THREAD RIPPER by Amalie Smith — reviewed by Thomas

Thread Ripper by Amalie Smith (translated from Danish by Jennifer Russell)   

Perhaps, he thought in a rare moment of self-reflection, or in a moment of rare self-reflection, he wasn’t sure which, I have become so accustomed to writing my so-called fictional reviews, to writing my so-called reviews in a fictional manner or even, more confusingly, in an autofictional manner so that they are not immediately recognised as the fictions they are, that I have proverbialised myself into a corner and am incapable of writing a straight review, if there is even such a thing, or a review just written as a review, there might be such a thing as that, he thought, without the novelistic trappings of my approach, my distancing and deflection tricks, my wriggling away from the task at hand and from the possibility that I am not up to the task at hand, he thought, perhaps all my trickeration, so to call it, is just a way of concealing my incapability, from myself at least for surely no-one else is fooled, he thought. None of this helped, he thought, this self-reflection, so to call it, makes me more incapable rather than less, makes anything that might pass for a review, or even for a meta-review, less possible, I have thought myself to a standstill, he thought, unless of course I create a fictional reviewer to write the reviews for me, a fictional reviewer who could write a straight review, a review written as a review, that elusive goal that for me is now unreachable, at least without some trickeration, I have got to the point at which only a fake reviewer can write a real review. Anyway, anyone but me. I wonder how my fictional reviewer will approach this book, Thread Ripper, he thought. Thread Ripper is written in two parallel sequences or threads on the facing pages of each opening, and each of those threads has its own approach to the matters that inform them both. My reviewer would probably find themselves obliged to begin or find it convenient to begin with a description of how the verso pages carry an account, if that is the right word, of the author’s researches and considerations of the history of weaving and computer programming, which turn out to be the same thing, at least in the author’s concurrent artistic practice, so to call it, here also described, and which turn out to be the same thing also as neurology and linguistics, or at least to have typological parallels to neurology and linguistics, if these even warrant separate terms, which the fictional reviewer may speculate on at some length, or not, these recto pages deal with matters outside the author’s head, matters of what could be termed fact, even though the term fact could be applied in this instance to some quite interesting philosophical speculations, speculations about things that may actually be the case, which, for the fictional reviewer, is as good a definition of the term as any. The recto pages are concerned with problems of knowing, the fictional reviewer may begin, or may conclude, whereas the verso pages are concerned with problems of feeling, so to call it, not that in either case should we assume the so-called problems to be necessarily problematic, although in many cases in both strands they are, the recto pages are concerned with what is going on inside the author’s head, with matters subject to temporal mutabilities, temporal mutabilities being an example, or being examples, of the sort of words a fictional reviewer might use when writing a review as a review but not making a very good job of it, though it is unclear whose fault that might be, does he have a responsibility for the performance of this fictional reviewer he has devised to do his job, he supposed he did have some such responsibility but he couldn’t help starting to wonder if successfully creating a character who fails to write well might be more of a success than a failure, though it would be, he supposed, a failure at his stated aim of achieving by the employment of a fictional reviewer the sort of straight review that he found himself these days incapable of writing, he wanted the fictional reviewer to write a real review, after all, a fictional review, which would not need to be actually written and which in this instance he could easily refer to as being wholly positive about this interesting book Thread Ripper, which he has read and enjoyed and which started in his mind, if it warrants to be so called, some quite interesting speculations and chains of thought of his own, and which he could suppose, to make his task easier, his fictional reviewer has also read and enjoyed, they are not so different after all, he thought, such a fictional review would not realise his intention or fulfil the purpose of the reviewer, he had intended the fictional reviewer to review the book in a straightforward way, even though he, even if this intention was by some chance realised, looked as if he would in any case treat the whole exercise, to his shame, as so often, as something of a sentence gymnasium. He would like to write in a straightforward way, he thought, to say, in this instance, I like this book and what is more I think you should buy it because I think you would like it too, but he could not help making the whole exercise into a sentence gymnasium, I never can resist a sentence gymnasium, he thought, these days less than ever, show me a sentence gymnasium or some relatively straightforward task that I could treat as a sentence gymnasium, pretty much anything can be so treated, he realised, and I am lost, he thought, whatever I attempt I fail, I am lost in the fractals of my sentence gymnasiums, or sentence gymnasia, rather, he corrected himself, my plight is worse than I thought, he thought. In Thread Ripper the author on the verso dreams, the fictional reviewer might point out, he thought, or he hoped the fictional reviewer would point out or remember to point out even if they didn’t get so far as to actually point out, according to the verso pages the author dreams and longs, and the author on the recto pages, if we are not at fault for calling either personage the author, programmes her computer with an algorithm to weave tapestries but also with an algorithm to write poetry, the results of which are included on these recto pages, if the author of those pages is to be believed, he didn’t see why not and he thought it unlikely that his fictional reviewer would have any reservations in regard to the authenticity of these poems, so to call them, or rather to the artificial authorship of the poems and of the so-called ‘artificial’ intelligence behind them, any productive system, any arrangement of parts that can produce something beyond those parts, is a sort of intelligence, he thought, though he evidently hadn’t thought this very hard. All thought is done by something very like a machine, even if this is not very like what we commonly term machines, he reasoned, reducing the meaning of his statement almost to nothing while doing so, it is a good thing I am not writing this review myself, it is a good thing I have a fictional reviewer to write the review, a fictional reviewer whom I can make ridiculous without making myself ridiculous, he thought, unconvincingly he had to admit though he didn’t admit this of course to anyone but himself, the universe is full of mess, a mess we are in a constant struggle to reduce. “The digital has become a source not of order, as we had hoped, but of mess, an accumulation of images and signs that just keeps on growing,” writes the author of Thread Ripper. “For humans it’s a mess; a machine can see right through.” Perhaps there is a difference between machine intelligence, which compounds, and human intelligence, which reduces, he thought briefly and then abandoned this thought, perhaps my fictional reviewer will have this thought and perhaps my fictional reviewer will be able to think it through and make something of it, fictional characters often think better than the authors who invent them, fictional characters are themselves a kind of machine for thinking with, artificial characters with artificial thoughts, if there can be such things, perhaps intelligence is the only thing that can never be artificial, he thought, though we might have to change the meanings of several words to make this statement make sense. “I hear on the radio that the human brain at birth is a soup of connections, that language helps us reduce them,” writes the author in Thread Ripper. “The more we learn, the fewer the connections.” Does grammar, then, work as a kind of algorithm, he wondered, or he wondered if his fictional reviewer might be induced to wonder, is it grammar that forms our thoughts by reducing them to the extent that we may affect on occasion to make some sense, whether of not we are right, which is, really, unimportant, the grammar is what matters not the content, is this what Ada Lovelace, who died before she could describe it, referred to as the calculus of the nervous system, could he actually end his sentence with a question mark, he wondered, the question mark that belonged to this Ada Lovelace question, or was he too tangled in his sentence to find its end?

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
WA and IRO — reviewed by Stella

Some books are a pleasure to look at, to handle, and to have close at hand for inspiration. The way a book is designed can alter your interaction with it. The choice of font, layout, paper stock, binding, and the content/space (the white of the page) ratio all affect your reading experience. Whether this is a novel or an art book, the design of a book should be pleasing, and yet unnoticeable. It should feel right. If you are interested in design, like Japanese aesthetics, and like a set, then these two books are awaiting your pleasure. I’ve owned a copy of Wa: The Essence of Japanese Design for a few years and I never tire of it. Wa is not only filled with gorgeous examples of wood, metal, and textile objects, it's a design object in itself. Beautifully bound with striking stitching, the pages are made from folded fine paper so from the moment you pick it up it feels special. Within the covers of the book, the pages carry the essence of Japanese aesthetic with typographic design and placement of images on the page which are pleasing and thoughtfully arranged. Split into different media (textile, wood, metal, etc), each chapter has an essay discussing the area and the contemporary approach to each. It’s altogether a stunning book. And its partner, Iro: the Essence of Colour in Japanese Design, is just as compelling.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
NEW RELEASES (17.11.23)

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers $37
“Part poetry, part electricity, this story carries relics between the ephemeral and the eternal with all the disarming vitality of a truly illuminated text.” —Goldsmiths Prize judges' citation
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras — from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage their dreams, desires, connections and communities. Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.
”A sensational piece of storytelling. The symbiosis of poetry and story, of knowledge and deep love, marks out Cuddy as a singular and significant achievement.” —Guardian
”A polyphonic hymn to a very specific landscape and its people. At the same time, it deepens his standing as an arresting chronicler of a broader, more mysterious seam of ancient folklore that unites the history of the British Isles as it's rarely taught.” —Observer

 

Flora: Celebrating our botanical world edited by Carlos Lehnebach, Claire Regnault, Rebecca Rice, Isaac Te Awa, and Rachel Yates $80
This splendid large-format book mines Te Papa's collections to explore and expand upon the way we think about our botanical world and its cultural imprint. It features over 400 selections by a cross-disciplinary curatorial team that range from botanical specimens and art to photography, furniture, jewellery, tivaevae, applied art, textiles, stamps and more. Flora's twelve essays provide a deeper contextual understanding of different topics, including the unique characteristics of New Zealand flora as well as how artists and cultures have used flora as a motif and a subject over time. Very desirable, very browsable, very givable.

 

I Have the Right: An affirmation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child illustrated by Reza Dalvand $30
Beautifully illustrated and unfortunately urgently relevant at the moment, this book introduces children and reminds adults of the basic rights of children that no adult or government should violate for any reason. I have the right to have a name and a nationality. I have the right to the best healthcare. I have the right to an education. I have the right to a home where I can thrive. Adopted in 1989 and ratified by these 190 countries, the UNCRoC promises to defend the rights of children and to keep them safe, respected, and valued. Dalvand's stunning illustrations speak to children all around the world, some of whose rights are often challenged and must be protected every day. Among its other articles guaranteeing children’s access to food, water, safety and wellbeing, the UNCRoC specifically “condemns the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict and direct attacks on objects protected under international law, including places that generally have a significant presence of children, such as schools and hospitals.”

 

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo $35
Short-listed for this year’s Booker Prize, Western Lane is a beautiful and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, and a teenage girl’s struggle to transcend herself. Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in an intense training regime, and the game becomes her world. Her life is reduced to the sport’s rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.
What the Booker judges say: "Skilfully deploying the sport of squash as both context and metaphor, Western Lane is a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language which reverberates like the sound ‘of a ball hit clean and hard…with a close echo’.” Now available in paperback.

 

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner $37
This is the story of Corey Fah, a writer on the cusp of a windfall, courtesy of the Social Evils prize committee, for whom the actual gong — and with it the prize money - remains tantalizingly out of reach. Neon beige, with UFO-like qualities, the elusive trophy leads Corey, with partner Drew and surprise eight-legged companion Bambi Pavok, on a spectacular detour through their childhood in the Forest 3 via an unlikely stint on reality TV. Navigating those twin horrors, through wormholes and time loops, Corey learns — the hard way — the difference between a prize and a gift. Both radiant and revolutionary, Isabel Waidner's fiction gleefully takes a hammer to false binaries, boundaries and borders, turning walls into bridges and words into wings. Fierce, fluid and funny, they free us to imagine another way of being. This is a novel about coming into one's own, the labour of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself and the pitfalls of social mobility. It's about watching TV with your lover. Waidner, whose Sterling Karat Gold was awarded he 2022 Goldsmiths Prize, has a unique, disorienting, and very enjoyable voice.
”A piece of winged originality.” —Ali Smith
”A provocative act of resistance to our morally slippery times. Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas.” —Guardian
”The writer everyone is talking about — and deservedly so. Their explosive sensibility and style are as far removed from mediocre prose and middle-class manners as you can imagine.” —Bernardine Evaristo
”Buckle up! Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is a head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion. I love it.” —Kamila Shamsie

 

At the Bach by Joy Cowley, illustrated by Hilary Jean Tapper $30
Cowley’s simple rhythmic text is perfectly matched with Tapper’s warm and gentle illustrations to capture the common childhood experience of staying in a bach by the sea in summer. An instant favourite.

 

The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell $37
It's the eighteenth century, and Celine is in trouble. Her husband is mostly absent. Her parents are elsewhere. And meanwhile men are inventing stories about her — about her affairs, her sexuality, her orgies and addictions. All these stories are lies, but the public loves them — spreading them like a virus. Celine can only watch as her name becomes a symbol for everything rotten in society. This is a world of decadence and saturation, of lavish parties and private salons, of tulle and satin and sex and violence. It's also one ruled by men — high on colonial genocide, natural destruction, crimes against women and, above all, language. To survive, Celine and her friends must band together in search of justice, truth and beauty. A wild story of female friendship, language and power, from France to colonial America to the moon, from 1775 to this very moment — a historical novel like no other.
”Adam Thirlwell considers the celestial and the political on the same plane, creating wondrous new ways of seeing history, nature, friendship and time. He weaves together so many wisps of reality, and the result is a radically beautiful new novel that is funny, touching, memorable and bright.” —Sheila Heti
”Thirlwell's prose is hypnotic and coolly beautiful. The writing is full of dreamlike leaps, not just at the level of plot, but in its sentences, too. The Future Future has a beauty and a mysterious power that reflect its enigmatic protagonist.” —Guardian
”A book filled with imaginative leaps, brave decisions and tiny details that give delight.” —Colm Toibin

 

Take What You Need by Idra Novey $25
Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who's sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah's urban life with her young family, she's revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother's hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left be-hind. What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she's welded from scraps of the area's industrial history. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, zeroing in on the joys and difficulties of family with great verve and humour.
”Novey fully renders the inarticulable parts of artmaking - the antagonism of an artist's material, the pleasure in that difficulty, the way it troubles tidy ideasof legacy.” —Raven Leilani

 

Determined: Life without free will by Robert Sapolsky $40
Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works — the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault". Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognising that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

 

Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Cat Bohannon $42
Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.
”Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic.” —George Monbiot
”Eve was immeasurably useful to me in my life-long quest to understand my own body. I highly recommend it to anyone who is on the same journey.” —Hope Jahren

 

Artists in Antarctica edited by Patrick Shepherd $80
What transformation happens when writers, musicians and artists stand in the vast, cold spaces of Antarctica? This book brings together paintings, photographs, texts and musical scores by Aotearoa New Zealand artists who have been to the ice. It explores the impact of this experience on their art and art process, as well as the physical challenges of working in a harsh and unfamiliar environment. Antarctic science, nature and human history are explored through the creative lens of some of New Zealand's most acclaimed artists, composers and writers, including Lloyd Jones, Laurence Aberhart, Nigel Brown, Gareth Farr, Dick Frizzell, Anne Noble, Virginia King, Owen Marshall, Grahame Sydney, Ronnie van Hout, Phil Dadson, and Sean Garwood.

 

A Passion for Whisky: How the tiny island of Islay creates malts that captivate the world by Ian Wisniewski $60
”Ian Wisniewski is one of our foremost drinks writers. At once affectionate, knowledgeable and entertaining, this engaging book is essential reading for any fans of Islay whisky.” —Charles MacLean
Individual profiles of Islay's 13 distilleries include tasting notes for selected malts that illustrate the incredible range of peated styles produced, together with a section on tasting techniques, making this an indispensable guide for Scotch whisky lovers.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
Book of the Week: WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

Short-listed for this year’s Booker Prize, Western Lane is a beautiful and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, and a teenage girl’s struggle to transcend herself. Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in an intense training regime, and the game becomes her world. Her life is reduced to the sport’s rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.
What the Booker judges say: "Skilfully deploying the sport of squash as both context and metaphor, Western Lane is a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language which reverberates like the sound ‘of a ball hit clean and hard…with a close echo’.”

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
MOTHERHOOD by Sheila Heti — reviewed by Thomas

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

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
Bookseller recommendations for children's gifts — from Stella

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!

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
Book of the Week: BIRD LIFE by Anna Smaill

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.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
NEW RELEASES (10.11.23)

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.

 
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THE PUPPETS OF SPELHORST by Kate DiCamillo and Julie Morstad — reviewed by Stella

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.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella, Children's books
Book of the Week: IF I SURVIVE YOU by Jonathan Escoffery

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."

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
NEW RELEASES (3.11.23)

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.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
I HEAR YOU'RE RICH by Diane Williams — reviewed by Thomas

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.

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas