to corporations, states and A.I. by David Runciman $40
'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before. A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago — and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency. Runciman is incisive, as always.
”Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to.” —Australian
The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone by Alex McCarthy $37
Tucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge. Sixteen-year-old Catrin Bone knows only what she has been told. Now, she is beginning to question her small world, and a version of the past that seems to entrap and embitter her reclusive mother, Mary. Mary had a sister once, a girl of unparalleled beauty. Why did she disappear from the village in a shroud of shame all those years ago — and where is she now?
Meanwhile the Clements brothers, skint and all out of hope, run rampant across the hills and lanes. And old Dai Bevel, whose frailty masks a dark history, dreams of a girl he used to know. The sins of the past are approaching, for it takes a village: to raise a child, to bring down a woman, to hide something monstrous and to look the other way.
”Small Things Like These meets Under Milk Wood — this slim but devastating novel captures an entire village, an entire world, and the many ways in which a woman can be trapped. A real gem.” —Ruth Gilligan
”A wonderful novella, full of atmosphere and feeling.” —Sara Baume
Around the Ocean in 80 Fish (and other sea life) by Helen Scales, illustrated by Marcel George $60
An inspiring tour of the world's oceans and eighty of its most notable inhabitants. Filled with lively illustrations, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life — whether in medicine, culture or folklore — in often surprising and unexpected ways.
>>Look inside!
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney $37
Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him. How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community in rural Ireland.
>>Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
Holding the Note: Writing on music by David Remnick $43
The editor of The New Yorker writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years. He portrays a series of musical lives – Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more – and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time.
”This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature. He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal.” —The New York Times
Fire Weather: A true story from a hotter world by John Vaillant $40
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant reveals a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet this volatile energy has always threatened to elude our control, and in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never witnessed by human beings. With masterly prose and cinematic style, Vaillant explores the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is an urgent book for our new century of fire.
City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak $21
India, 1855. The British rule, and all across the country, Indian magic is being stamped out. More terrifying still, people born with magic are being snatched from their homes. Rumour is that they are being taken across the sea — to England — by the all-powerful, sinister Company. When Chompa's home is attacked and her mother viciously kidnapped, Chompa — born with powerful and dangerous magic that she has always been forbidden from using — must travel to the smoky, bustling streets of East London in search of her. But Chompa will discover far more treachery in London than she had bargained for — and will learn that every act of her rare magic comes with a price.
”Dazzling from start to finish.” —Abi Elphinstone
”A gripping and spellbinding fantasy woven together with threads of magic, secrets and colonial history . An incredible cast of characters and a truly multicultural Victorian London that we don't see often enough.” —Rashmi Sirdeshpande
BOOKSHOP DAY is approaching. It's a chance to reflect on what your bookshop means to you! The way in which we find books comes in many guises. Whether you are waiting for your favourite author to write that next book, getting tips from a friend, being gifted or gifting a surprise package, or indulging in something from your wish-list, it's likely a bookseller has a hand in your book discovery. At VOLUME, we offer our customers excellent service, and love to share our knowledge of and passion for interesting books produced by some of the very best publishers in Aotearoa and internationally; and written by authors who take us to new places, inform us about our world and incite us to action, literally and philosophically. Bringing books and readers together is the purpose of a bookshop. This year, to celebrate, send us a photograph of a book (or a stack of books!) you have purchased from VOLUME — it could be a snap of you reading it, a photo of the book in situ on your shelf, arranged in a curated display, or any inventive arrangement. Entries due by midnight 7th October 2023. Every entry goes in the draw to win a 6-month VOLUME Reading Subscription. You can enter as many times as you like (but each entry should be in a separate email). Email your entry to us at books@volume.nz.
If you have a young aspiring artist in your household, or a keen block builder, then one of these lovely art books would make an excellent gift. For the absolute beginners, My Art Book of Adventures is the latest in a charming series of board books for pre-schoolers. This series introduces the very young to a range of fine art images alongside relevant childhood experiences. Exploring their world, going on a picnic, being a baby, sleeping, and dreaming. The book is designed to appeal to and be practical for youngsters with its firm pages, only one or two images per page (there are 35 artworks), and short, sweet texts.
Building up and breaking down, find out all about buildings in 100 Things to Know About Architecture. This is an excellent book featuring both iconic buildings and simple structures, early builders, and famous architects. What I enjoy about this book over others that cover similar ground is the inclusion of technical information, architectural concepts, and socio-cultural context. Have a look at a few images on our website and you will see what I mean. Here you’ll find out the relationship between topography and buildings, what it takes to build a bridge, and how we live in houses. The attractive illustrations are immediately appealing and the text is informative, yet incisive. Each entry (100 in all) has a 100-word descriptor alongside its illustration.
And for something more hands-on, just published, a wonderful and inspiring art activity book, Ziggle! - The Len Lye Art Activity Book. The education team at the Len Lye Centre has gathered together 65 activities and plenty of information about the playful and inventive artist. This is fun, fascinating, and brimming with ideas. You might get a wind wand in your garden or get to enjoy an avant-garde film experience!
Recently, the art of Hilma af Klint has been showing up at galleries around the world. This renewed interest reflects the re-examination of influential women artists who have previously been sidelined. A Swedish artist, she was part of a circle of female mystics. Her work is grounded in her philosophy. Her paintings are among the first abstract works known in Western art history, predating Kandinsky and Mondrian. The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint is a great introduction to this artist, their distinctive style, and their passion for art and ideas.
Click on the book jackets to look inside!
BWB Texts is 100. Congratulations to Bridget Williams Books for their commitment to non-fiction publishing. This year marks the publication of 100 BWB Texts; short books on big subjects for Aotearoa New Zealand. To celebrate we are offering you a discount on every BWB Text you purchase over the next 2 weeks. Help us to get more kōrero about issues of urgency and importance into our community. Want to share a favourite text with a friend, let us know and we can send this anywhere on your behalf. Our target — 100 books! Use the code: 100BWB or just email us with your requests. #101 has just arrived: Encounters Across Time by Judith Binney.
*Regular Price $18 - Promotion Price $15.
Promotion ends Sunday 15th October .
Here’s a section from our shelves and to see more click here
The Platform: The Radical Legacy of the Polynesian Panthers
Living with the Climate Change: Voices from Aotearoa
Student Political Action in New Zealand
A Matter of Fact: Talking Truth in a Post-Truth World
Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook
He Pou Hiringa: Grounding Science and Technology in Te Ao Māori
Read our 348th newsletter. Find out about a new release from Volume Editions, the short list for the 2023 Booker Prize, and help us to celebrate Bookshop Day.
22 September 2023
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The Coming Bad Days by Sarah Bernstein
“The truth is that sometimes we just want the worst to happen,” she writes, he supposes because there is no other way that we can be conclusively relieved of our fear that the worst may happen. Until such relief arrives, he thinks, we attempt to suppress our fear with whatever means we have at our disposal. “When we probed underneath everyday life,” she writes. “When we pressed on to the other side of the ordinary, did we not after all conclude that boredom was a form of anxiety, if not of sheer terror? When one acted out of boredom, it was an effort to forestall the worst taking one by surprise.” We learn very little about the narrator of this book, he thinks, we learn very little and the very little that we do learn is eventually taken away. The narrator sheds rather than accrues character, the things that happen to her are either without consequence or with no consequence other than being later undone, the narrator ends up less connected to any of the other characters, so to call them, than she was when she had not yet met them, she continuously makes observations and intimations but these observations and intimations are strangely devoid of content, they are structures with no core. The nameless narrator takes a post at a nameless university in a nameless city prone, seemingly, to flooding. Someone puts portentous notes under her door, but don’t expect to learn why or who. She develops an enduring fascination with Clara, the wife of the Department Chair, who leaves her husband, who knows why, and moves into the narrator’s cottage, who knows why, and then moves out again, who knows why and who knows where, certainly the narrator doesn’t seem to know why or where. “Our turning towards each other … might best be understood as an orientation towards an ideal, and it is for that very reason that the whole enterprise suggested devastation from the start. It contained within it the seeds that made its own realisation impossible,” she writes. It is unclear what the relationship between Clara and the narrator could be, the narrator doesn’t seem able to relate to anyone on any level, the two are almost complete opposites in every way, but, judging from hurts that the narrator is intent upon receiving from this relationship, if it even is a relationship, we could do worse than to speculate that Clara, one of only two characters who have been given a name, is mostly a projection of the narrator, a masochistic fantasy, a tool for self-harm. “Clara suggested that I had allowed myself to descend further and further into the realms of abjection in an effort to make myself interesting. Perhaps, she said, it was for the best that I could not write, for if I could not write, I would not then compromise myself in the ways that I had previously described to her — that is, in ways that were, when one looked closely, actually relatively shameful. … Although I may at one point have been a good thinker, this was evidently no longer the case.” After Clara leaves, something happens to her, there have been intimations of physical threats towards women throughout the novel, though we don’t know exactly what. “I did not want to think about what had happened to Clara. I did not want to think about what had happened. I did not want to think that what had happened to me had happened to her.” This is the only time that the narrator hints at a reason behind her evident self-loathing and abjection. Some unfaceable trauma has left her believing that abjection is her due, left her without faith in the possibility of any continuity or reciprocation, “sure to be found out for transgressions I did not recall having committed but was nonetheless guilty of.” She believes herself fated to endless loss and misfortune, “merely because one found oneself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Merely because, increasingly, it seemed to me, there was no right place or right time, still less did the two together exist anywhere, hard though one looked.” The narrator is unable to achieve anything or believe in anything closer than an immense distance between herself and her material, the sort of distance a narrator might maintain from the details of the story of another character in another book or of the story or some other personage unknown to them but narrated by another character, but in this book the material from which this degree of remove is maintained is herself. There is no past, and there is hardly any present either, and, turned upon itself, the narrator’s text sometimes almost eliminates any excuse for its production. At other times, often when taking a more casual attachment to the material, such as the story of a woman sitting on a park bench in Helsinki, perhaps when the material itself is at sufficient remove, Bernstein’s precise, cool, devastating prose takes on a Cuskian quality in highly memorable passages balancing dismissal, sympathy and unsparing humour. Bernstein’s sentences often have an aphoristic quality, sometimes unsettlingly at odds with their purported content. Her prose prickles. “What was absolute was not necessarily unconditional.”
On We Go by Catherine Bagnall and L. Jane Sayle
On We Go is a beautiful book, in design and content. This collaboration between artist Catherine Bagnall and poet Jane Sayle is a whimsical dreamscape, contemplative with little pinpricks of curiosity and quiet insistence. Here on the page are the watercolours and the words moving against and with each other. Here on the page is our place and relationship with nature. Our eyes are drawn to the creatures and landscapes of the paintings; we both wonder at these magical places and the human-animal hybrids. Are they us? Are they our inner selves wandering in the garden, in the bush? Are they our nightscapes of dreams or unconscious rememberings? Our mind lingers on the words. A passing phrase here, a word there, evocatively carving its way in. This world so familiar, yet slightly strange — off-kilter, mythic. And within and beyond the work are the themes, the conversation about ecology and the perils facing the natural world — a whisper of fragments that build upon each other and suggest quietly, yet forcefully, an attentiveness that is due to this place we live in. I’ve owned my copy of this perfectly designed small book of poems and art for a few years and it is a pleasure to read and contemplate each time I glance into it. I was drawn to it initially by the watercolours and then by the words, and back around to the art. A circular relationship in my looking and reading which reflects this excellent collaboration. You sense the flow of ideas and exchange between the two contributors; the ease that makes the work sing on the page. A lilting exploration of our place, and sometimes conversely, our otherness, in the natural world.
Good news times two: One, a new publication from this duo is due in October — pre-order In the Temple; and Two, On We Go can be ordered and in your hand within a week. Treasures to keep beside you in a world unsettled.
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Some Things Wrong by Thomas Pors Koed $35
”Presence on the road. Call it a road. Somewhere with the expectations of a road. The expectation to go on. For example. The expectation to overcome the impediments to going on. The expectation that going on is possible. The expectation that going on is even to be considered. Too late. Something near necessity bound to something near impossibility. Near enough in either case. Resembling both. But contending in their imperfections. Imperfect necessity. Imperfect impossibility. No more likely candidates for hope.” Composed entirely of details that would have been better left out, Some Things Wrong is an unsparing yet strangely cheerful exploration of failure, error and incapacity. Our memories, identities, concepts and intentions are entirely dependent on the errors on which they are founded. By exhausting these errors and by calling its own content constantly into question, this book asks what it is, at base, that enables or causes us to continue.
>>Find out more.
>>Thomas introduces and reads from the book.
>>This is the second book published by Volume Editions this year.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff $37
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her. Lauren Groff's new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how — and if — we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
"I know of few other writers whose sentences are so beautiful and so propulsive. The girl embodies a furious onward motion, as does the prose." —New York Times Book Review
”Groff is a mastermind, a masterpiece-creator, an intoxicating magician. I wait with impatience for every book and I am always surprised and delighted. The Vaster Wilds feels like her bravest yet, hallucinatory, divine, beyond belief but also entirely human.” —Daisy Johnson
>>Read Stella’s review.
>>Hear Stella’s review on RNZ.
>>Difficulty engaging.
>>”The book of the year so far.”
>>How Groff does her work.
Beasts of England by Adam Biles $38
Adam Biles's anarchic return to Animal Farm is a warped fable; a state-of-the-farmyard novel about back-stabbers, truth-twisters and corrupt charlatans. Manor Farm has reinvented itself as the South of England's premium petting zoo. Now humans and beasts alike are invited (for a small fee) to come and stroke, fondle, and take rides on the farm's inhabitants. But life is not a bed of roses for the animals, in spite of what their leaders may want them to believe. Elections are murky, the community is beset by factions, and sacred mottos are being constantly updated. Manor Farm is descending into chaos. What's more, a mysterious illness has started ripping through its residents, killing them one by one. In Beasts of England, Adam Biles honours, updates and subverts George Orwell's classic, all the while channelling the chaos of populist politics in the internet age into a savage farmyard satire.
“Orwell is one of the great writers of fear, but where Animal Farm works by suggestion Biles’s novel puts everything on show, and in doing so stops the reader several times through its sheer brutality.” —The Telegraph
“The past decade in world politics offers plenty of easy opportunities to invoke George Orwell. But writing a sequel to Animal Farm, a book that exemplifies Italo Calvino’s definition of a classic – that we don’t need to have read it to know it – is a riskier undertaking. In Beasts of England, Adam Biles has updated and retooled Animal Farm for today, and in this clever, resourceful and at times painful novel, the risk pays off.” —The Guardian
>>On populism, post-truth, and piggybacking George Orwell.
>>We still have a great deal to learn from the animals.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray $37
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's car business is going under, but instead of doing anything about it, he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking local wrongun Big Mike. Their teenage daughter Cass, usually top of her class, seems determined to drink her way through the whole thing. And twelve year old PJ is spending more and more time on video game forums, where he's met a friendly boy named Ethan who never turns his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home. Digging down through layers of family history, the roots of this crisis stretch deep into the past. Meanwhile in the present, the fault lines keep spreading, ghosts slipping in through the cracks, and every step brings the Barneses closer to a fatal precipice. When the moment of reckoning finally arrives, all four of them must decide how far they're willing to go to save the family, and whether — if the story's already been written — there's still time to give it a happy ending.
”It can't be overstated how purely pleasurable The Bee Sting is to read. Murray's brilliant new novel, about a rural Irish clan, posits the author as Dublin's answer to Jonathan Franzen . A 650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment, The Bee Sting oozes pathos while being very funny to boot. Murray's observational gifts and A-game phrase-making render almost every page — every line, it sometimes seems — abuzz with fresh and funny insights. At its core this is a novel concerned with the ties that bind, secrets and lies, love and loss. They're all here, brought to life with captivating vigour in a first-class performance to cherish.” —Observer
”Expertly foreshadowed and so intricately put together, a brilliantly funny, deeply sad portrait of an Irish family in crisis. Murray is triumphantly back on home turf — troubled adolescents, regretful adults, secrets signposted and exquisitely revealed, each line soaked in irony ranging from the gentle to the savage. We live though hundreds of pages on tenterhooks, and the suspense and revelations keep coming until the end. He is brilliant on fathers and sons, sibling rivalry, grief, self-sabotage and self-denial, as well as the terrible weakness humans have for magical thinking. A tragicomic triumph, you won't read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year.” —Guardian
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
>>A possible future.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch $37
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her doorstep. Two officers from Ireland's newly formed secret police want to speak with her husband, Larry, a trade unionist for the Teachers' Union of Ireland. Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together. Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality and devastating insight, a novel that can be read as a parable of the present, the future and the past.
”I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years. The comparisons are inevitable — Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy — but this novel will stand entirely on its own.” —Colum McCann
”It was gripping and chilling, and terribly prescient — a novel with a darkly important message about this particular moment in time.” —Sara Baume
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
>>Radical empathy.
>>Today in Ireland.
Brian by Jeremy Cooper $33
Perennially on the outside, Brian has led a solitary life; he works at Camden Council, lunches every day at Il Castelletto café and then returns to his small flat on Kentish Town Road. It is an existence carefully crafted to avoid disturbance and yet Brian yearns for more. A visit one day to the BFI brings film into his life, and Brian introduces a new element to his routine: nightly visits to the cinema on London’s South Bank. Through the works of Yasujirō Ozu, Federico Fellini, Agnès Varda, Yilmaz Güney and others, Brian gains access to a rich cultural landscape outside his own experience, but also achieves his first real moments of belonging, accepted by a curious bunch of amateur film buffs, the small informal group of BFI regulars. A tender meditation on friendship and the importance of community, Brian is also a tangential work of film criticism, one that is not removed from its subject matter, but rather explores with great feeling how art gives meaning to and enriches our lives.
”I don’t think I’ve ever felt such warmth for a character, or that I’ve been able to see cinema through another’s eyes insuch a lucid, sustained way. As Brian moves further and further into a life of moviegoing, ordering his days, and then years, around it, he finds companionship and a calm sense of wellbeing. As I read this beautifully subtle novel, I found the same.” —Amina Cain
”After having published his luminous Ash Before Oak, Jeremy Cooper now brings us Brian, equally a work of mysterious interiority and poetry. It confirms that however solitary life might be, art enriches both our imaginations and our realities. This is a very tender book.” —Xiaolu Guo
52 Ways of Thinking about Kafka: LRB diary for 2024 $35
”It was a comfort to read him in a year when everyone again had the same disease. She thought she could work through him, if she could not work through herself; she thought she could use his hands, if she could not use her own. —Patricia Lockwood
Mark the centenary of Kafka’s death with the LRB Diary for 2024: 52 ways of thinking about Kafka — one for each week of next year. From Kafka’s attention-seeking to Kafka’s clothes, Kafka and gay literature to Kafka and The Lord of the Rings, Kafka at the football to Kafka on BookTok, by writers including Elif Batuman, Alan Bennett, Judith Butler, Anne Carson, Amit Chaudhuri, Jenny Diski, Penelope Fitzgerald, Rivka Galchen, Jonathan Lethem, Adam Phillips, Philip Roth, Colm Tóibín, Marina Warner and many more. Also featuring entries from Kafka’s own diaries (taken from Ross Benjamin’s new translation), and original artwork by Alexander Gorlizki.
>>Look inside (there are even postcards!).
Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: Travelling through the land of my ancestors by Louise Erdrich $25
Erdrich travels, with her 18-month-old daughter, to the turangawaewae her ancestors inhabited for centuries: the lakes and islands of southern Ontario. Summoning to life the Ojibwe's sacred spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, Erdrich considers the many ways in which her tribe — whose name derives from the word ozhibii'ige, 'to write' — have influenced her. Her journey, through a landscape of breathtaking beauty, links ancient stone paintings with an island where a recluse built an extraordinary library, and she reveals how both have transformed her.
The Milkwood Permaculture Living Handbook: Habits for hope in a changing world by Kirsten Bradley $50
Packed with practical skills and projects, this is a book of regenerative living for busy people who want to make a positive impact in a world out of balance. Discover how simple changes to your every day can make a big difference. Maybe it's decluttering your home, growing sprouts on your windowsill, connecting with your community or taking on a locavore mini-challenge. Maybe it's going waste-free or falling in love with compost. Inspired by the life-affirming principles of permaculture, all 60 habits will help you reconnect with your ecosystem, save money and celebrate sustainable living.
>>Look inside.
>>The other Milkwood book.
>>A taste of Milkwood.
Blue Machine: How the ocean shapes our world by Helen Czerski $40
All of the Earth's ocean, from the equator to the poles, is a single engine powered by sunlight — a blue machine. Human history has been dictated by the ocean — the location of cities, access to resources and the gateways to new lands have all revolved around water. We live inside the weather the ocean generates and breathe in what it breathes out. Yet despite our dependence, our awareness of its totality is minimal. In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean's complex, interlinked system.
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell $23
”It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him.” A boy called Christopher is visiting his reclusive grandfather when he witnesses an avalanche of mythical creatures come tearing down the hill. This is how Christopher learns that his grandfather is the guardian of one of the ways between the non-magical world and a place called the Archipelago, a cluster of magical islands where all the creatures we tell of in myth live and breed and thrive alongside humans. They have been protected from being discovered for thousands of years; now, terrifyingly, the protection has worn thin, and creatures are breaking through. Then a girl, Mal, appears in Christopher's world. She is in possession of a flying coat, is being pursued by a killer and is herself in pursuit of a baby griffin. Mal, Christopher and the griffin embark on an urgent quest across the wild splendour of the Archipelago, where sphinxes hold secrets and centaurs do murder, to find the truth — with unimaginable consequences for both their worlds.
”There was Tolkien, there is Pullman, and now there is Katherine Rundell. Wondrous invention, marvellous writing. This book is her best yet, and that's saying something. Just riveting, quite extraordinary.” —Michael Morpurgo
“Katherine Rundell is a phenomenon. She not only understands what fantasy is for and why children (and the rest of us) need it, but she crafts original and brilliant books that delight readers of all ages and kinds, while stretching our minds and filling our hearts.” —Neil Gaiman
>>”All the creatures of myth are still alive.”
>>All of Rundell’s books are superb.
A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto by China Miéville $28
In 1848, a strange political tract was published by two German émigrés. Marx and Engles's apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system, which penetrates every corner of the globe, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics, remains a picture of our world. And the vampiric energy of that system is once again highly contentious. The Manifesto shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity, and remains a key touchstone for modern political debate. China Miéville is not a writer hemmed in by conventions of disciplinary boundaries or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today. Like the Manifesto itself, this is a book haunted by ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction.
”It's thrilling to accompany Miéville as he wrestles — in critical good faith and incandescent commitment — with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world>\.” —Naomi Klein
”Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity.” —Mike Davis
”A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out.” —Andreas Malm