A new poem by Waiheke poet Rata Gordon. Pacing A deep bow to Neruda It so happens I am sick of being a woman. It happens that I walk into BP stations and supermarkets greasy, swollen, like a cow made of soap, losing my way in a field of placentas and pesticides. The smell of … Read more
Chloe Blades reviews Kate Weinberg’s first novel, which is selling like mad and earning the London writer comparisons to Agatha Christie and Donna Tartt. It was always going to be unfair on whichever book I read after Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women; that divisive, genre-defying masterpiece on the manipulation of female desire. Yet The Truants, also … Read more
In this extract from a chapter called ‘Deep Time’ in Rebecca Priestley’s new memoir, Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica, Rebecca remembers her peculiar, legume-heavy, art-saturated childhood in Wellington. (And a note from the author: if anyone has a painting from Ruth Priestley’s Antarctic Dream series, Rebecca would love to hear from you.) I grew up in … Read more
One of our country’s finest writers gorges herself on Gilead – and finds herself wishing for more osmosis between the Booker-shortlisted new novel and the horror-story politics playing out around us. Over the past five days I’ve re-read Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, caught myself up with the MGM/Hulu TV series of the … Read more
The following four short extracts are from A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case by Lynley Hood, which has just been reprinted by Otago University Press. The book was first published in 2001 and won the Montana Medal for Non-Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. The controversial conviction of Peter Ellis in … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Native Son: The Writer’s Memoir by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House, $40) Stand by for a review from Essa Ranapiri! … Read more
A new poem by London-based poet Morgan Bach. Turning, hurtling I march diligently to sunshine in the park everything bathed and turning golden. A woman breathes fire by the folly framing her like a personal door to hell. Conkers are pitched from high boughs to break and give up fruit, a spire emergent from the … Read more
‘The beautiful are cruel, the cruel are sad, the demons are capable of good.’ Maria McMillan reviews the new novel by Elizabeth Knox, bound to be one of the year’s biggest local releases. Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book has an awful lot going on. I’m still working it out. It’s a story about Taryn Cornick … Read more
Gabrielle Jackson is a Sydney-based Guardian journalist who has written a book about her pain, and the pain of women, and the ways in which the medical system is making it worse. The book is called Pain and Prejudice: a call to arms for women and their bodies. It focuses on ‘women’s troubles’ – a … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury, $35) Here I’ll just open a random page and find a string of … Read more
A new poem by performance poet Carrie Rudzinski. Love Poem after Seven Years At this point it’s difficult to sleep without you. I prefer to take up the whole bed with you in it, just to listen to your protests before I fall asleep. I’ve said No to your drunk half-proposals more times than … Read more
Ahead of his appearance at the Going West Festival, author Jeff Murray insists the stories we tell ourselves – and each other – will make all the difference in how we cope with climate change. “I a Koro Meketanara tētahi pāmu – TI-HAI-TI-HAI-HAU . . .” I read Old Macdonald Had A Farm to my … Read more
A poem by Christchurch scholar Paul Millar. Thx for the memories for the people of the Avon Loop At first we didn’t see we were sinking, or that over our heads ice was hardening. How could so many be all, and all end? By the time someone noticed, we were on the … Read more
Loved Linda Burgess’s essays for The Spinoff? Now she’s written a whole book of ’em. And it is, predictably, terrific. With love, Linda Burgess writes simply in her dedication. With love, and god there is so much of it here, in these essays, this “memoir of sorts”, you’ll get to the end and feel like … Read more
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. These lists of the bestselling children’s books at Unity Wellington and Little Unity in Auckland cover the four weeks to August 29 2019. AUCKLAND 1 Te Tiriti … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury, $35) “The children, of course, add purpose, but the house feels like a … Read more
A prose poem by Wellington writer Susanna Gendall. Art The number of artists at the art gallery was overwhelming. It seemed there were too many. There were too many. Never would so many poems be assembled in a single building and people expected to walk around and read each one. It seemed an unfair burden … Read more
Lani Wendt Young writes powerful Pasifika women who summon earthquakes and crack whips of pure flame. Today, in a fierce lecture presented by the New Zealand Book Council, she landed hit after hit on the all-white castle of publishing, finishing with this rallying cry for change. I read Little House on the Prairie to my … Read more
Jean Sergent is left bemused and beaten-down by CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, a book that sucked up two decades of the author’s life. As the resident murderino on The Spinoff’s guest roster, I’m the natural choice to review this new book on the Manson murders. Timed for … Read more
Ruby Porter on the first novel by acclaimed Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong. I came across Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds last year. I read it twice in one day. I was staying outside of New York, at the time, and taking the train in each morning. I remember being disappointed when … Read more
Vana Manasiadis wrote a collection of poetry in the wake of her mother’s death. In this essay, ahead of her appearance at the Going West festival, she argues that as a nation Aotearoa needs to learn to make space for mourning. When Mum died in Athens, I cried loudly and publicly and was held up … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi by Toby Morris with Ross Calman, Mark Derby, and Piripi Walker (Lift … Read more
A new poem by Oamaru-born poet Nick Ascroft. Superman Halfway up the ascent zigzagging from Royal Terrace to upper Stuart Street carrying four too-heavy grocery bags I begin to understand that I will not make it. My huffing personage – from the fingers, white with the strain, to a face the … Read more
Colson Whitehead won the 2017 Pultizer Prize for Fiction for The Underground Railroad, a depiction of slavery and resistance in 19th century Georgia. Now he’s back with a similarly grim premise, following two boys through the horrors of a real-life reform school in Florida. Our reviewer is Aaron Smale, whose reporting on similar schools in New … Read more
Prolific, award-winning Palmerston North poet Paula Harris somehow manages to be stroppy and properly vulnerable all at once. Here, she writes about her first slam competition – and why she cried all the way home. I am old enough to have given birth to most of the people here. Sure, there’s a couple of parents … Read more
A new poem by Waikato poet Loren Thomas. to convince myself we’re dreaming we were walking through suburbia houses kissing front lawns copied one after another you tasted like mint leaves and chlorophyll that’s been pissed on by cats I held your hand and we walked towards the ocean dodging planks from dead train … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23) Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney Sally Rooney 2 An … Read more
In literature, disability is everywhere. But more than a century after Dickens gave us Tiny Tim, writers often fail to make disability anything other than a narrative crutch. Robyn Hunt, writer, disability consultant and co-founder of the Crip the Lit project, explains. The use of disability as metaphor and plot device has been described as … Read more
Paula Green, madwoman, took it upon herself to launch three (3) books this month. The biggie is Wild Honey, a deeply-researched but accessible tribute to women poets in New Zealand. We’ve a review underway, but for now, let’s talk about the cover – the bit that hits you first. It’s a painting by artist and … Read more