Even a small reduction in the number of trips taken by car can lead to a significant decrease in the number of deaths and injuries on our roads. But we can’t rely on individuals to drive less in a social and physical environment that doesn’t support it, says Holly Walker. At the time of writing, … Read more
Politicians can’t make us feel less lonely, but they can adopt policies that create conditions for meaningful social interaction to flourish. This article tackles loneliness at the policy level, which is important, but won’t be much immediate help to individuals feeling lonely and isolated right now. If you’re in that situation, Loneliness NZ has some … Read more
Even in normal times, loneliness takes a terrible toll on society’s most vulnerable. Now with New Zealand under lockdown, we need to be even more mindful of the risks. These are disorienting times. The benchmark for what’s “normal” is shifting so rapidly it’s dizzying to remember what we were all doing just a few weeks … Read more
Holly Walker shelled out big bucks to see The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood being interviewed by Kim Hill in Wellington on Monday. After a prickly 90 minutes of questioning, she left wondering what Atwood gets out of her seemingly endless live appearances. We filled the lobby of the Michael Fowler Centre. We wore jumpsuits. … Read more
“The obliteration of self. The prioritising of others. The yearning for escape”: Holly Walker on a motherhood memoir that rings in the bones. Before the current bumper crop of radically honest books about motherhood, there was Marie Darrieussecq. Eighteen years ago in Paris, she sat at her desk, notebook open, her baby resting face down … Read more
All week this week we name and review the five very best books of 2018. Today: Holly Walker reviews the fifth best book, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a novel about the desperate joys of sleep. New York. Late 2000. Our narrator is 27. She is thin, pretty, tall, blond. White. She works at … Read more
Hollie McNish – author, poet, activist, mother, spoken word artist, winner of the Ted Hughes Award – is coming to New Zealand to speak at Word Christchurch. Author and Spinoff Parents contributor Holly Walker caught up with McNish to discuss motherhood and writing. When I read award-winning British poet Hollie McNish’s ‘poetic memoir’ about motherhood, … Read more
Holly Walker, former Green MP and author of a memoir of being a mother in parliament, says this week’s images of babies in the debating chamber indicate a new attitude to working mothers in politics. But there’s still a long way to go. When I was an MP and pregnant with my first child, people … Read more
Holly Walker reviews a moody, gothic novel set in the brooding countryside of the Wairarapa. There’s something about the Wairarapa. Big skies. Beautiful old villas. Close-knit communities, with a pointy edge of small town meanness. There’s also something about the dying days of 1999, that strange, tense moment before we ticked over into the 21st … Read more
What the hell is Sarah Quigley playing at in her novel about three mentally ill young people on the brink of suicide, wonders Holly Walker. Last week’s “Break the Silence” series by Olivia Carville in the New Zealand Herald was intended to start a national conversation about youth suicide. Are we not already having that … Read more
All this week the Spinoff Review of Books is devoted to a candid, sometimes shocking new memoir by ex-Green MP Holly Walker about her experience as a working mother in parliament. Today: an excerpt. One Friday morning, about three months after my return to work, I held a drop-in clinic for constituents in Petone. Parliament … Read more
The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Holly Walker talks with Chris Kraus, an American writer who worked for newspapers in Wellington before creating the belated smash-hit feminist novel, I Love Dick. Read more Auckland Writers … Read more
Feminist writer Roxane Gay explores the female condition in her new collection of short stories. Some critics have loathed the depiction of women characters who welcome violence; reviewer Holly Walker takes another approach. Roxane Gay is good at opening sentences. Examples from her first short story collection, Difficult Women: “The stone thrower lives in a glass house … Read more
All week this week we recommend the very best, A-grade quality, guaranteed good books for Christmas. Today: Holly Walker reviews Commonwealth, a stunning novel by Ann Patchett. It creeps up on you, this novel. It opens in 1964, at a christening party in suburban Los Angeles. Bert Cousins shows up uninvited with a big bottle of gin. The … Read more
Being a parent means a never-ending series of problems, big and small, and often it can feel like a struggle just to make it through the day without collapsing in an exhausted heap. Until one day, it doesn’t. Holly Walker writes about the small joys, and the days that make it all worthwhile. On the … Read more
All week we revisit the Mervyn Thompson Affair – the strange, powerful 1984 incident when six women abducted an Auckland university lecturer, chained him to a tree in Western Springs, and labelled him a rapist. Today: a modern take on the incident, and its wider implications, by former MP Holly Walker. I think the six … Read more
Holly Walker reviews The Natural Way of Things, the award-winning novel by Australian writer Charlotte Wood There’s something inevitable, natural even, about the way victims of sexual abuse can end up being blamed for what’s happened to them. Sometimes it’s so overt and egregious that we’ll all be outraged – like the Canadian judge who … Read more
“Lionel Shriver has written a gripping novel about fiscal and monetary policy,” says reviewer Holly Walker, “and the punchline is this: America is fucked. “ In humans, the mandible is the largest and strongest bone in the face. In insects, mandibles are those freaky appendages near the mouth, used to grab food and fend off … Read more
Holly Walker reviews the working-class white New Zealand fuck-ups, suicides and predators in Tracey Slaughter’s amazing new story collection deleted scenes for lovers. “It is possible to say it,” says one of Tracey Slaughter’s narrators in deleted scenes for lovers, steeling herself to name the cancer that is eating her body from the inside. She … Read more
All week this week we feature a book or author nominated in next Tuesday’s Ockham national book awards. Today: Holly Walker is given a rare interview with fiction finalist Patricia Grace. Since becoming the first Māori woman to publish a book of short stories in English in 1975, Patricia Grace has always made a commitment … Read more
Intimate, informative and idiosyncratic, podcasts are the media format that everyone seems to love. But beware, says Holly Walker: podcast puppy love can quickly spiral into aural obsession. I was having a rough time. My partner was sick and we had a small child. I was working full time, and doing most of the domestic … Read more
Holly Walker reviews American Housewife (Doubleday, $43) by Helen Ellis. If the rumours are true, not only do we have another season of The Bachelor and a New Zealand Survivor to look forward to, but soon the Real Housewives franchise will hoist up a gilt-framed mirror in Herne Bay and show the rest of us … Read more
An appreciation of Tessa Duder’s 1987 classic novel Alex by former Green MP Holly Walker, first published on her abandoned blog the she-book reader, in May this year. I had seen it on the shelf in the Waterloo School library many times. I was drawn to the cover, which shows a striking, androgynous swimmer emerging … Read more