This Sunday, two Charlotte Grimshaw novels come to the screen in the form of The Bad Seed. She writes about the experience of having her work adapted for TV. This month, a small team arrived at my door. As part of publicity for the adaptation of my novels The Night Book and Soon into TV … Read more
Book of the Week: Charlotte Grimshaw reviews the profound final volume of the My Struggle series by the one and only Karl Ove Knausgaard. The first thing to say about The End, the sixth and final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s series, My Struggle, is that it’s 1153 pages long. It’s enormous and it’s a … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw endures a novel full of ‘knowing and coy references to real people’ in New Zealand literature. I have a friend who refers to a certain weekly newspaper column as “the Seventh Form essay.” I recalled this description recently while reading Anne Kennedy’s new novel, The Ice Shelf. “Seventh Form essay” not only implies writing … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reports on the latest weird and turbulent week in Donald Trump’s presidency: “The most powerful country in the world is at the mercy of someone so unfit for office that he shouldn’t be running a gas station.” It was the end of summer on the east coast of America, and it was only getting … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw writes about the forces behind her new novel: “Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un. The posturing. The bizarre hairstyles, the violence and cruelty. The narcissism…” May 2016, London We were staying in a small flat with a roof terrace. I typed sitting outside at a picnic table. I’d written pieces about Karl Ove Knausgaard … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews a new collection of letters by Sylvia Plath – most written to her mother, whom she both loved and loathed. So much has been written about Sylvia Plath that reading her letters involves a continual reference beyond them, to all that’s known about her life. As I grappled with this enormous, hardcover book, … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews A Strange Beautiful Excitement, Redmer Yska’s superb telling of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood and teenage years in Wellington. Samuel Revans, who died in 1888, the year Katherine Mansfield was born, was an enthusiastic promoter for the New Zealand Company. His handbills were distributed in London and went in for a fantastic degree of license, … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews a new study which claims methamphetamine abuse in the Nazi regime. In the 90s, when the Berlin Wall had just come down, German novelist Norman Ohler began experimenting with ecstasy and LSD. After learning that drugs were widespread in the Nazi era, he got the idea to write a novel on … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw on the selfie novels of acclaimed English writer Rachel Cusk. Rachel Cusk’s previous novel, Outline, was a narrative experiment that followed her divorce memoir Aftermath. The author’s voice – her world view – was so strident and solipsistic in Aftermath that she was accused of being a “brittle little narcissist.” In Outline, Cusk … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle, Volume 5 by Karl Ove Knausgaard There was no plot, I wanted to entwine the internal with the external, the neural pathways in the brain with the fishing smacks in the harbour… – Karl Ove Knausgaard If you’ve ploughed through Volumes One to Four of Karl Ove … Read more
We cross live to Matahiwi marae in Hawkes Bay, where Charlotte Grimshaw reports from a ceremony to honour the new poet laureate – her father, Karl Stead. The Poet Laureate had been summoned to a weekend at Matahiwi Marae in the Hawkes Bay, for a ceremony to honour his appointment. He was invited to bring … Read more
Dad Art, the new novel by Damien Wilkins, is launched tonight at the writer’s festival in Wellington. Charlotte Grimshaw arrives ahead of the party to consider the book’s virtues and flaws. Michael Stirling is on his own. He has separated from his wife, his much-loved daughter has left home and his father is in a … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw examines anonymous literary sensation Elena Ferrante, and the place of the ‘self’ in written work. I,I,I… Some time after the Christchurch earthquake, I visited the city. I hadn’t been there since before the disaster, and I was shocked by the devastation in the centre, and in particular by the number of multi-storey buildings that … Read more
Auckland writer Charlotte Grimshaw’s 2015: Tokyo, Tel Aviv, her novel Starlight Peninsula, ‘solemn and conscientious reviews’ for the Listener, ‘internal chaos’. In a narrow street of tiny houses, in a district near the Yanaka Cemetery where the last Shogun is buried, a row of shoes was laid out along the pavement. Policemen stationed beside their bikes wielded … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw examines anonymous literary sensation Elena Ferrante, and the place of the ‘self’ in written work. I,I,I… Some time after the Christchurch earthquake, I visited the city. I hadn’t been there since before the disaster, and I was shocked by the devastation in the centre, and in particular by the number of multi-storey buildings that … Read more
An essay by New Zealand’s best social realist novelist in response to the incredible My Struggle series. This really happened. One evening, when I was standing with my siblings at a party, a woman approached who was familiar and yet unknown. We all had the same split-second reaction: who is this stranger we know so well? … Read more