A new book is a promise of good times ahead.
Read our #355th NEWSLETTER and consider the many ways to give the gift of reading!
10 November 2023
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to guide your life?
no
Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a book?
no
But isn’t this book, Motherhood, which has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins, in this case Sheila Heti, the author of the book, a good book?
yes
Is Motherhood a good book, then, because it was written by Sheila Heti rather than because it was written by flipping coins?
yes
When Sheila—the Sheila who is a character in the book, which the reader is permitted to assume is the same person (whatever that means) as Sheila Heti the author of the book— says, “I don’t think I have a heart—a heart I can consult. Instead, I have these coins,” is that a good way for either the character in the book or the author of the book to proceed?
no
Is flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a review of a book that has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the author?
no
If I wrote a review in such a way, would I be able to do it without cheating, in other words, without only pretending that I had flipped coins when I had not actually flipped coins at all, or flipping the coins but then overriding the outcomes of those coins if they did not suit me?
no
Would it be better if I didn’t waste time looking for coins to flip, then?
yes
And Sheila Heti, can I be sure that she didn’t cheat when writing a book by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions she posed?
no
Does this matter?
no
In fact, might this not be a good way to compose a novel or somesuch, or find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, or determine a way out of any predicament, at least any fictional predicament, given that predicaments usually arise from the presence of binaries—either A or not-A, for example—and so seem to clamour for a resolution that can be expressed in a binary way?
yes
Just as writing conversation can be a good way to find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, even writer’s block visited upon the writing of a book review?
yes
Even if one side of the conversation says only either yes or no?
yes
Are the results I might achieve this way satisfactory?
no
Would the results be satisfactory with a different approach?
no
Is any of this useful in so-called real life?
no
But doesn’t Sheila Heti apply this approach to the real-life question—if we accept that the Sheila of the book corresponds to the real-life Sheila, the book’s author—of whether or not she wants to or should have a child, or become a mother, which may or may not imply having a child, depending on how subtly the concept of motherhood is understood or defined?
yes
So this approach is not useful?
no
You mean it is useful?
yes
Can you explain that?
no
Can Sheila Heti explain that?
yes
Does she do so in this passage, when she consults her coins?
“Is any of the above true?
no
Is there any use in any of this, if none of it is true?
no
Even if you said yes, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t mean anything to me. You don’t know the future, and you don’t know anything about my life, or what I should be doing. You are complete randomness, without meaning. [However] you have shown me some good things, but that is just me picking up the good in all the nothing you have shown me.”
yes
As Sheila approaches forty she suffers from ambivalence about whether or not to have a child before it is ‘too late’. She can’t seem to disentangle what might be the expectations of her by others because she is a woman from what might be her biological inclinations as a woman, not that this concept necessarily has any validity, and from her own personal expectations and inclinations. Is it even possible to disentangle these things?
no
Would it be true to say that the more you think about things in these terms the less sense these terms make?
yes
Is there any point in thinking about things in these terms?
no
Unless, perhaps, it is useful to get to the point at which these terms make no sense?
yes
Does Sheila obsess over the question of whether or not to have a child as a way of relieving herself of the question of whether or not to have a child?
yes
A way of avoiding having a child, even?
yes
Saying yes to having a child would remove the uncertainty of whether or not to have a child and the uncertainty could not be regained, at least not in that form, but saying no merely provides the opportunity for the uncertainty to resurge at the next possible moment for it to be considered. Prevarication is, therefore, such a tiring prophylactic. Is the book to some extent somehow about the deep problems of decision-making, in whatever sphere of life, about whether we can disentangle the force of what we might call ‘will’ from the force of what we might, for want of a better word, call ‘fate’ (‘determinism’ is probably a better word)?
yes
When Sheila says, “Sometimes I am convinced that a child will add depth to all things—just bring a background of depth and meaning to whatever it is I do. I also think I might have brain cancer. There’s something I can feel in my brain, like a finger pressing down,” is her problem really about depth and meaning rather than about having a child?
yes
Sheila says, “This will be a book to prevent future tears.” Is this book, Motherhood, perhaps more about depression—Sheila’s, her mother’s, perhaps the reader’s—than it is about motherhood per se?
no
Sheila says, “I am a blight on my own life.” She says, “Nothing harms the earth more than another person—and nothing harms a person more than being born.” She says, thinking of her decision to be a writer and all the time she has consequently spent arranging commas, “When I was younger, writing felt like more than enough, but now I feel like a drug addict, like I’m missing out on life.” Is there a sense in which writing and ‘living’ are incompatible modes of existence?
yes
When Sheila states that resisting urges has previously led her to more interesting places, is it useful for her to think about resisting the urge to have a child—wherever that urge originates—as a way of bringing depth and meaning to her life?
yes
Does she in fact find more depth and meaning by resisting the urge to have a child?
yes
Does this depth and meaning, or at least the finding of more depth and meaning if not the depth and meaning themselves, have some sort of tangible expression?
yes
This book?
yes
Early in the book, Heti identifies her struggles with the mythic struggles of Jacob wrestling with and withstanding the unknown being “until the breaking of the day,” and she concludes the book an altered quote from the Torah: “Then I named this wrestling-place Motherhood, for here is where I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.” Is that a satisfactory way to end the book?
yes
Is that a satisfactory way to end my review?
no
Should I go on?
no
The time is approaching when you want to gift books and you may have a list of recipients that need matching with great choices. A bookseller is your friend in this task! Every year we receive lists from our customers wanting recommendations for children and teens; for adults who have specific interests and reading genres; and for suggestions to expand one’s horizons. Instead of a review this week, I am going to give an example of a ‘list’ and the choices we would offer the customer, who is looking for gifts for children.
“Hello, I’d love some suggestions for these children and teens. My nephew George is, I think, 6 and loves being read to, my niece is also 6 but I don’t know her very well and I’m not sure what her reading level is. Aroha has read everything! She’s 12. Vincent is turning 15 and used to like adventure stories but doesn’t read much these days. Helena is 9 and likes stories about people, and her big sister will be 16 soon and is keen on historical romances. Two little ones. Kenji is 4 and likes to laugh, while Jess, 3, is keen on animals and plants. And we have an 11-year-old budding writer. Thanks for your help, RJ.”
And our reply would be something like this:
Hi RJ,
Here are some recommendations.
George,6: The First Case (chapter book with pictures), Frog and Toad (we have a collection, as well as individual books each with a number of different stories), Skunk and Badger (chapter book with pictures about two very different characters)
Niece, 6: Tales from Moominvalley (short stories - for reading to), My Happy Life (junior chapter book), or a sophisticated picture book A Perfect Wonderful Day with Friends, Dulcinea in the Forbidden Forest
Aroha, 12: Heap House (interesting and strange), The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (daring adventure, but also a climate message), A Face Like Glass
Vincent 15: A fast-paced sci-fi The Loop or fantasy Spellslinger a graphic novel Tsunami
Helena, 9: The Letterbox Tree (friendship, climate change), The Wolf Wilder, The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson
Helena’s big sister, 16: Enchantee (France, revolution, a dangerous dress, and romance), Anatomy: A Love Story (historical, gothic mystery), Mortal Fire (YA from NZ author Elizabeth Knox — intriguing)
Kenji, 4: Funnybones (a classic), A Bird Day (witty) Dazzlehands (lively and funny)
Jess 3 : Animals at Home (a matching game), The Big Book of Beasts, Look! Said the Little Girl (local author, picture book)
The Writer, 11: Writing Radar, Skinny Dip (collection of Aotearoa poetry), The Writing Deck (writing prompts and ideas)
Let us know if you would like further suggestions or more information about any of the titles.
Happy choosing,
VOLUME.
From here the customer can ask more questions, choose which appeals the most, and we can gift wrap, and have them ready for collection or posting to the customer (or we are always happy to courier to the recipients directly with a message).
Booksellers make recommendations every day for gift-giving and for your own reading pleasures. We are always keen to match books and readers. Send in your lists sooner, rather than later, if you would like the books in time for the gifting season!
Set in Japan, Bird Life, Anna Smaill's second novel, brings two women together, seemingly with little in common, each dealing with grief and uncertainty. Dinah, a young woman in a foreign land, is absorbed by grief; while Yasuko, enigmatic and polished, is striving towards an elusive power. It's a novel of beautiful control, yet uneasy vibrations. In Bird Life we sense the pulse of worlds layered together and the stories that define these worlds. The magical realism hints at Murakami and Allende, while the quotidian observations keep the novel grounded, creating a satisfying fracture to examine the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness.
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Bird Life by Anna Smaill $38
In Ueno Park, Toyko, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives. Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother, Michael, a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianist — until he wasn’t. In the seemingly empty, eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed, she sees Michael everywhere, even as she feels his absence sharply.Yasuko is polished, precise, and keenly observant — of her students and colleagues at the language school, and of the natural world. When she was thirteen, animals began to speak to her, to tell her things she did not always want to hear. She has suppressed these powers for many years, but sometimes she allows them to resurface, to the dismay of her adult son, Jun. One day, she returns home, and Jun has gone. Even her special gifts cannot bring him back. As these two women deal with their individual traumas, they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world, as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.
”Bird Life is an astonishing book about grief, beauty and survival. The writing enters your bloodstream like a strange and wonderful drug.” —Emily Perkins
”Bird Life examines the forces that allow us to slip from one world to another, the relationship between the internal and external, and the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness. As with Anna Smaill’s acclaimed previous novel, The Chimes, the writing is taut and evocative with subtle symbolism and a rhythmic beauty.” —Stella
Knowledge is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected writings, 1980—2020 by Anne Salmond $65
For fifty years, Anne Salmond has navigated 'te ao hurihuri' — travelling to hui in her little blue VW Beetle with Eruera and Amiria Stirling in the 1970s, working for a university marae alongside Merimeri Penfold, Patu Hohepa and Wharetoroa Kerr in the 1980s, giving evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal on the meaning of Te Tiriti in the 2000s. From Hui to The Trial of the Cannibal Dog to today's debates about the future of Aotearoa, Anne Salmond has explored who we are to each other. This book traces Anne Salmond's journey as an anthropologist, as a writer and activist, as a Pakeha New Zealander, as a friend, wife and mother. The book brings together her key writing on the Maori world, cultural contact, Te Tiriti and the wider Pacific — much of it appearing in book form for the first time — and embeds these writings in her life and relationships, her travels and friends. This is the story of Aotearoa and the story of one woman's pathway through our changing society.
Ki Mua, Ki Muri edited by Cassandra Barnett and Kura Te Waru-Rewiri $70
Packed with superb art works, this richly illustrated publication examines the last 25 years of the influential Toioho ki Āpiti programme at Massey University, its global indigenous pedagogical reach, and its ongoing impacts on national and international contemporary art and cultural sectors. Toioho ki Āpiti 's transformative and kaupapa Maori-led programme and its pedagogical model is structured around Maori notions of Mana Whakapapa (inheritance rights), Mana Tiriti (treaty rights), Mana Whenua (land rights) and Mana Tangata (human rights) and is unique in Aotearoa. Its staff and graduates, who include Bob Jahnke, Shane Cotton, Brett Graham, Rachael Rakena, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, Israel Birch and Ngatai Taepa, are some of the most exciting, powerful and influential figures in contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a series of intimate conversations, Ki Mua, Ki Muri describes the unique environment that has helped form them.
Swanfolk by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (translated from Icelandic by Vala Thorodds) $26
In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life. Elísabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality. Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elísabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade. Now in paperback.
”Magical and disturbing.” —Adam Thirlwell
The Iliad by Homer (translated from Ancient Greek by Emily Wilson) $76
"Wilson's translation runs as swift as a bloody river, teems with the clattering sounds of war, bursts with the warriors' hunger for battle." —Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
"Wilson's Iliad is clear and brisk, its iambic pentameter a zone of enchantment.” —Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
"Seduces with its crystalline clarity, elegance, sensuality, sometimes breathless pace and above all emotional clout." —Edith Hall, The Guardian
"A triumphant new translation of the Iliad. It's a poem you read with your heart in your throat. " —A. E. Stallings, The Spectator
"Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek. Readable, relevant and from the heart, this is the Iliad we have all been waiting for, whether we knew it or not." —Naoise Mac Sweeny, The Washington Post
Checkerboard Hill by Jade Kake $35
When a family member dies in Australia, Ria flies from New Zealand and returns to the family and home in Australia she suddenly left decades before as a teenager. Waiting for her return are her husband and son in New Zealand. Neither family has met the other, and Ria has always kept her Maori, Australian, New Zealand identities and lives separate. But the family tensions, unfinished arguments, connections to places and meeting of former friends, lead Ria to revisit her memories and reflect on the social and cultural tensions and racism she experienced, and the decisions she made. The novel confronts the complexities of families, secrets and trauma and the way these play out across generations. It also explores the ways in which Maori cultural traditions and tikanga are transmuted and transformed across the Tasman, across time and space.
Native Shells of Aotearoa by Bruce Marshall and Kerry Walton $27
Native Insects of Aotearoa by Julia Kasper and Phil Sirvid $27
Packed with good information and appealing line drawings, these two volumes combine a retro 1950s aesthetic with the latest research.
Companion volumes: Native Plants of Aotearoa by Carlos Lehnebach and Heidi Meudt $27
Native Birds of Aotearoa by Michael Szabo $27
Days of Darkness: Taranaki, 1878—1884 by Hazel Riseborough $50
The narrative of the Parihaka community sheds light on a critical period in Aotearoa’s colonial past. As the government seized their land, Māori communities across the region engaged in non-violent resistance, with Parihaka emerging as a powerful symbol of defiance under the leadership of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi. Rather than a history of Parihaka itself, Hazel Riseborough’s compelling account delves into the government’s systematic efforts to dismantle Māori rights and self-determination. First published in 1989, Days of Darkness is published now in a new edition which includes opening words contributed by the Parihaka community.
‘Hazel Riseborough’s account is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand critical aspects of New Zealand’s past. Riseborough has presented a study in quintessential colonialism, or the assertion of European supremacy. It is a part of New Zealand’s history which has to be recognized and not buried.” —Judith Binney
An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific essays by Damon Salesa $50
From the far-reaching indigenous civilisations that flourished in Oceania, to the colonial encounters that shaped Samoa's history, and the complex relationship between New Zealand and the Pacific, Salesa's work offers a nuanced and insightful perspective on the vast region's past, present and future. Spanning a wide range of topics, from race and inequality to Pacific studies and empire, these essays demonstrate Salesa's scholarship and his ability to bridge the gaps between academic disciplines and cultural traditions. With a deep appreciation for the complexities of Te Moana-nuia-Kiwa, and a commitment to uncovering the hidden histories that shape our understanding of the region, An Indigenous Ocean is an essential contribution to the field of Pacific studies and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history and culture of Oceania.
Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia $30
Admire my big fat brown body, bitches! Admire it! The Big Fat Brown Bitch runs, sleeps, cries, laughs, splits open. She is sitting in a garage in South Auckland with her two brothers and discussing the majestic architecture of atoms. She is playing an audio book of The Power of Positive Thinking at herself. She is jumping over the lazy dog. She is lying face down in the mud and doing an apology on behalf of us all. She is receiving an election-year visit and a death threat. She is strapped to the cross. She is turning into a werewolf. The Big Fat Brown Bitch is coming for you.
Tusiata Avia, author of Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and The Savage Coloniser Book, returns with another eviscerating work. These are poems of defiance, confrontation, consolation, satire, sorrow and fury. No white people were harmed in the making of this book.
>>How not to read poetry.
In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen by Kiran Millwood Hargrave $20
In the lakes, the wolf queen sharpens her spear. In the mountains, an ancient girl opens an eye. In the forest, an orphan is summoned by the trees. Our story has begun. Ysolda has lived her life in the shadow of the wolf queen's tyrannical rule but, safe in her forest haven, she has never truly felt its threat. Until one day when a mysterious earthquake shakes the land and her older sister Hari vanishes in its wake. Accompanied by her loyal sea hawk, Nara, Ysolda embarks on a desperate rescue mission. But when she is forced to strike a bargain with the wolf queen herself, she soon finds herself embroiled in a quest for a magic more powerful — and more dangerous — than she could ever have imagined.
”The kind of fantasy adventure I have always loved: evocative and imaginative and destined to be a classic.” —Garth Nix
”The Wolf Queen herself is majestically ambiguous, sometimes magnetic and inspiring, sometimes chilling. And every adventure is better with giant sea wolves.” —Frances Hardinge
Wot Knot You Got: Mophead’s guide to life by Selina Tusitala Marsh $30
‘What do you do if nothing is right – not at home, at school, anywhere?’
‘What if people don’t like me?’
‘What if your own ideas stink?’
‘How do I hug my dad?’
One morning, Selina wakes up with a twisting, tangling, knotty problem. It takes over everyone and everything – work, kids, life, the lot. How can she get out of a knot this tight? Then she remembers: kids write to her all the time – they ask some of life’s toughest questions. Can she help them through their knots? And through helping them, can she find a way out of her own? In this self-help give-it-a-go moppy-mayhem-filled workbook-that’s-all-about-play, join Selina as she scribbles and draws and writes her way out of the darkness – and invites you to take out a pen.
A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:
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What some subscription recipients have said:
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A new book is a promise of good times ahead.
Read our #354th NEWSLETTER and build a reservoir of good reading.
3 November 2023
The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo (illustrated by Julie Morstad)
Forgotten in a trunk. Left in the dark. Unwanted. Once they had been on display, crafted with care. They belonged together and they had a story. Would they be together again, and would there be a new story? Kate DiCamillo works her magic with The Puppets of Spelhorst. With the texture of a folk tale, she reveals the story of a girl, a boy, a king, an owl, and a wolf. An old man sees a puppet in the window of a toy shop and the memory of a love is rekindled. He wants to take her home and look into her eyes so like those of his sweetheart long gone, but, bothersome: he has to have all the puppets. And so, it comes to be. In the night the girl sitting atop a dresser sees the moon and describes its beauty to her companions. The old man sleeps and does not awaken. And then an adventure begins. A journey that will take them through the hands of the rag-and-bone man, to an uncle with two inquisitive nieces, where a new story will be made — one which involves all of them; even though they will have their fierce teeth tampered with (the wolf), be mistaken for a feather duster (the owl), left abandoned outside and kidnapped by a giant bird (the boy), be snaffled into a pocket (the girl), and left alone with no one to rule (the king). Yet this is not the only story. Emma is writing, and Martha is making mischief. A story is ready to be told. An extra hand and a good singing voice are needed. In steps the maid, Jane Twiddum — someone who will have a profound impact on the fate of the five friends. The Puppets of Spelhorst is an absolute delight with its clever story. A spellbound tale. "Now it all happens," whispered the boy. "Now the story begins." Perfect for reading and gifting.
If I Survive You, short-listed for the year's Booker Prize, is the debut novel-in-stories from American writer Jonathan Escoffery. Variously described as energetic, commanding, sure-footed, astute, tender, and funny, If I Survive You takes on racism, hurricanes, and recessions alongside the existential crisis of identity and belonging of Trelawny, the son of Jamaican immigrants in Miami with style and sharp observation.
What the Booker judges say: “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."
"I knew from the outset that I wanted to structure it in such a way that the chapters worked as standalone stories, and the stories worked as chapters that built toward a larger narrative arc and toward a climax. I wanted to challenge myself, and thought this would be formally interesting, if not innovative, but I also suspect it closely resembles the episodic nature of human experience. It was when I stopped worrying about whether to label it as stories or as a novel that it finally came together."
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Pacific Arts Aotearoa edited by Lana Lopesi $65
This remarkable, fascinating and comprehensive account spans six decades of multidisciplinary Pacific creative genius, remembering the diverse, fresh and energetic contributions of Pacific artists to New Zealand, Oceania and the world. Edited by Pacific writer and scholar Lana Lopesi, this book includes over 300 images and contributions from more than 120 artists, curators and community voices, providing new and previously unheard perspectives on this vast and growing legacy.
The Hunger of Women by Mariosa Castaldi (translated from Italian by Jamie Richards) $42
Rosa, midway through life, is alone. Her husband passed away long ago, and her cosmopolitan daughter is already out the door, keen to marry and move to the city. At loose ends, Rosa decides to transplant herself to the flat, foggy Lombardy provinces from her native Naples and there finds a way to renew herself — by opening a restaurant, and in the process coming to a new appreciation of the myriad relationships possible between women, from friendship to caregiving to collaboration to emotional and physical love. Unconventional in style and yet rivetingly accessible, The Hunger of Women is a novel infused with the pleasures of the body and the little shocks of daily life. Made up of Rosa's observations, reflections, and recipes, it tracks her mental journey back to reconnect with her own embattled mother's age-old wisdom, forward to her daughter's inconceivable future, and laterally to the world of Rosa's new community of lovers and customers. A beautifully written contribution only to the tradition of women's writing on hearth and home but to the legacy of such boundary-breaking feminist writers as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Helene Cixous.
”Castaldi does not use punctuation, lets thought flow unchained, because life flows like water, and the search for one's identity, always painful, always exhausting, manifests even in our food.” —Rolling Stone
“A hypnotic theatre of cruelty and tenderness in which the protagonist and narrator Rosa and her friends make vacuum cleaners buzz, exhibit the most lavish forms of desire, desire each other, and desperately, and above all make food, the food which is really the nourishment of the book itself, an obsession formalised here in something like a hundred recipes spread over just under two hundred pages.” —Corriere del Mezzogiorno
Lori and Joe by Amy Arnold $38
Lori and Joe have lived in the English Lake District for many years, in a quiet valley where one day is much like another. Bringing Joe his regular cup of coffee one morning, Lori finds him dead. She could call an ambulance, but what difference would it make? Instead, she heads out for a walk over the fells. As she makes her way through the November fog, Lori's thoughts slip between past and present, revealing a marriage marked by isolation, childlessness and a terrible secret she's never disclosed. Arnold's musical prose merges form and content to express what cannot be communicated through language alone. Taking place over the course of a single day, yet revealing the secrets of a marriage of many decades, Lori & Joe is a sparse, intimate and deeply moving story of entrapment and isolation, and of a life in which desire is continually overcome by inertia: nothing changes and nothing is ever (re)solved.
Short-listed for the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.
”Amy Arnold’s subject is the vast and quietly dangerous interior landscape of an individual life. As we move through this novel, traversing and circling back across the Cumbrian moorland and hills where it is set, we come to see the house where Lori lives as a sort of theatre, a seemingly safe outline of walls and rooms that is not a safe space at all. Lori & Joe shows a writer, in this, her second novel, caught up wondrously once again in the creative project of reflecting consciousness in the very rhythm and language of her prose.” —Kirsty Gunn
”A unique and mesmerising book which manages to be both equivocal and amazingly solid; it feels like a walk in the lakes in the mist, all mud and stone and weather that slips and changes around you. It is ghostly and resonant and brutally physical all at the same time, with a propulsive quality to the way language loops and repeats, letting it reveal its secrets slowly. I am haunted by it.” —Sammy Wright
>>Far from being a blank.
>>Read an extract.
>>Walking upstairs carrying two mugs of coffee.
I Hear You’re Rich by Diane Williams $30
In Williams's stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.
”A true living hero of the American avant-garde.” —Jonathan Franzen
”One of the very few contemporary prose writers who seem to be doing something independent, energetic, heartfelt.” —Lydia Davis
>>Read Thomas’s review.
>>”I’m afraid I’ve overdone it.”
>>You can look but you can’t touch.
>>Unable to answer the question.
>>Never dutiful.
>>The Collected Stories predate these stories.
The Delivery by Margarita García Robayo (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) $38
An enormous package arrives that can't be opened, Agatha the cat appears and disappears, half-finished buildings punctuate the horizon — semi-ordinary happenings that take on an otherworldly cast if you look at them sideways. And nothing is stranger, in this high rise apartment far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don't. The narrator works, zooms with her sister, makes plans for the future (a writing residency, a child), and tentatively probes her past, while subtle fissures open up around her, changing her life forever. As she says about her childhood home, "Sometimes I get curious...but I don't ask, because the answer could come with information I'd rather not know." Wait until you find out what is in the package! From the author of Fish Soup and Holiday Heart.
”If you’re a fan of Ottesa Moshfegh or Melissa Broder, then this is for you.” —Guardian
>>Aspiring to pastlessness.
>>No spoilers.
Take Two by Vivian Thonger and Caroline Thonger (illustrated by Alan Thomas) $36
What happens when siblings revisit shared memories? Charting the growth from childhood to adulthood of two sisters raised in north London, Take Two is an innovative collage of contrasting voices. The jigsaw includes stories, poems, letters, postcards, a menu, one-act plays, objects and popular music. Fractures are exposed; revelations cast new light on previous episodes; both playful and disquieting, the writing itself aspires to be a form of healing. Aotearoa author and illustrator.
”Take Two moves beyond the conventions of family memoir, fusing narrative with something like the spirit of a compendium or almanac, gathering up song titles, drawings of household objects, letter extracts, playscripts, poems, and illuminated micro-stories. The book accumulates into a vivid portrait of a family of German and British heritage, set up in post-WW2 London and torn between impulses to close ranks or break apart. It’s a fascinating and provocative act of witnessing, one that offers up new insights and patterns with each re-reading.” —Michael Loveday
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au $35
A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafés and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here – is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey? At once a careful reckoning and an elegy, Cold Enough for Snow questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another’s inner world.
”Au’s novel is ... masterly in the way it evokes our dissociation from desire—our own and other people’s.... We can sense it in the soft, patient warmth of Au’s prose, which sometimes feels attuned to truths just out of the narrator’s reach.” —New Yorker
”Au’s is a book of deceptive simplicity, weaving profound questions of identity and ontology into the fabric of quotidian banality....What matters, the novel reassures us, is constantly imbricated with the everyday, just as alienation and tender care can coexist in the same moment.” —Claire Messud, Harpers
”This novella is graceful and precise. Like the narrator fine-tuning the aperture on her Nikon camera, Au seems to say, we have to choose our scale, what we pay attention to.... Finally, we bump up against what is not knowable. Au has mentioned her taste for ‘subverting narrative expectation … open endings, scenes in which nothing happens yet everything happens’. Cold Enough for Snow is exactly this, a book of inference and small mysteries. The stories, memories and images Au puts on the table escape easy conclusions … Aesthetic, opaque, endlessly uncoiling.” —Guardian
>>How to read one another.
>>Life and art.
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto (translated from Japanese by Ada Yoneda) $33
Yayoi lives with her perfect, loving family — something 'like you'd see in a Spielberg movie. But while her parents tell happy stories of her childhood, she is increasingly haunted by the sense that she's forgotten something important about her past. Deciding to take a break, she goes to stay with Yukingo, her mysterious but beloved aunt, whose strange behaviour includes waking Yayoi at two in the morning to be her drinking companion, watching Friday the 13th over and over and throwing away all the things she wants to forget. Living a life without order and rules, Yukino seems to be protecting herself, but beneath this facade Yayoi starts to recover her own lost memories, and everything she knows about her family threatens to change forever.
The Marquise of O— by Heinrich von Kleist (translated from German by Nicholas Jacobs) $28
In a Northern Italian town during the Napoleonic Wars, Julietta, a young widow and mother of impeccable reputation, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. This follows an attack on the town's citadel, in which several Russian soldiers tried to assault her before she was rescued by Count F—, at which point she fell unconscious. Thrown out of her father's house, Julietta publishes an announcement in the local newspaper stating that she is pregnant and would like the father of her child to make himself known so that she can marry him. What follows is an ambiguously comic drama of sexuality and family respectability. One of Kleist's best-loved works, The Marquise of O— is an ingenious and timeless story of the mystery of human desire, and Nicholas Jacobs's new translation captures the full richness of its irony.
Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry and the mysteries of mental illness by Andrew Scull $32
For more than two hundred years, disturbances of reason, cognition and emotion — the sort of things that were once called 'madness' — have been described and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, it is said, is an illness like any other — a disorder that can be treated by doctors, whose suffering can be eased, and from which patients can return. And yet serious mental illness remains a profound mystery that is in some ways no closer to being solved than it was at the start of the twentieth century. In this clear-sighted and provocative exploration of psychiatry, acclaimed sociologist Andrew Scull traces the history of its attempts to understand and mitigate mental illness — from the age of the asylum and unimaginable surgical and chemical interventions, through the rise and fall of Freud and the talking cure, and on to our own time of drug companies and antidepressants. Through it all, Scull argues, the often vain and rash attempts to come to terms with the enigma of mental disorder have frequently resulted in dire consequences for the patient. Now in paperback.
”There are few heroes in this enraging study of a great failing. Fascinating.” —Sebastian Faulks
City of Lions: Portrait of a city in two acts: Lviv, Then and now by Józef Wittlin and Philippe Sands (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $30
The Ukrainian city Lviv's many names (Lviv, Lvov, Lwow, Lemberg, Leopolis) bear witness to its conflicted past — it has, at one time or another, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Russia and Germany, and has brought forth numerous famous artists and intellectuals. My Lwow, Jozef Wittlin's short 1946 treatise on the city he left in 1922, is a wistful and lyrical study of an electrifying cosmopolis, told from the other side of the catastrophe of the Second World War. Philippe Sand's essay provides a parallel account of the city as it is today: the cultural capital of Ukraine, its citizens played a key role during the Orange Revolution, and its executive committee declared itself independent of the rule of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. This new edition of The City of Lions includes both old black-and-white photos showing Lviv during the first half of the twentieth century, and new photographs by the award-winning Diana Matar, of the city as it is today.
>>Read Thomas’s review.
Prima Facie by Suzie Miller $38
A very able young barrister has made a name for herself casting doubts on the accusations against men charged with sexual assault and harassment. When she finds herself on the receiving end of a fellow attorney’s attentions, she has to reorient her attitudes towards consent and consider testifying in a legal system she knows is stacked against her. Based on Miller’s award-winning play.
Passenger by Alexandra Bracken $20
In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Pulled back through time to 1776 in the midst of a fierce sea battle, she has travelled not only miles, but years from home. With the arrival of this unusual passenger on his ship, privateer Nicholas Carter has to confront a past that he can’t escape and the powerful Ironwood family who won’t let him go without a fight. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value; one they believe only Etta can find. Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by an enigmatic traveller. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta from Nicholas, and her way home, forever.
”An ambitious and exquisite symphony of adventure, romance, and dynamic characters, Passenger grabs you by the heart from its opening notes and doesn’t let go until its knockout, blockbuster finale.’” —Sarah J. Maas
The Letterbox Tree by Rebecca Lim and Kate Gordon $19
Nyx lives in the Tasmania of 2093 – deforested, over-mined and affected by bushfires and drought. With sea-levels rising, Tasmania is marooned and abandoned to its fate. Nyx’s widowed father wants them to leave while they can, but for Nyx, West Hobart is all she has ever known, and where her mother is buried. She finds solace in the single living tree on the dusty reserve near her home, an 80-foot pine that has defied odds and survived the climate crisis. Bea lives in present, beautiful, Tasmania and is facing a move to the mainland. She will miss the giant tree that she climbs to seek solace from bullies. One day she leaves a despairing note, the words pouring out her troubles, stuffed in a hole in its trunk. Nyx finds the note, and writes back. The girls begin a correspondence across two different time periods and they form a friendship that defies the logic of time. When Nyx faces life threatening fire and then floods, she must turn to her friend Bea to change the future.
I Hear You’re Rich by Diane Williams
If it is necessary to move out to the very edge of ourselves, to the part of ourselves that is least ourselves, to be near another person, another person who has also moved out to the very edge of themselves, to the part of themselves that is least themselves, in order to be near us, what value can there be in any communication that takes place, if any communication can take place, between parties who are therefore almost strangers even to themselves? Diane Williams’s short, energetic, hugely disorienting short stories pass as sal volatile through the fug of relationships, defamiliarising the ordinary elements of everyday lives to expose the sad, ludicrous, hopeless topographies of what passes for existence. This is not a nihilistic enterprise, however, for Williams has immense sympathies and her stories themselves demonstrate the possibility of connection through the very act of delineating its impossibility. With the finest of needles, the most ordinary of details, Williams picks out the unacknowledged, unacknowledgeable but familiar hopeless longing that underlies our unreasoned and unreasonable striving for human relations, a longing that makes us more isolated the harder we strive for connection. So much is left unsaid in these stories that they act as foci for the immense unseen weight of their contexts, precisely activating pressure-points on the reader’s sensibilities.
A selection of books from our shelves.
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27 October 2023
Bird Life by Anna Smaill $38
Dinah has arrived in Japan to teach English. Her apartment is dismal, her job mediocre, but here, in this foreign city far from her suburban New Zealand upbringing, she thinks she can escape and forget about her twin brother. Yet everywhere she looks he is there. Dinah is moving through the city streets on the edge of tipping into despair. This city is what she wants but it is unexpectedly strange. She is at odds with it. Sleeping outside in the grim park outside her building, suspecting she is the only person living in the apartment complex (she never sees anyone) and wary of an overly aggressive crow. Is what she senses real? How far is she removed from herself when she is not playing the role of the foreign language teacher? Can she thrive here or will she be subsumed by her grief? Yasuko, a teacher at the same school, is polished and precise. From her elegant wardrobe to her observant eye, she is an enigma to her colleagues. They are wary but captivated by her charm and daring, while she holds herself separate and aloof. For this world is of little importance to her. She hides a secret self. One which she represses for her adult son Jun. When her son disappears Yasuko begins to unravel. She has powers within her that connect her to another world, a natural world. This supernatural world seems drawn to Yasuko, as much as she is drawn to it, and the carefully manicured roles she plays as teacher and parent are tentative. The animals in her past and present are increasingly close, although it is to the strange young foreigner she leans. She is convinced that the girl can help her reconnect with Jun. This unexpected relationship will take them both on a journey. For Yasuko, she is driven on by a desire to be released from her burdens towards a place where the voices can fly free. For Dinah, in the hope she will come home to herself, she will follow, as she has always done, without understanding the peril or the pleasure. Bird Life examines the forces that allow us to slip from one world to another, the relationship between the internal and external, and the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness. As with Anna Smaill’s acclaimed previous novel, The Chimes, the writing is taut and evocative with subtle symbolism and a rhythmic beauty. The magical realism hints at Murakami and Allende, while the quotidian observations keep the novel in the here and now, creating a satisfying fracture in this absorbing story.
Bird Life is due for release on November 9th. Pre-order now.
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Everything I Know about Books: An insider view of publishing in Aotearoa edited by Odessa Owens and Theresa Crewdson $35
A really very interesting book about everything that happens to a book as it passes between the mind of the writer and the mind of the reader. Recommended! The list contributors reads like a Who’s Who of the book trade in Aotearoa: Foreword - Witi Ihimaera; Introduction: Everything we know about teaching publishing - Odessa Owens & Theresa Crewdson; Te korihi a te huia: The space for Maori storytelling - Pania Tahau-Hodges; How to edit a poem - Chris Tse; Tomorrow will be the same as this, pretty much - Sarah Pepperle; Festival of dreams: Literary events as world-building - Claire Mabey; The American publishing industry and your Wi-Fi signal - Chloe Gong; How to publish less-heard voices - Ash Davida Jane & Stacey Teague; How to review a book - Charlotte Grimshaw; Why should anyone care? - Lana Lopesi; I learned it at the movies: What film and TV can teach us about publishing—and what they get wrong - Claire Murdoch; An industry of rejection - Angelique Tran Van Sang; Having your book edited is a bit like going through a breakup - Madison Hamill; From the Kiddie-Corner: Some insights into the world of children's book publishing - Lynette Evans; My audiobook epic - Clayton Carrick-Leslie; Story sovereignty in self-publishing - Qiane Matata-Sipu; An Edmonds story - Dom Visini & Alison Shucksmith; On editing your friends - Ashleigh Young; Wild card - Selina Tusitala Marsh; Pushing out the margins - Adrienne Jansen; Reflections from a small Pacific publisher + a manifesto of sorts - Faith Wilson; How to commission - Holly Hunter; Scenes on the screen inside my head - Michael Bennett; Publishing by the book: The Whitireia classroom and beyond - Lauren Donald; Why we need new typefaces: Thoughts from the frontline of type - Kris Sowersby; Sweet Mammalian: Messy, sexy, biased, dirty - Hannah Mettner; Lessons from the business end of the business - Becky Innes; Gunk (mereology) - Joanna Cho; How to avoid defamation - Steven Price; She had me at the cows: The making of a modern classic - Mary McCallum; Taking New Zealand books offshore - Peter Dowling; Waharoa: An (Indigenous) hero's journey into the world of publishing - Nadine Anne Hura; Synapses are how booksellers sell books - Tilly Lloyd; Collective disruption: The art of art book making - Clare McIntosh; Big pond: Experiences in UK publishing - Katie Haworth; On the power of festivals - Rachael King; Swipe card and a dream: Advice for publishing interns - Damien Levi; How to publish a non-fiction bestseller - Jenny Hellen; Valuing two hundred years of Maori books - Jacinta Ruru; From Colenso to Catton: A quick skim through two centuries of book publishing in Aotearoa - Elizabeth Caffin; Centred somewhere else - Marian Evans; Who owns the stories? Adventures in copyright - Sam Elworthy; Having sextuplets: A case study - Trish Harris; I wrote The Porangi Boy for kids like me - Shilo Kino; writers festivals are fucking weird eh - Dominic Hoey; How to be literary philanthropists - Mary & Peter Biggs; Why publishing matters: Behind the scenes in a museum - Sean Mallon; Bringing stories to Aotearoa, curiously - Julia Marshall; How to bankroll a book: Paper may grow on trees-but money doesn't - Malcolm Burgess; Thoughts on correctness - Anna Jackson-Scott; Reps on the road - Marthie Markstein; Prediction: your life will come to this - Jane Arthur; The crooked path to a picture book - Gavin Bishop; From multinational to multitasking - Kevin Chapman; Kia puawai te aroha ki te reo - Mike Dreaver; How to rock self-publishing - Steff Green; More than a numbers game: A view from PANZ - Craig Gamble; The curious reader: Championing books - Kiran Dass; Publishing Nicky Hager - Robbie Burton; Paula Morris reads your emails - Paula Morris; Everything I know about publishing in other languages - Ya-Wen Ho; How to design a book: A focus on covers - Alan Deare; To publish or not to publish, is that the question? - Anahera Gildea; How to publish a blue whale - Susan Paris; Paper trail: The evolution of academic publishing - James L Savage; How to smash the system - Murdoch Stephens & Brannavan Gnanalingam; Joan picks Joan's Picks - Joan Mackenzie; Here's what happens when no one shows up to your writers event - Madeleine Chapman; The Changeover: From page to screen - Stuart McKenzie; And the winner is... - Nicola Legat. Published to mark thirty years of the Whitireia publishing course.
Patu: The New Zealand Wars by Gavin Bishop $40
A stunning, large-format, visual history of the New Zealand Wars of the 1800s, suitable for both children and adults. Discover the key people, perspectives and battles of the New Zealand Wars in this powerfully told and richly illustrated visual history. Auē! Te mamae! Navigate the defining moments of the wars, visit the battle sites and explore the sweeping change that took place in Aotearoa during the 19th century. Guiding readers through the bitter armed clashes over land and sovereignty, PATU is an essential book for every shelf.
>>Find out more and look inside this excellent book.
>>Extraordinary circumstances.
The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore $37
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land. The stupendous new novel from the author of The Manningtree Witches.
”One of the most remarkable novels of the year.” —Guardian
“An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave
>>The man who ate everything.
The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo and Julie Morstad $28
Once, there was a king. And a wolf. And a girl with a shepherd’s crook. And a boy with a bow and arrow. And also, there was an owl... They were puppets, and they were waiting for a story to begin. Carried off in an old trunk, the puppets find not only their own story but find themselves also acting out a story written by a girl in the house they find themselves in — and whose story will take flight from this puppet show? Thoughtful, well written, and completely charming.
>>Look inside this beautiful book!
Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino (translated from Japanese by Kendall Heitzman) $25
A young girl loses her mother, and her father blindly invites his secret lover into the family home to care for her. As she obsessively tries to curate a pristine life, this new interloper remains indifferent to the girl, who seems to record her every move - and she realises only too late all that she has failed to see. With masterful narrative control, ‘Nails and Eyes’ — appearing in English for the first time — builds to a conclusion of disturbing power. Paired with two additional stories of unsettled minds and creeping tension, it introduces a daring new voice in Japanese literature.
>>’You OK for Time?’
>>’Quiet Night’.
Nipponia Nippon by Kazushige Abe (translated from Japanese by Kerim Yasar) $25
Isolated in his Tokyo apartment, seventeen-year-old Haruo spends all his time online, researching the plight of the endangered Japanese crested ibis, Nipponia nippon. Living on an allowance from his parents, he drops ever further into a fantasy world in which he alone shares a special connection with the last of these noble birds, held at a conservation centre on the island of Sado. His conclusion is simple: it is his destiny to free the birds from a society that does not appreciate them, by whatever means necessary. With his emotional state becoming increasingly erratic, he begins to source weapons and prepares for a reckoning.
The Penguin New Zealand Anthology: Fifty stories for fifty years in Aotearoa edited by Harriet Allan $45
Amelia Batistich, Evana Belich, Norman Bilbrough, Ben Brown, Eleanor Catton, Craig Cliff, Marilyn Duckworth, David Eggleton, Fiona Farrell, Sia Figiel, Janet Frame, Maurice Gee, James George, Fiona Kidman, Patricia Grace, Charlotte Grimshaw, Dominic Hoey, Witi Ihimaera, Stephanie Johnson, Lloyd Jones, Tim Jones, Fiona Kidman, Shonagh Koea, Sarah Laing, Sue McCauley, Tina Makereti, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Owen Marshall, Tze Ming Mok, Kelly Ana Morey, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Paula Morris, Carl Nixon, Julian Novitz, Sue Orr, Vince O'Sullivan, John Puhiatau Pule, Sarah Quigley, Frazer Rangihuna, Victor Rodger, Frank Sargeson, Tracey Slaughter, CK Stead, Bernard Steeds, Alice Tawhai, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Elsie Uini, Peter Wells, Albert Wendt, Judith White, Alison Wong.
The Art Thief: A true story of love, crime, and a dangerous obsession by Michael Finkel $37
For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly ten years — in museums and cathedrals all over Europe — Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.
"The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, elan, and a great sense of timing. It is propelled by suspense and surprises. This ultra-lucrative, odds-defying crime streak is wonderfully narrated by Finkel, in a tale whose trajectory is less rise and fall than crazy and crazier.. Part of what makes Finkel's book so much fun is that, without exception, Breitwieser's strategies are insane." —The New Yorker
Around the World in 80 Games: A mathematician unlocks the secrets of the greatest games by Marcus du Sautoy $38
Why do some games seem to be universal while others have a particular connection to the culture of the people playing them? Around the World in 80 Games is about the mathematics of chance, game theory, gamification, gaming strategies and computer games. Traversing the globe, Marcus du Sautoy looks at the genesis of games new and old, explores how to invent a good game and explains the fascination of a popular lockdown game.
"With the lightest of touches du Sautoy manages persuasively to show how games are both narratives that speak about us and structures whose ideas underlie everything in our known universe. And on top of it, the book serves as an absolutely indispensable compendium. Rainy weekends in Cornwall will now be welcomed.” —Stephen Fry
Foxlight by Katya Balen $20
Fen and Rey were found curled up small and tight in the fiery fur of the foxes at the very edge of the wildlands. Fen is loud and fierce and free. She feels a connection to foxes and a calling from the wild that she's desperate to return to. Rey is quiet and shy and an expert on nature. She reads about the birds, feeds the lands and nurtures the world around her. They are twin sisters. Different and the same. Separate and connected. They will always have each other, even if they don't have a mother and don't know their beginning. But they do want answers. Answers to who their mother is and where she might be. What their story is and how it began. So when a fox appears late one night at the house, Fen and Rey see it as a sign — it's here to lead them to their truth, find their real family and fill the missing piece they have felt since they were born. But the wildlands are exactly that — wild. They are wicked and cruel and brutal and this journey will be harder and more life changing than either Fen or Rey ever imagined...
The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass $21
When a mysterious little free library (guarded by a large orange cat) appears overnight in the small town of Martinville, eleven-year-old Evan plucks two weathered books from its shelves, never suspecting that his life is about to change. Evan and his best friend Rafe quickly discover a link between one of the old books and a long-ago event that none of the grown-ups want to talk about. The two boys start asking questions whose answers will transform not only their own futures, but the town itself.
The Natural Garden: Landscape ideas for New Zealand gardens by Xanthe White $60
A revised and updated edition of this standard work on garden planning in Aotearoa. Well photographed, but also with layout plans and plant directories for all the various sorts of gardens: flower, native, rural, dry, inner city, productive, subtropical ,and coastal.
>>Look inside.
A Therapeutic Journey by Alain de Botton $42
A Therapeutic Journey follows the arc from mental crisis and collapse to convalescence and recovery. Written with kindness, knowledge and sympathy, it is both a practical guide and a source of consolation and companionship in what might be some of our loneliest, most anguished moments. Alain de Botton explores how we can cope with a variety of forms of mental pain and illness, from the mild to the severe. It considers how and why we might become ill; how we can explain things to friends, family and colleagues; how we can find our ways towards recovery; and how we can build resilience, so as to live wisely alongside our difficulties.
>>Illustrated throughout.
The Very Last Interview by David Shields
So, what makes you want to write a review of David Shields’s new book, The Very Last Interview?
Then why are you writing one?
Every week? Whose idea was that?
Surely at your age, you shouldn’t be so bound by obligation or by expectation, or whatever you call it?
Yes, but do you really care what these readers might think, and do you even believe that there are such people? Aren’t you being altogether a bit precious?
Do you really think that this helps to pay the mortgage, I mean that this makes a direct and measurable contribution towards paying your mortgage? Or even an indirect and unmeasurable but still valuable contribution towards paying your mortgage?
Well, what else would you be doing?
Surely you’re joking?
Okay, we’ve got a bit off the track there. I will reframe my first question. What makes you think that you are able to write a review of David Shields’s new book?
Don’t you think your humility is a bit mannered?
The Very Last Interview is a book consisting entirely of questions that interviewers have asked David Shields over the years, omitting his answers, assuming he will have answered probably at least most of the questions, and your review, if we can call it that, of this book also consists of a series of questions ostensibly directed at you but without your answers, if indeed there were answers, which is less certain in your case than in the case of David Shields. Is this, on your part, a deliberate choice of approach, and, if so, is it justifiable?
Do you really believe that a review written in imitation of, or in the style of, the work under review inherently reveals something about that work, even if the review is badly written, or should your approach rather be attributed to laziness, stylistic insecurity, or creative bankruptcy?
Has it ever occurred to you that the supposedly more enjoyable qualities of your writing are actually nothing more than literary tics or affectations, and, furthermore, that it might be these very literary tics and affectations that prevent you from writing anything of real literary worth?
Do you think that, by removing his input into the original interviews but retaining the questions, David Shields is attempting to remove himself from his own existence, or merely to show that our identities are always imposed from outside us rather than from inside, or that we exist as persons only to the extent that we are seen by others? Is this, in fact, all the same thing?
What do you mean by that statement, ‘We are defined by the limits we present to the observations of others’?
What do you mean by that statement ‘There is no such thing as writing, only editing,’ and how does that relate to Shields’s work?
Do you think that David Shields, in this book as in the much-discussed 2010 Reality Hunger, sees the individual as an illusion, a miserable fragment of what is actually a ‘hive mind’ or collective consciousness, and that ‘creativity’, so to call it, is another illusion predicated on this illusion of individuality?
You don’t? What, then?
What do you think David Shields would have answered, when asked, as he was, seemingly in this book, “But what is the role of the imagination in this ‘post-literature literature’ that you envision?” and how might this differ from the answer you might give if asked the same question?
Shields was asked if he had written anything that couldn’t be interpreted as ‘crypto-autobiography’, but don’t you think the salient question is whether it is even possible to write anything that couldn’t be interpreted as crypto-autobiography?
Is a perfectly delineated absence, such as David Shields approximates in The Very Last Interview, in fact the most perfect portrait of a person, even the best possible definition of a person, as far as this is possible at all?
But do you actually have a personal opinion on this?
Do you think then that you, like Shields, like us all perhaps, are, in essence, a ghost?
Gavin Bishop has yet again created a book that needs to be on everyone’s bookshelf. PATU: THE NEW ZEALAND WARS is a masterpiece of illustration that gives any reader, child or adult, a clear and compelling overview of the struggle between settlers and tangata whenua that underlies all of Aotearoa’s subsequent history. The beautiful large-format book covers all the phases and aspects of the conflict, is insightful into the viewpoints of the various participants and into the range of contexts for the events, and includes fold-out plans of many battles and sieges. Highly recommended.
Bishop’s other large-format, lively, beautifully illustrated books packed with information for older children (and adults). Every home needs these:
Aotearoa: The New Zealand Story ;
Wildlife of Aotearoa ;
Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes.
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