The Limits of My Language by Eva Meijer (translated from Dutch by Antoinette Fawcett)

He did not want to write any aphoristic gems about depression, and he did not want to read any, either. When he wrote, Depression sharpens the tools but makes them too heavy to use, he crossed this out immediately, it was simply not true, after all, depression blunts the tools and makes them too heavy to use, which is hardly an aphoristic gem. Nothing to be gained. As Eva Meijer points out in her excellent and well-written book The Limits of My Language, the sensitivities that may appear to be a side benefit of depression might in any case just as well be precursors of the depression that renders them useless, at least in those times when the depression is at its most obliterative and those sensitivities are impossible to recognise as any sort of benefit, no matter how kindly others might assure us that they are. Meijer’s book is not a self-help book, thank goodness, he thought, but a thoughtful account of the experience of depression, or rather the non-experience that so often constitutes depression, and of the philosophical and practical considerations entailed by that (non)experience. It is what Meijer terms “the expired present” that makes it impossible for the depressed person to see the point in anything, even, or most especially, their most basic everyday needs; if they do see value in anything, they cannot see any possible connection between this value and themselves. The depression prevents the depressed person from achieving the benefits of agency and identity that commonly result from (or produce) a person’s experience of time (agency being a connection with a future (through intention); identity being a connection with the past (through memory)). “When you are depressed, all the time is between-time or anti-time, just as the depressed person is a between-person, not dead but certainly not alive (if only you were actually dead or alive).” The present is erased, he thought, or I am erased in that present, which is the same thing, at least for me. This depression, a state with no feelings, with no capacities, is indistinguishable from brain damage, he thought, that is, unless I do have actual brain damage, which sometimes I wonder; this self-loss, this moment-by-moment existence that resembles an erasure, this inability to actually achieve anything that I would recognise as thought or action, or, at best, the achievement of what seems to me a mere simulacrum of thought, a mere simulacrum of action, the best I can achieve, that I have learned to achieve, on a good day, simulacra that may carry me through that day, though their connection to me is less than tentative, as far as I can see, but not nothing. “Depression isn’t always something that you can solve with your head,” writes Meijer, who has herself slowly learned, over the years, her own habits and techniques that help to pull her though depressive periods, or to avoid some of their worst effects (for instance, by putting “into brackets” what cannot be removed (a useful editing technique)). “Time persists in moving forward and moving you too,” she writes. Although thinking may have its uses, even as far as depression is concerned, the withstanding of depression, if it is to be withstood, seems to come from some other something in oneself, perhaps, he thought, something to do with the physical aspects of oneself, whatever they are, or the physical aspects of the world around, so to call it, or of some relationship between the two, physical aspects being more conducive to the physics of momentum, he supposed, which can carry us though. Even though I hardly believe in momentum, at least as far as I am concerned, here I am, carried forward, there is at least some evidence that I have been susceptible to being carried forward, despite it all, for what it’s worth, at least so far. What is it that enables or compels us to continue, he wondered. Whatever depression makes most difficult could be the best tool to use against it, but depression makes that tool blunt and makes it too heavy to use. All we can hope to do, he thought, and this is not nothing, is learn to withstand it all, perhaps, anchored maybe by whatever is too heavy to be used, and allow time to pass. This is not nothing, at all. 

“I wonder if I am allowed to love my sister Baby more than I love the Duce.” Penny ranks her love for her sister against her love of Jesus, Mussolini, Italy and the Fatherland, and compares all this to love for her yellow bear. It’s 1944 in fascist Italy. Penny and Baby, orphaned, have been left in the care of Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Katchen. They attend school where they sing fascist songs and wear their Piccola Italiana uniforms with pride. At home, their uncle won’t allow them to go to mass and Penny finds herself constantly in trouble for her high spiritedness. Yet, it’s a happy life with her loving Uncle and Aunt, the cousins and the adoring household servants. Penny and Baby have a good life in the country and spend hours in the fields and the woods playing games both imaginative, and punitive, with the village children. Many of their games include penitent actions, as Penny knows that to save their Jewish Uncle from Hell sacrifices have to be made. Many of Penny’s ideas are hilarious and wrong-footed in the way that only children can achieve. The Sky is Falling is a charming, deceptive and ultimately shocking autofiction. Like the sisters, Penny and Baby, filmmaker, artist, and writer Lorenza Mazzetti and her twin were left with their relatives after their mother died. They lived in Italy during the second world war and witnessed the deaths of their family. In the 1950s, having made their way to England, Mazzetti talked her way into The Slade and began making films. She was instrumental as a founder of the Free Cinema and won several prestigious awards before returning to Italy in the late 1950s. (In this new translation, there’s an excellent introduction by Ali Smith about Mazzetti, and a thoughtful critique of this novel). However, Mazzetti’s alter ego Penny is younger, and this makes the end of childhood innocence all the more shocking and enables the author to playfully compose situations which are blackly, hilariously funny. She captures the voice, feelings and thoughts of a chid — their truth, as well as their missteps — with honesty in simple evocative language. The beautifully produced book from Another Gaze Editions includes a series of naive drawings by the author, adding to the air of impending doom. This is a novel about facing down trauma and about exposing the cruel and often arbitrary nature of war. It is carefully calibrated, the tension teased out by Penny’s often riotous behaviour, witty dialogue and sharp observation; yet builds without relief to its inevitable horrific end.

A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:

Bloody Woman

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets

Divine Might

Stranger in the Shogun’s City

A History of New Zealand Women

A History of Islam in 21 Women

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

Shakespeare’s Sisters

• Browse some other women’s histories.

Keep warm with one (some) of these new books — just out of the carton:

The Garden Against Time: In search of a common paradise by Olivia Laing $50

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there's still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton's Paradise Lost to John Clare's enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the costs of making paradise on earth. But amidst larger patterns of privilege and exclusion, she also finds rebel outposts and communal dreams, including Derek Jarman's improbable queer utopia and William Morris's fertile vision of a common Eden. The Garden Against Time is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens — not as places to hide from the world but as sites of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.
”I don't think I've ever read a book that captures so well not only the deep pleasures and satisfactions of gardening, but its near-hypnotic effect on the human body and mind.” —Observer
”What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way.” —Nigel Slater
”A sharp and enthralling memoir of the garden's contradiction: dream and reality, life and death, the fascination of cultivation and the political horrors that it can disguise.” —Neil Tennant
”Laing probes important questions about land ownership and exclusion and the human drive to create paradise on earth. All the while, her elegant prose bewitches and beguiles. A truly wonderful read.” —Sue Stuart-Smith, author of The Well Gardened Mind
”No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained.” —Philip Hoare

• The radical potential of gardens.

• Hidden relationships with colonialsim.

Do Not Send Me Out among Strangers by Johua Segun-Lean $36

Do Not Send Me Out Among Strangers is a wholly remarkable text considering shame, isolation, and the strange terrain where private and public grief meet. 31 illustrations: black-and-white and colour photos, iPhone dawings.
”Beautiful, strange, captivating.” —Olivia Laing
”Clear-eyed and brilliant and desperately sad.” —Sara Baume

• Look inside!

• The smell of bread forms a map of life.

Foraging New Zealand: Over 250 plants and fungi to forage in New Zealand by Peter Langlands $50

Aotearoa is full of incredible, edible wild foods — fruit, fungi and seaweed; berries, herbs and more — you only need to know where to look and how to use it safely. This remarkable, definitive book is the ultimate guide to unearthing more than 250 of our tastiest wild plants. Packed with stunning photography, up-to-date information and helpful tips, this book will have you venturing into the countryside or your own garden, viewing urban weeds with fresh eyes, and returning to the larder with zest. Peter Langlands has spent a lifetime compiling Aotearoa's largest database of wild foraged species, running workshops and sourcing wild produce for chefs as one of our only licensed professional foragers. He brings his years of expertise together in this essential compendium. This book will change the way you eat and the way you think of where you live.

The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon $38

A boy searches for his father, a prison guard on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. In the Edo Period, a samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen. In upstate New York, a formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town and attempts to build a family. The Hive and the Honey is a bold and indelible collection that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in the far east of Russia?

• Violence is the only law in this war.

• Both real and not real.

Missing Persons, Or, My grandmother’s secrets by Clair Wills $50

A history of unmarried motherhood and concealed secrets through three generations of an Irish family. How far would you go for the missing? When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a Mother and Baby home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet she was never told of her existence. How could a whole family — a whole country — abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history? To discover the missing pieces of her family's story, Clair searched across archives and nations, in a journey that would take her from the 1890s to the 1980s, from West Cork to rural Suffolk and Massachusetts, from absent fathers to the grief of a lost child. There are some experiences that do not want to be remembered. What began as an effort to piece together the facts became an act of decoding the most unreliable of evidence — stories, secrets, silences. The result is a moving, exquisitely told story of the secrets families keep, and the violence carried out in their name.
I”n its account of one family's history of silence and secrecy, Clair Wills has written a compelling book which demonstrates the uncanny universality of even the most personal stories. Attending to the ways that the past ruptures and grows through the present, this is a history shaken by intimacy — a brave and rigorously humane book.” —Sean Hewitt
”If the past is a mass of tangled wool, Clair Wills frees a long strand and knits it into clarity, line by line, inviting the reader to see the complexity of the pattern she reveals. Written with elegance and erudition, Missing Persons is an extraordinary, moving achievement.” —Doireann Ni Ghriofa
”Clair Wills retrieves from time's abyss a speculative history of universal import. This is a penetrating and affecting study, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the profound contradictions, the secrets and lies that define post-famine Ireland.” —Paul Lynch

• Never going home.

Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann (translated from Russian by Imogen Taylor) $40

What did the disintegration of the Soviet Union feel like for the people who lived through it? As a child, Lena longs to pick hazelnuts in the woods with her grandmother. Instead, she is raised to be a good socialist: sent to Pioneer summer camps where she’s taught to worship Lenin and sing songs in praise of the glorious Soviet Union. But perestroika is coming. Lena’s corner of the USSR is now Ukraine, and corruption and patronage are the only ways to get by – to secure a place at university, an apartment, treatment for a sick baby. For Tatjana, the shock of the new means the first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union and certified foreign whisky, but no food in the shops; it means terrible choices about how to love. Eventually both women must decide whether to stay or to emigrate, but the trauma they carry is handed down to their daughters, who struggle to make sense of their own identities. Glorious People is a vivid depiction of how the collapse of the Soviet Union reverberated through the lives of ordinary people.
 ''A story of several generations of women that poignantly demonstrates the imprint of history on people's lives, often with tragic consequences. Salzmann conveys the emotional turmoil and agonizing choices their characters make with exquisite nuance and sensitivity. Their distinctive voice, elegant prose and engaging narrative result in a marvelous work.” —Victoria Belim
”Glorious People is hypnotic, sweeping, and more relevant than ever. The mothers and daughters of Glorious People will stick with you long after you turn the last page of this mesmerizing, sharp, and devastating novel. They are searching for meaning and belonging as immigrants, mothers, wives, professionals, and citizens of a complex and ever-changing world. This novel offers a fresh take on the Soviet diaspora that offers both a meaningful critique and a semblance of much-needed hope for the future.' —Maria Kuznetsova

How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican memoir by Safiya Sinclair $38

There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world just beyond their gate. Rastas were ostracised in Jamaica, and in this isolation Safiya's father's rule was absolute. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything: no short skirts and no opinions, nowhere but home and school, no friends but this family and no future but this path. Her mother did what she could to bring joy to her children with books, poetry and education. But as Safiya's imagination reached beyond its restrictive borders, her burgeoning independence brought with it greater clashes with her ever more radical father. Safiya realised that if she was to live at all, she had to find some way to leave home. But how? In seeking to understand the past of her family, Safiya Sinclair takes readers inside a world that is little understood by those outside it and offers an astonishing personal reckoning.
'“Dazzling. Potent. Vital.” —Tara Westover
”To read it is to believe that words can save.” —Marlon James
”Unforgettable, mesmerising, heartbreaking and heartwarming. One of the best memoirs in world literature.” —Elif Shafak

• Short-listed for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

• Writing a ghost story.

• Scorching.

Sebze: Vegetarian recipes from my Turkish kitchen by Özlem Warren $65

Here you will find Kahvati (all day breakfast), Meze and Salata, Sokak Yemekleri (street food) as well as breads, mains, pickles, and sweets. Everything looks and sounds delicious. Winter garden favourites could be Pazih Lebeniye Corbasi (Yoghurt Soup with Chickpeas and Swiss Chard), Pazih, Cevizli Eriste (Eriste Noodles with Chard, Walnuts and Crumbly Cheese), or Firinda Sebzeli Karnabahar Mucveri (it’s a baked cauliflower dish!).

• Look inside!

• Cooking sunshine.

Wild Figs and Fennel: A year in an Italian kitchen by Letitia Clark $65

A beautifully presented delight. It’s a seasonal culinary journey through the sun-soaked landscapes of Italy sure to please. In the Winter section there’s the always popular Spaghetti Puttanesca, Lemon and Wild Fennel Polpette and the wonderfully named Ricotta Cloudballs. Packed with recipes for everyday and special occasions.

• Look inside!

• Cooking sunshine.

Empire, Incorporated: The corporations that built British colonialism by Philip J. Stern $74

Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan — a legal fiction with very real power. Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

The Other Side: A journey into women, art, and the spirit world by Jennifer Higgie $30

In an illuminating blend of memoir and art history, The Other Side explores the lives and work of a group of extraordinary women artists. From the twelfth-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen and the nineteenth-century spiritualist Georgiana Houghton to the pioneering Hilma af Klint, these women all — in their own unique ways — shared the same goal: to communicate with, and learn from, other dimensions. Weaving in and out of their myriad lives, Jennifer Higgie considers the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. New paperback edition.
”In effervescent and atmospheric prose, Jennifer Higgie explores some of history's most innovative artists and their spiritual investigations into this realm and the next. I was entranced from start to finish, as she takes us on both a personal and artistic journey across time and across the globe. The Other Side is an exhilarating read.” —Katy Hessel
”The Other Side lit up my brain. A radical, fascinating exploration of art and the otherworldly, Higgie is an expert and erudite guide in this brilliant reclamation of female artists.” —Sinead Gleeson

Mediterranean (‘The Passenger’) $40

The word ‘Mediterranean’ evokes something larger than geography, and has historically marked a distinct cultural space, one where different people have met, traded, and clashed. Today the Mediterranean appears to be in crisis, neglected by the EU, and at the centre of one of the greatest migrations in history. While millions of tourists flock to its shores, hundreds of thousands of people face a dramatic journey in the opposite direction-to escape wars, persecutions, and poverty. The liquid road, as Homer called it, is increasingly militarized, trafficked, and polluted-as well as overheated and overfished. But the Mediterranean remains a source of wonder and fascination-a space not entirely colonized by modernity, where time flows differently, and where multiple cultures and languages are in very close contact and dialogue. Includes: ‘The Sea Between Lands’ by David Abulalfia; ‘The Liquid Road’ by Leila Slimani; ‘The Cold One, the Hot One, the Mad One, and the Angry One’ by Nick Hunt — plus: the sounds and smells of the Mediterranean; the invention of the Mediterranean diet; and more.

• Look inside!

• Other volumes in the excellent ‘The Passenger’ series.

Like a Charm by Elle McNicoll $20

Edinburgh is a city filled with magical creatures. No one can see them… until Ramya Knox. As she is pulled into her family’s world of secrets and spells, Ramya sets out to discover the truth behind the Hidden Folk with only three words of warning from her grandfather: Beware the Sirens. Plunged into an adventure that will change everything, Ramya is about to learn that there is more to her powers than she ever imagined.

The Great Wave: The era of radical disruption and the rise of the outsider by Michiko Kakutani $38

In the twenty-first century, a wave of political, cultural and technological change has capsized our old certainties and assumptions, creating both opportunity and danger. As people lose their faith in old institutions and elites, radical voices at the margins and the grassroots are disrupting the status quo. This is the time of the outsider — the protester, the populist, the hacker. Some of these outsiders have sown chaos, and others have provided inspirational leadership. But all have grasped this precarious moment to make something new. Writing with a critic’s incisive understanding of cultural trends, Michiko Kakutani outlines the consequences of these new asymmetries of power, and looks back to similar hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the aftermath of the Second World War, to find a way forward. For there is, Kakutani argues, always the promise of transformation in times of turmoil. We can surrender to the waters, give in to the gathering chaos, or we can use the wave’s momentum to propel us into a more stable and sustainable future.
”Michiko Kakutani offers a profoundly inspiring and prophetic perspective on the contemporary world. The Great Wave is an exceptionally rare book, marked by its deep, sincere, and precise comprehension of the formidable challenges that humanity faces in the third millennium. This may well be a pivotal turning point.” —Ai Weiwei

Art is all around you, and Jamie Baird finds it on the street. For four decades he has walked the streets of Wellington with his camera, capturing both large murals in and small incursions into the urban landscape — from the loud to the quiet, from the subtle to the flashy, from the planned and approved to the furtive and the fleeting. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow is a social commentary and cultural history of one of our most dynamic cities, and in these pages you’ll find political moments and personal messages, through the imagination and talent of street artists and the tenacity of social protest — and through the lens of Jamie Baird. A fascinating book, absolutely packed with images that capture time and place, with a forward by historian Redmer Yska, and superbly designed by Matthew Bartlett. A must for Wellingtonians, past and present, and an excellent gift for anyone interested in politics, visual culture and social history.

• Jamie on Seven Sharp (starts at 4 mins 40)

• Walking the streets

• Four Decades of Street Art

• Look inside

Welcome to winter. Feeling like the days are a bit bleak? Maybe you need a ray of sunshine in your kitchen. Sometimes books arrive in clusters. Just in the door at VOLUME are some lovely sunshine-inducing Mediterranean cookbooks. We think these could bring cheer to your kitchen and your palate.

Portico is Leah Koenig’s excellent survey of Roman Jewish cooking. It’s a love letter to Rome, the flavours and the atmosphere, and Koenig’s recipes expertly reflect this wonderful blend of cultures. So whether you are feeling like something hearty — Stuffed Pasta in Broth (Carcioncini in Brodo), or sweet — Fried Almond Pastries with Orange Syrup (Burik Belluz), there will be something here to please the tastebuds.

Melbourne food writer Ella Mittas takes us on a trip to Greece and Turkey in Ela! Ela! This is local cuisine at its best with a focus on four distinct places: Istanbul, Alacati, Crete and Melbourne. It’s an exploration of Mittas’s own cultural heritage and her cooking adventures working in the mountains and by the sea. Discover Kisir, Briam, and her all-time favourite dessert, Galaktoboureko.

Staying with the theme of cultural roots, there’s a new book from the excellent Georgina Hayden. In Greekish, Hayden brings us everyday recipes with all the vibrance of Greek cuisine and the simplicity of cooking at home. Her recipes are a joy to use and even more joyful to eat. Her previous book, Taverna, is a firm favourite in our household. There are handy V, DF and GF markers for easy reference and the recipes range from snacks — Filo-wrapped Feta with Spiced Honey ; to feasts — Pumpkin and Feta Kataifi Pie; to sweet treats — Baklava Riccotta Semifreddo. Delicious.

Back to Italy, Wild Figs and Fennel, is a beuatifully presented delight. It’s a seasonal culinary journey through the sun-soaked landscapes of Italy sure to please. In the Winter section there’s the always popular Spaghetti Puttanesca, Lemon and Wild Fennel Polpette and the wonderfully named Ricotta Cloudballs. Packed with recipes for everyday and special occasions.

Sebze is a celebration of vegetarian Turkish cooking. Here you will find Kahvati (all day breakfast), Meze and Salata, Sokak Yemekleri (street food) as well as breads, mains, pickles, and sweets. Everything looks and sounds delicious. Winter garden favourites could be Pazih Lebeniye Corbasi (Yoghurt Soup with Chickpeas and Swiss Chard), Pazih, Cevizli Eriste (Eriste Noodles with Chard, Walnuts and Crumbly Cheese), or Firinda Sebzeli Karnabahar Mucveri (it’s a baked cauliflower dish!).

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS!

Read our latest newsletter. Prepare yourself for winter with a new book.

31 May 2024

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Énard 's text is like a ball-bearing rolling around indefinitely inside a box over surfaces imprinted with every sort of information about the wider Mediterranean, from Barcelona to Beirut, and Algiers to Trieste (the ‘Zone’), past and present. Énard very effectively uses the necessarily one-directional movement of a sentence to sketch out, through endless repetition and variation, the multi-dimensional complexity of the political, cultural, historical, social and physical terrain of the entire Zone. The narrative, so to call it, takes the form of a single 520-page sentence perfectly capturing (or perfectly inducing the impression of) the thought processes of the narrator as he travels, in ‘real’ time by train from Milan to Rome bearing a briefcase of classified information on terrorists, arms dealers and war criminals to sell to the Vatican, speeding on amphetamines, fatigue and alcohol, in his memory through multistranded loops from his experiences, which include his involvement as a mercenary in Croatia and working for the French secret service as well as his string of personal relationships, and in even greater loops of knowledge and association that pertain to the places in which his experiences took place and the history associated therewith. Énard’s prose is so irresistible and so mesmeric that the reader is effortlessly borne along, its forward movement not at all inhibited by the encyclopedic effect of the loops, and the loops upon the loops, upon the strand of the narrator’s journey, nor by the pieces of painful psychological grit not yet abraded from the narrator’s personal history of involvement in the recent traumas of the Zone. By so seductively inhabiting the mind of his less-than-admirable narrator, a mind caught between obsessive focus and restless discursion, Énard provides a panoramic view of the political and personal violence that has shaped the history and cultures of the Zone, and also intimates the way in which an individual is caught irretrievably in the great web of their circumstances, submission to those circumstances being the price of travelling along them. 

Recently, I was in a reading pit, where the novels I picked up were good or even very good, but not holding my attention. What I needed was something fresh, compelling and altogether distracting. Distracting in that good way; in the ‘I’m not stopping this book until I’m finished’ kind of way. You’ll only get a hmm or a later from me until I close the back cover. I read Kick the Latch in one gulp. Kathryn Scanlan is a genius. From transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, Scanlan has lost nothing of the voice of this woman and her hard life at the track in this moving and fascinating account of the underbelly of racing culture, while simultaneously constructing a novel of tidbits, of scrabble and insight, that jumps alive from the page.  A book of twelve chapters; each chapter a series of succinct episodes which are sharply arranged and rich in texture and character. With titles like ‘Bicycle Jenny’, ‘It Wasn’t His Fault’, ‘I Wouldn’t Barely Break’, ‘Gallon of Blood’, ‘Grandstanding’, ‘A Thousand Pounds of Pressure’ and ‘I Tried To Be a Normal Person’ it’s hard not to be curious.  Every small bit-player has a role to play in revealing the person at the centre, Sonia. Those that help her, break her, and the ones she observes. There are horses, front and centre; and the jockeys that ride well and badly, the owners who cheat and the ones who are okay. There’s the family of track workers who work the circuit, looking out for each other. Sonia, herself, is forthright and compelling. The stories or memories build and bounce off each other. There are times of losing and winning; of destitution and just making a living. There are the horses Sonia trains and the respect that she garners. There is the hard Midwest childhood and the misogyny which spells danger for a young woman determined to kick out on her own. And then there is the fact that this is Scanlan’s novel. It’s a joy to read something that you can’t be sure about. Sonia is a family acquaintance. The interviews were transcribed. Fiction is unreliable, but completely compelling. It’s truthful in a way that often memoir is not. Fiction is a portal and here, as I was submerged into the foreign world of horse trainer, track and the midwest, I was wonderfully distracted in the best possible way.

Start winter with a book still warm from the carton.
Click through to our website for your copies:

Long Island by Colm Tóibín $37

Eilis Lacey is Irish and married to Tony Fiorello. They live in a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, surrounded by Tony's large Italian family. Spring 1976. Eilis is now in her forties with two teenagers. An Irishman knocks on her door and tells her his wife is pregnant with Tony's child. Eilis has choices to make.
”Brilliantly written with a deft touch, it is only at the end that the breath you have been holding will be exhaled, but only briefly. —Stella
 "A masterful novel full of longing and regret." —Stuart Douglas
"Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue: this is Toibin at his best." —Robbie Millen, The Times
"Glittering with all of Toibin's intelligence and humane wit." —Colin Barrett

• Read Stella’s review.

• We will be discussing Long Island in our online book group on Tuesday 9 July. Please join us!

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis $45

Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis's keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers. This book has taken six months to come back into stock, so we will celebrate it as if it were a new release!
”This is a writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust.” —Ali Smith
”Davis captures words as a hunter might and uses punctuation like a trap. Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail, a most original and daring mind.” —Colm Toibin

• A feat of omission.

• Writing and revision.

• Not worried about fame and glory.

Ela! Ela! To Turkey and Greece, A journey home through food by Ella Mittas $45

A collection of recipes and stories from cook and food writer Ella Mittas. Inspired by her time working in a village in the mountains of Crete and the hot, loud streets of Istanbul, as well as her Greek heritage, they represent a journey of food, culture and belonging. These simple, comforting recipes are a mix of things Ella saw, ate and was taught on her travels, though years of cooking them have made them something more her own. Above all, they represent community — the reason Mittas ever wanted to cook at all.

• Look inside!

• Mittas at home.

In Italy: Venice, Rome, and beyond by Cynthia Zarin $23

Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ – a traveller moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her we see anew the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice, Rome, Assisi and Santa Maria Maggiore vividly to life for the reader.
”These pieces induce a comparable sense of being pleasurably lost, of wanting to live imperfectly in the present tense.” —Observer

• Self-portrait in Venice.

A History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hirsch $55

The way we remember the past today remains dishearteningly patriarchal: a place where women have always been oppressed by men, from ancient times to the present day. A History of Women in 101 Objects tells a new story of female history, revealing the evolution of the role women have played in society through the quiet power of their everyday items. Much of what we've read about history focuses on the men in power: women's stories are too often hidden or considered unremarkable. But in this collection, Annabelle Hirsch curates a compendium of women and their things, uncovering the thoughts and feelings at the heart of women's daily lives, to offer an intimate and lively alternative history. The objects date from prehistory to today and are assembled chronologically to show the evolution of how women were perceived by others, how they perceived themselves, how they fought for freedom. For example, what do handprints on early cave paintings tell us about the role of women in hunting? What does a mobile phone have to do with femicides? Or Kim Kardashian's diamond ring with Elena Ferrante?
”I love this book — a new feminist history of the world — stirring, provocative and carefully researched.” —Lauren Elkin

• Look inside!

• Her grandmother’s lipstick.

• Not exactly how it happened.

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville $40

A novel of the life of Kate Grenville's complex, conflicted grandmother — a woman Kate feared as a child, and only came to understand in adulthood. Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors were starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, Dolly spent her restless life pushing at those doors. Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family photo albums as remote figures in impossible clothes, or maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe handed down through the generations. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of these women to life as someone we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.
Short-listed for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
”The writing sparkles with Grenville's gift for transcendently clear imagery. This is a work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding.” —Guardian

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler $65

Butler confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed 'anti-gender ideology movements' dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization — and even 'man' himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how 'gender' has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and transexclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of critical race theory and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonises struggles for equality and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice.
”Who's Afraid of Gender? calls for gender expression to be recognized as a basic human right, and for radical solidarity across our differences. With masterful analysis of where we've been and an inspiring vision for where we must go next, this book resounds like an impassioned depth charge.” —Esquire
”If we want to see the political temperature fall to something that might allow for progress, there are few thinkers better placed to guide us than Butler. Crucially, Butler sets out an ethical vision for how gender freedoms and rights might be better integrated within a collective broader struggle for a social and economic world that eliminates precarity and provides health care, shelter, and food for everyone everywhere.” —Angela Saini

• Judith Butler thinks you’re over-reacting.

Papyrus: The invention of books in the Ancient world by Irene Vallejo $30

Long before books were mass produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this impressive tradition would continue. Weaved throughout are fascinating stories about the spies, scribes, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, authors, and statesmen whose rich and sometimes complicated engagement with the written word bears remarkable similarities to the world today: Aristophanes and the censorship of the humourists, Sappho and the empowerment of women's voices, Seneca and the problem of a post-truth world. New edition.
”In this generous, sprawling work Vallejo sets out to provide a panoramic survey of how books shaped not just the ancient world but ours too. While she pays due attention to the physicality of the book, Vallejo is equally interested in what goes on inside its covers. And also, more importantly, what goes on inside a reader when they take up a volume and embark on an imaginative and intellectual dance that might just change their life. As much as a history of books, Papyrus is also a history of reading. “ —Guardian

• Why it is a mistake to undervalue books.

• Booksellers are saviours.

A Thread of Violence: A story of truth, invention, and murder by Mark O’Connell $33

In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history and the words used to describe the crimes (grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre, and almost unbelievable) have remained in the cultural lexicon as the acronym GUBU. Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk.
”Like all great books, A Thread of Violence is the document of a great writer's obsession. Mark O'Connell draws the reader into a deeply engrossing story, and at the same time into a complex investigation of human brutality and of narrative writing itself. This is a superb and unforgettable book.” —Sally Rooney
”Phenomenal. It's very dark, necessarily, but I found it very rich. Macarthur seems as though he's being generous and open, but there's also this manipulative side of him. It's like a chess game between the two of them, which I found really compelling. No contemporary literary mind seems to me more subtle, perceptive or trustworthy. An eerie, philosophically probing book. A Thread of Violence instils the certitude not only that no one else could have written this book, but that no other need ever be written on the subject. It's a marvel of tact, attentiveness, and unclouded moral acuity.” —Guardian

The Curtain and the Wall: A modern journey along Europe’s Cold War border by Timothy Phillips $28

The Iron Curtain divided the continent of Europe, north to south, with the Berlin Wall as its most visible, infamous manifestation. Since the Cold War ended and these borders came down, Europe has transformed itself. But we cannot consign the tensions and restrictions of the past to history. At a time when Russia is once again making war and when divisions elsewhere in Europe are on the rise, these old fault lines have new resonance. What do the Curtain and the Wall mean today? What have they left in their wake? In this book, Timothy Phillips travels the route of the Iron Curtain from deep inside the Arctic Circle to the meeting point of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. He explores the borderlands where the clash of civilisations was at its most intense between 1945 and 1989, and where the world's most powerful ideologies became tangible in reinforced concrete and barbed wire. He looks at the new Europe that emerged from the ruins. The people he meets bear vivid witness to times of change. There are those who look back on the Cold War with nostalgia and affection. Others despise it, unable to forgive the hard and sometimes lost decades that their families, friends and nations endured. In these historic landscapes lie buried many of the seeds of our world's current disputes - over borders, and about belonging and the meaning of progress.

12 Theses of Attention edited by D. Graham Burnett and Stevie Knauss $20

"True attention takes the unlivable, and makes it livable." So say the Friends of Attention in their visionary and epigrammatic analysis of attentional freedom in our time. Directly confronting the pathologies of our attention economy, this slim text, written by an underground collective of activist-critics, utopian dreamers, and peaceful insurgents, stakes out the terrain of a new politics — one that centers on the truly human use of our capacity to attend. It is widely recognized that unprecedented technologies, operating at unprecedented scales and with near-total ubiquity, continuously "frack" our faculties of eye and mind, extracting revenue by capturing our most precious and intimate resource: our attention. What can be done? Informed by the radical traditions of figures as diverse as Simone Weil and adrienne maree brown, and drawing on contemporary philosophy of mind no less than the eccentricities of slacker-surrealists, Twelve Theses on Attention offers a surprising and lyrical answer. The book is illustrated with stills from a set of related films by a diverse group of young filmmakers.

• Look inside!

• Meet the Friends of Attention.

Harlequin Butterfly by Toh EnJoe (translated from Japanese by David Boyd) $25

Successful entrepreneur A.A. Abrams is pursuing the enigmatic writer Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who appears to have the ability to write expertly in the language of any place they go. Abrams sinks endless resources into finding the writer, but Tomoyuki Tomoyuki always manages to stay one step ahead, taking off moments before being pinned down. But how does the elusive author move from one place to the next, from one language to the next? Ingenious and dazzling, Harlequin Butterfly unfurls one puzzle after another, taking us on a mind-bending journey into the imagination.
”The novel is perhaps most provocative as a meditation on language. A satisfying and reflective read” —Asian Review of Books

• Harlequin’s butterfly.

Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie by Shelley Burne-Field $20

Poto is the perfect fledgling – the apple of her father's eye and a natural at hunting and flying. Anything a kāhu is supposed to be good at, Poto can do best of all. She can't understand why her sister Whetū gets cross with her – it's not her fault she's good at everything! As for her baby brother Ari, he's so weird and annoying. After their mother is killed by a flock of magpies, Poto and Whetū have to get an injured Ari to safety before a deadly foretold earthquake arrives, unleashing a flood and destroying their home. With the help of the birds and new friends they meet on the way, the hawk siblings journey through the Valley, keeping an eye out for a menacing flock of magpies who are on a mission to take back the Valley for their own. Can they stop Tū the makipai and her flock from ruining the harmony of the Valley? Will aroha win out over hate? And will Poto realise that everyone has something special to offer, even if they can't do everything quite like she does?

Maurice and Maralyn: A whale, a shipwreck, a love story by Sophie Elmhirst $45

Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an idea: sell the house, build a boat, leave England - and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation — forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale. It sinks within an hour, and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On their tiny raft, over the course of days, then months, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Their pet turtle helps, as does devising menus for fantasy dinners and dreaming of their next voyage. Filled with danger, spirit and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive — not just at sea, but in life.
”Electrifying. A tender portrait of two unconventional souls blithely defying the conventions of their era and making a break for freedom.” —Fiona Sturges, Guardian
”Easily one of the most captivating works of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.” —Oliver Burkeman

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler $30

When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA — a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence — has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research. But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
”A first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive.” —Jeff Vandermeer

In Long Island we meet Eilis twenty-five years on from Brooklyn. Upset with Tony and the surprising revelation of a new baby (not hers) , Eilis leaves America and returns to Ireland. In Enniscorthy little has changed, yet Eilis is perturbed; emotionally drawn to her past and what might be her future. Long Island propels you forward with ease, but under the seemingly benign runs a thread of tension. There’s the three-way complication of Eilis, her old friend Nancy and the love interst Jim. And then the problem of Tony and the children — can Eilis make a new life for herself in America? Long Island is not merely driven by its captivating plot, it is a commentary on expectation and illusion, where everyone has a private dream, but no one is honest with each other nor themselves. Colm Tóibín has a gift for capturing intimate relationships — their nuances, inconsistencies, and delusions. Brilliantly written with a deft touch, it is only at the end that the breath you have been holding will be exhaled, but only briefly.

Find out more:

• Why a Sequel?

• Masterclass in Subtlety

• Colm Tóibín on Long Island

• In conversation with Miwa Messer

• See Stella’s review

• Join the discussion in July

A selection of books from our shelves
for any time of the day or night.
Click through to find out more:

At Night All Blood is Black

Night As Day

Untold Night and Day

So Late in the Day

Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night

Day

All Through the Night

Surf By Day, Jam By Night

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS

Read our latest newsletter. Read an interview with Thomas about Some Things Wrong. Find our about our Book of the Week. Get yourself the book you’ll read next. Treat yourself from our cookbook sale. Win a night in paradise. Read our reviews. Find out what our cat’s been reading.

24 May 2024

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There is nothing funnier than depression, he thought, at least nothing funnier to me than my own depression. There is nothing more ludicrous than my inability to do even the simplest things, the kind of inability you would ordinarily expect to belong to the most difficult things, but really the simplest things are for me the most difficult, or at least indistinguishable from the most difficult, there is no difference between the simplest and the most difficult, but not in a way that would make the most difficult things achieveable, though really there is no reason why this should not be the case, other than my inability to imagine myself as the person who has achieved even the simplest, let alone the most difficult, things, he thought. There is nothing more ludicrous and perforce nothing funnier than that, he thought. There is a rupture of some kind, he thought, between me and my fortunate place in the world, making one of those self-obsessed, self-indulgent, grandiloquent statements that he found intolerable when others made them and so usually pretended not to hear them, which probably made him appear unsympathetic when he was in fact oversympathetic, which is just as useless. Is there any point in being oversympathetic to the self-revulsion of others, he wondered, no, this is just as pointless as my own self-revulsion, experience is disjoined from reality, neither revulsion is reasonable or appropriate, these revulsions are entirely ludicrous and perforce funny. That there is nothing funnier than my own self-revulsion should make my self-revulsion tolerable, but then it would hardly be self-revulsion and therefore not ludicrous enough to be funny, he thought. If I could find relief in this way from my suffering, he thought, recognising the self-obsession, self-indulgence and grandiloquence of this statement about suffering even as he made it, if I could find relief in this way from my suffering it wouldn’t be suffering and therefore wouldn’t be ludicrous enough to qualify as a relief. There is no relief, which only makes my suffering all the more ludicrous and perforce all the more funny. The more pathetic my suffering, the more inappropriate and ludicrous my suffering, the more self-obsessed and self-indulgent and grandiloquent and entirely pointless and unreasonable my suffering, the more I perforce suffer, and the funnier it is. Nothing funnier, he thought. Is this why I enjoyed this book, Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, he wondered, this book he had read almost inadvertently, this book concerning a depressed young woman’s heroic efforts to achieve not very much and the degrees of shortness to which those efforts fall, this book concerning the disjunction between this young woman and her place in the world, this book at once funny and pathetic and, he supposed, terribly sad, written in the first person by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle but, as it says on the front cover, fiction, just like what he is writing now. He could not decide if he was oversympathetic or undersympathetic when he found this supposedly fictional woman’s depression so funny, but, he thought with a ludicrously grandiose thought, the tragic is only more tragic for not existing in the context of a tragedy, and it is this disjunction, he thought, that makes depression so ludicrous. Taking it seriously would increase the disjunction and make it more ludicrous still. 

From the rusting hulks of the industrial era, from China to America, from the bodily functions of blood to the philosophical musings on the allegories of nature and man, Jean-Michel Rabaté’s Rust in the 'Object Lessons' series is a fascinating exploration of this chemical process. Fittingly introducing us to his subject through the most obvious — and what comes to mind immediately (for me at least) when we consider rust — Rabaté describes industrial wastelands and the slow decay of iron as it oxidises creating layers of rust. In a country where corrugated iron and steel infrastructure is synonymous with growth and decline, construction and patched sheds, placing ourselves in the world of the American Dust Bowl or the industrial decline of China or the agricultural wastelands of Australia is more a matter of scale than of foreign territory. In these discussions of rust, Rabaté draws on cultural references in literature and film: Paul Hertneky’s memoir Rust Belt Boy, Wang Bing’s documentary Rust, and an Australian novel by Paddy O'Reilly, The Fine Colour of Rust. Where the reader starts with the idea of decay and decline, Rabaté's analysis moves us to see rust also as a saviour, a surprising and not always negative keeper of time. Using the same method, the conversation moves towards the metaphoric, and here again texts illustrate the author’s thinking. Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K is explored as a metaphor for renewal and the land giving, through its richness in iron, a plentiful supply of vegetables — the one the main character is most enamoured of being the red-orange (rust-coloured) pumpkin. As we are drawn into this examination of the notion of rust, oxidation, iron — the ideas of nature in flux — the text moves into deeper discussions of the works of several philosophers: Hegel and Ruskin each have chapters devoted to them, lovingly entitled 'Hegel and the Restlessness of Rust' and 'Ruskin: Nothing Blushes like Rust'. These are thoughtful, lively and witty explorations worth re-reading. Alongside these more academic musings are anecdotal tales from the author’s childhood - his pet turtle features with her rust coloured shell, as does his anaemia and the prescribed medicine of fresh horse’s blood. Another writer explored in response to the ideas of rust and decay is Kafka, and his story ‘Jackals and Arabs’, which features rusty scissors and is also an allegory for his views on the politics and machinations of Zionism and its effect upon the Arab communities of Palestine. In the final parts of the book Rabaté extends the conversation of rust to imperfection, to the flaw that makes an object exquisite — the mark of time, nature and artist — in the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, in the sculptural works of monuments purposely made to alter over time through oxidisation, and in architecture that allows the metal to record time on its facades. The concluding chapter introduces the hopefulness of rust - the discovery of ‘green rust’, an ecological tool that can clean iron-heavy waters and that may lead to technology that will break down waste. Rust is ‘infinitely restless’ in all its guises — physically, emotionally and intellectually — and Rabaté’s musings are infinitely provocative with their eclectic amalgams. Another excellent member of the 'Object Lessons' series. 

Out of the carton and into your hands!
Click through for your copies:

Wrong Norma by Anne Carson $38

Wrong Norma is Anne Carson's first book of original material in eight years, and a facsimile edition of the original hand-designed book, annotated and corrected by the author. Anne Carson is famously reticent, asking that her books be published without cover copy, she has agreed to say this: “Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night, Sokrates, writing sonnets, forensics, encounters with lovers, the word ‘idea’, the feet of Jesus, and Russian thugs. The pieces are not linked. That's why I've called them ‘wrong’.”

• Look inside.

• Unjoined-up thinking.

Hard by the Cloud House by Peter Walker $40

The legend of Pouakai, a.k.a. the extinct Haast's Eagle, takes Peter Walker on a journey from an 1860s Canterbury sheep run to a deep cave near Karamea as he learns the story of the mighty hunter that inhabited a peak in the foothills of the Southern Alps. Was it the same creature as The Rukh of Arabic legends? And, if so, was that evidence that in the twelfth century Arabic and Chinese explorers ventured as far as the South Pacific, saw Pouakai, and traded with Maori? From Kai Tahu's fatal encounter with colonisation to the glories of tenth century Baghdad and ceremonies at the great Tahitian marae Taputapuatea, Hard by the Cloud House is a heady, powerful, speculative, seductive mix of history, memoir, science and myth.

• Show us the bird.

Counterfutures #15 edited by Neil Vallelly $25

COUNTERFUTURES is a multidisciplinary journal of Left research, thought, and alternatives, with a focus on Aotearoa. The essays, articles, interviews and reviews are urgent, thoughtful, and vital. This issue includes: An interview with Franco ‘Bifo’ Bifardi on ‘Futurism without a future’, and on using psychoanalysis to comprehend political events today; A review of Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood, which situates it within a revision of the South Island myth that has occupied a privileged place in settler aesthetic traditions; An assessment of the 2023 New Zealand General Election by Metiria Turei, Sue Bradford, and Jack Foster, and its implications for left politics in Aotearoa; An exploration by Neil Vallelly of the entwined relationship btween democracy and violence, as revealed in the current Israeli siege of Gaza; An analysis of the ‘religious right’ and its involvement in politics in Aotearoa, by Isabella Gregory; An overview of contesting Treaty histories, by Emma Gattey; Essays on the growing importance of a nationally co-ordinated union movement, the possibilities of inclusive debt forgiveness, and on the meeting of theory and the lived experience of sex workers in Aotearoa.

• Previous issues are available on the Counterfutures website.

Splinters by Leslie Jamison $40

In this blend of memoir and criticism, Leslie Jamison turns her attention to some of the most intimate relationships of her life — her consuming love for her young daughter, and a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope — and examines what it means for a woman to be many things at once: a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover.
”Splinters is as sharp and piercing as its title — a brilliant reckoning with what it means to make art, a self, a family, a life. This memoir is a masterclass.” —Maggie Smith

• More than a divorce memoir.

• A different kind of love story.

Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman $70

"What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love." Women Holding Things features Kalman’s signature bright, bold images accompanied by thoughtful and intimate anecdotes, recollections, and ruminations. Many of the subjects draw from her own personal history, and most of the paintings are portraits of women, both ordinary and famous, including Virginia Woolf, Sally Hemings, Hortense Cezanne, Gertrude Stein, as well as Kalman's family members and other real-life people. These women hold a range of objects, from the mundane — balloons, a cup, a whisk, a chicken, a hat — to the abstract — dreams and disappointments, sorrow and regret, joy and love. Kalman considers the many things that fit physically and metaphorically between women's hands: We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of the women's lives — their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain. Ultimately, she reveals that many of the things we hold dear — as well as those that burden or haunt us — remain constant and connect us from generation to generation.

• Look inside!

• Even more look inside!

Greekish: Everyday recipes with Greek roots by Georgina Hayden $60

Georgina Hayden’s Taverna: Recipes from a Cypriot kitchen is one of our favourite cookbooks at home, so we can’t wait to start using her easy-to-us but entirely delicious new book, Greekish, which contains 120 dynamic recipes springing from her Cypriot Greek heritage and into the everyday. Standout recipes include: Fried sesame cheese bites to serve up as an irresistible snack;Tuna, egg and caper salad to make an easy lunch; Sticky aubergine and pomegranate tart for a crowd-pleasing centrepiece; Spanakopita jacket potatoes as a twist on the weeknight classic; One-pot pastisio for an easy meal everyone will love; Kebabs delivering the ultimate barbecue; Baklava cheesecake as a show-stopping dessert. There are easy breakfasts, small dishes and snacks, salads, desserts and even whole sections of recipes inspired by the iconic spanakopita and baklava.

• Look inside!

• Portokalopita!

H is for Hope by Elizabeth Kolbert and Wesley Allsbrook $40

Climate change resists narrative and yet we must see clearly what's happening in our world. Millions of lives are at stake, and upwards of a million species. We must act. In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the history, and future, of climate change from A, for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world's first climate model in 1894, to Z, for Net Zero. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunberg's 'blah blah blah' speech, flies an all-electric plane, experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body, and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future. Complemented by Wesley Allsbrook's gorgeous, colour illustrations, H Is for Hope offers an inspiring, worrying and, above all, hopeful vision for how we can still save our planet.

• Look inside!

• Climate change, A to Z.

Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich $33

On the longest night of a Berlin winter two women sit side-by-side. Both fled the Soviet Union as children, one from Ukraine, and her girlfriend from Russia.
A thigh shifts, fingers fold in, a shoulder is lowered. Neither speak. As silence weighs heavy between them, decades of Ukrainian and Russian history resurface, from Yiddish jokes, Kyiv's DIY queer parties and the hidden messages in Russian pop music, to resistance in Odessa, raids in Moscow clubs and the death of their friend. As the requiem inside the narrator's head expands within the darkness of the room, she asks the all-important question: what does it mean to have hope?
”Yelena Moskovich is a true original, a literary titan, an innovator, her prose is both poetry and punk, political without any obviousness to it, pure, demented in the best possible way, and always brilliant..” —Jenni Fagan

• Other books by Yelena Moskovich.

• Read Stella’s review of Virtuoso.

Kafka by Nishioka Kyodai $30

Nine of Franz Kafka's most memorable tales are here given fresh life with dazzling graphic renderings by the brother-and-sister manga creators Nishioka Kyodai. With their distinctive, surreal style of illustration, they have reimagined the fantastic, the imperceptible and the bizarre in Kafka's work, creating a hauntingly powerful visual world. These stories of enigmatic figures and uncanny transformations are stripped to their core, offering profound new understandings. Includes The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, and A Country Doctor.

• Look inside!

Humanise: A maker’s guide to building our world by Thomas Heatherwick $38

A story about humanity told through the lens of our buildings. Our world is losing its humanity. Too many developers care more about their shareholders than society. Too many politicians care more about power than the people who vote for them. And too many cities feel soulless and depressing, with buildings designed for business, not for us. So where do we find hope? Thomas Heatherwick has an alternative. By changing the world around us, we can improve our health, restore our happiness, and save our planet. The time has come to put human emotion back at the heart of the design process. Drawing on thirty years of making bold, beautiful buildings, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Heatherwick brings together vivid stories and hundreds of beautiful images into a remarkable visual compendium.
”Humanise is a masterwork.  It's quietly furious, impassioned, rigorous and forensic in all the right doses.  It leaves me very hopeful indeed about how things could go from here.” —Alain de Botton

• Look inside!

• Against the blandemic.

• A bit of optimism.

An African History of Africa: From the dawn of humanity to independence by Zeinab Badawi $40

Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone.For too long, Africa's history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight.In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa's spectacular history - from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilisations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa — an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

• The book began as a television series.

The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo (translated from Spanish by Thomas Bunstead) $33

Blending fiction and essay, poetry and philosophy, Agustin Fernandez Mallo's The Book of All Loves is a startling, expansive work of imaginative agility, one that makes the case for hope in the midst of a disintegrating present. In the wakeof the Great Blackout, faced with the near-extinction of humanity, a pair of lovers speak to each other. They parse, with precision, with familiarity, the endless aspects of their love. Out of their dialogues, piece by piece, a composite image of love takes form, one that moves outwards beyond the realm of relationships and into philosophy, geology, physics, linguistics. Years previously, a writer and her husband, a Latin professor, stay in Venice while she works on a text. As they roam the city, strange occurrences accumulate, signalling that the world around them is heading towards a point of no return. 
”There are certain writers whose work you turn to knowing you'll find extraordinary things there. Borges is one of them, Bolano another. Agustin Fernandez Mallo has become one, too.” —Chris Power
”The most original and powerful author of his generation in Spain.” —Mathias Enard

• Atypical talk.

Swimming Pool (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Piotr Florczyk $23

As a former world-ranked swimmer whose journey toward naturalization and U.S. citizenship began with a swimming fellowship, Piotr Florczyk reflects on his own adventures in swimming pools while taking a closer look at artists, architects, writers, and others who have helped to cement the swimming pool's prominent and iconic role in our society and culture. Swimming Pool explores the pool as a place where humans seek to attain the unique union between mind and body.
”Having spent most of my life around a pool, no one would fault me taking it for granted. But Swimming Pool tells a unique and compelling story of the swimming pool, allowing me to appreciate that it's more than just a place to cool off or go back and forth along a black line. Florczyk has done a remarkable job bringing to the surface the potentially unanticipated way that pools have affected us, for the good and the bad.” —Rada Owen

• Other ‘Object Lessons’.

• It seems OK to me.

Immediacy: Or, the Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh $43

Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of ‘disintermediation’: cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the  economic imperative to intensify circulation when production  stagnates. ‘Flow’ is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub. And the bad news is that political turmoil and social challenges require more mediation. Collective will, inspiring ideas and deliberate construction are the only way out, but our dominant style forgoes them. Considering original streaming TV, popular literature, artworld trends and academic theories, Immediacy explains the recent obsession with immersion and today's intolerance of representation, and points to alternative forms in photography, TV, novels and constructive theory that prioritize distance, impersonality and big ideas instead.

• Why is our culture so obsessed with individual experience?

• A waxing of affect.

Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler $55

When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers — Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich — lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music, scores that carry forward the echoes of lost time.

The Apprentice Witnesser by Bren MacDibble $20

That's what my photos are. Little moments. All the good moments, the kind moments, the moments of care and love that, if you add them all together, make a life sweet. Bastienne Scull is a young orphan who lives with the local Witnesser of Miracles, Lodyma Darsey, who investigates 'miraculous events' and spins them into stories she tells at the night markets. After Lodyma's husband and elder son died of a sickness that continues to sweep the land, she sent her teenage son Osmin into the hills to live with the mountain men. That was ten years ago, and Lodyma doesn't know if he's alive or dead. And she's taken Bastienne as an apprentice to fill the void of her lost family. One day, two young boys arrive in town asking Lodyma to go on a mysterious mission to a monastery. And when Lodyma and Bastienne arrive, what they discover will change their lives.
”A classic MacDibble: young Basti is a delight as she searches for her strength and a family in a post-apocalyptic world, leaving us with a glimmer of hope for her future and our own.” —Wendy Orr
”Bren MacDibble has become well-known for her unique and heartfelt adventure novels. She is particularly astute at writing timely and inventive stories exploring the impacts of climate change. There are plenty of twists for younger readers who enjoy a good dash of marvel and intrigue with their adventure stories. MacDibble's use of language is unparalleled, and she illustrates hope and resilience through her characters.” —Books & Publishing  

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton $28

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn’t figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other? New (cheaper) edition.
"I wanted the novel to explore the contemporary political moment without being itself partisan or propagandistic. I wanted it to be fateful but never fatalistic, and satirical, but not in a way that served the status quo. Most of all, though, I wanted it to be a thriller, a book of action and seduction and surprise and possibility, a book where people make choices and mistakes that have deadly consequences, not just for themselves, but for other people, too. I hope that it’s a gripping book, a book that confides in you and makes you laugh and – crucially, in a time of global existential threat – that makes you want to know what happens next." —Eleanor Catton

A ruinous selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:

Waste

Ruin and Other Stories

Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life

Rust

Ruin and Renewal

Ruin and Tranquillity

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

A Short History of Decay

COUNTERFUTURES is a multidisciplinary journal of Left research, thought, and alternatives, with a focus on Aotearoa. The essays, articles, interviews and reviews are urgent, thoughtful, and vital. This issue includes:

• An interview with Franco ‘Bifo’ Bifardi on ‘Futurism without a future’, and on using psychoanalysis to comprehend political events today.

• A review of Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood, which situates it within a revision of the South Island myth that has occupied a privileged place in settler aesthetic traditions.

• An assessment of the 2023 New Zealand General Election by Metiria Turei, Sue Bradford, and Jack Foster, and its implications for left politics in Aotearoa.

• An exploration by Neil Vallelly of the entwined relationship between democracy and violence, as revealed in the current Israeli siege of Gaza.

• An analysis of the ‘religious right’ and its involvement in politics in Aotearoa, by Isabella Gregory.

• An overview of contesting Treaty histories, by Emma Gattey.

• Essays on the growing importance of a nationally co-ordinated union movement; the possibilities of inclusive debt forgiveness; the meeting of theory and the lived experience of sex workers in Aotearoa.

• Previous issues are available on the Counterfutures website.

“An expertly braided novel about the entanglement of personal and national transformations, set amid the tumult of 1980s Berlin. Kairos unfolds around a chaotic affair between Katharina, a 19-year-old woman, and Hans, a 53-year-old writer in East Berlin. Erpenbeck’s narrative prowess lies in her ability to show how momentous personal and historical turning points intersect, presented through exquisite prose that marries depth with clarity. She masterfully refracts generation-defining political developments through the lens of a devastating relationship, thus questioning the nature of destiny and agency. Kairos is a bracing philosophical inquiry into time, choice, and the forces of history.” — International Booker Prize judges' citation

• Winner of the 2024 International Booker Prize.

• The turbulence of history.

• Returning to East Berlin.

• “I need to get you out of my head.”

• Writing in the ruins.

• Spying, lying, and eros.

• Reading and rereading.

• Blind spots in shared memory.

• In translation.

• Other books listed for the 2024 International Booker Prize.

• Read our reviews of several others of Erpenbeck’s books.

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS!

Read our latest newsletter and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending. Learn about the winners in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Grab the newest new releases. Go in the draw for a relaxing stay in Paradise. Ding dong for books!

17 May 2024

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