Is learning to get around on two wheels as easy as riding a bike? Not exactly, writes Wyoming Paul. As an adult, saying that you can’t ride a bike can feel like admitting you’re not sure how to use a can opener, make a bed, fry an egg, or read a clock. It’s a basic … Read more
Wyoming Paul is grossed out and engrossed by the new novel by English humourist Caitlin Moran. I love a book that isn’t afraid to make people squirm through sheer grossness. There are so many things that are usually sanitised or hidden away — female masturbation, naked parents, bad sex, apartment filth, inter-species sex fantasies — … Read more
Han Kang won the international Booker Prize for her depressing novel The Vegetarian. Her follow-up, The White Book, is even bleaker, writes Wyoming Paul. A 22-year-old woman has given birth to a premature baby girl, alone in her house in a remote area, with no way to call either her husband or a doctor. During the birth she … Read more
George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo is the year’s most talked-about novel, and there’s much excitement that the author will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival in May. Wyoming Paul reviews what may be a masterpiece. A year into the Civil War, a tormented President Lincoln visits his 11-year-old son’s crypt in the cemetery. He holds … Read more
Wyoming Paul reviews Dear Mr M, the latest novel by Herman Koch, who once again dissects middle-class urban professional fuck-ups. Mr M’s downstairs neighbour is listening when he takes a shower. He’s imagining the scene at his dinner table and the look on M’s wrinkled face when he makes love to his much younger wife. … Read more
Wyoming Paul reviews two new New Zealand novels by women authors. She enjoys one but the other one leaves her cold. Debra Daley’s The Revelations of Carey Ravine and The Quiet Spectacular by Laurence Fearnley are both written by women and celebrate women. In Fearnley’s case, I wanted – but failed – to like a … Read more
Wyoming Paul reviews The Vegetarian, the slim, erotic novel which has become the literary sensation of 2016 after it won this year’s Man Booker international prize for fiction. After a violent and disturbing nightmare, an ordinary Korean woman decides to stop eating meat. She empties the kitchen of fish, eggs, pork, and for the first … Read more
A top-level inquiry by an anthropologist (a bookseller, actually) into gender buying habits. The book world, like the world-world, shows sad signs of gender bias. To work in a bookshop is to become an anthropologist of sorts, specialising in the genus Biblio Lector (or book reader/buyer, for those who are not fluent in the anthropologists’ … Read more
During a recent trip to Copenhagen, Wyoming Paul found the seamy crimes of The Killing and The Bridge were never far from her mind. // Scandinavian television has become Big, worthy of capitalisation, in the crime-thriller division. Shows such as The Killing, Wallander, Morden and The Bridge all bring a depth of darkness to our … Read more