New verse by Pt Chevalier writer Jenny Blood. My mother My mother kept eleven glasses of water Beside her bed She would only eat bananas and tinned mandarins Her room stank She said they were trying To kill her I don’t blame them Jenny Blood, 2018 The Spinoff Review of Books is … Read more
Only 32 shopping days till Xmas! Get in early and peruse the week’s bestselling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press, $65) The cookbook of 2018. 2 Past Tense by Lee Child (Bantam, $38) Reacher! 3 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber & Faber, … Read more
Book of the Week: In which Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias commissions Murray Edmond to review an anthology of New Zealand poetry – first appearing on the Spinoff Review of Books – published by Steve Braunias The cover of The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand Poems is a photo of someone riding a bike … Read more
Auckland writer Kirsten Warner on the continuing horror of the Holocaust for second generation survivors. A Facebook friend recently made contact to say he’d heard me talking on National Radio about my newly published novel The Sound of Breaking Glass. His wife was, like me, the child of a survivor of the Holocaust. He said he’d … Read more
Author Bruce Ansley follows in the footsteps of Te Puoho, who set off on an epic, 1500-kilometre march with his war party in 1836, intent on destroying an entire people – Ngāi Tahu. I once read a piece by archaeologist Atholl Anderson (Ngāi Tahu), who was then just a budding academic. It was like discovering … Read more
The Monday Extract: A harrowing personal essay by Christchurch poet Jeffrey Paparoa Holman from his new memoir. Even before I took LSD with a poet friend I was becoming unhinged. It was as if I just didn’t care; with a few cans of beer on board to dull the rational sites in the brain, dropping a … Read more
Only 39 shopping days till Xmas! Get in early and peruse the week’s bestselling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Tart & Bitter: Four Decades of Dining Nightmares by David Burton (Potton & Burton, $30) Food. 2 The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand poems edited by Steve Braunias … Read more
New verse by Dunedin writer Vincent O’Sullivan. After Lucy Tinakori’s Famous Party I love it that poetry now so possesses the world it is not possible to play ‘pin the tail’ at a children’s party without every child being the winner wherever the tail’s pinned. Space is guaranteed compliant the way thumb’s fumbling’s inevitably … Read more
Book of the Week: Jane Westaway reviews Colin Hogg’s portrait of poet Sam Hunt. Personal disclosure first. Sam Hunt and I crossed paths back in the 1970s and early 80s, in his Bottle Creek/Battle Hill/Death’s Corner days. His Minstrel-the-dog and first-son days. And at what he would probably dislike being dubbed his peak-celebrity days. He was … Read more
Steve Braunias heads out to New Lynn to ponder two new books on His Holiness of the Church of Enduring Beatlemania, John Lennon. There is a new, beautifully produced and monumentally pompous book about John Lennon, Imagine John Yoko, and the best and most impressive place to inspect this holy relic in Auckland, in New … Read more
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias does his best to remember a drunken weekend in Wellington at 2018 LitCrawl. Crazy to feel the need to rush to a literary event – there’s always plenty of room, it doesn’t matter if you’re a tad late – so I leisurely ironed my shirt in my … Read more
The Monday Extract: Christchurch coroner Marcus Elliott writes a personal essay about death, grief, and mercy in a new book about dying in New Zealand. Across New Zealand on a Saturday morning, people are playing netball or cricket, mowing the lawn, buying fruit, reading the paper, checking Facebook, living life. I am at my desk at … Read more
New verse by Kirikiriroa writer essa may ranapiri. what the poem isn’t allowed to do the poem isn’t allowed to say abolish the police abolish the police abolish the police return their uniforms to the dirt and their sirens to the odyssey tie a leash to a grenade and send it off teach it how … Read more
Only 46 shopping days till Xmas! Get in early and peruse the week’s bestselling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber & Faber, $33) “The Man Booker-winning Milkman richly deserves its prize”: New Zealand Listener. 2 Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker, $45) … Read more
Book of the Week: Jane Stafford reviews a vast, thought-provoking study of late colonial New Zealand, when European portrait artists romanticised Māori culture. I have long regarded Roger Blackley as a living taonga, an unfailing resource for anyone working in the field of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial culture. There is no enquiry too recondite, no … Read more
A New Zealand reviewer thought that a line in a new novel by acclaimed Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes was about a “head-cold”. She has helpfully pointed out it was a period. “Very cool to be reviewed in New Zealand’s Dominion-Post,” Irish novelist Caoilinn Hughes wrote on the Twitter machine on Tuesday. This was in reference to … Read more
A semi-fictional memoir by Jackson C Payne, son of the late Bill Payne, an ex-con busted for drugs, winner of the 1993 Sargeson Literary Fellowship, author of a classic book about New Zealand gangs, and writer in residence at the Alhambra in Three Lamps. The year after he died they sprinkled his ashes at the house of … Read more
The star of Wellington’s awesome LitCrawl event this weekend is poet Kaveh Akbar, who has a great haircut. Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar will perform at Wellington’s annual LitCrawl event this weekend, and so will his haircut. Many say he has the best haircut in world literature. The evidence certainly strongly supports these claims. He is … Read more
The Monday Extract: Peter Malcouronne’s superb new book on Great Barrier Island features an extraordinary interview with Jade Webster – labourer, surfer, survivor. This book extract contains discussion of abuse that may be distressing to some readers. Usually you’ll find her on the digger. Inside the cab, left joystick working the swing, right the bucket … Read more
New verse by Auckland writer Ian Wedde. from Ode to Auckland When the weather warms up I swim in the murky Waitemata in the upper basin at the bottom of Hamilton Road. Sometimes my friend Jonathan is there, he’s a composer and swims about in a leisurely fashion shifting his rhythm from time … Read more
Only 53 shopping days till Xmas! Get in early and peruse the week’s bestselling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber, $33) Winner of the 2018 Man Booker prize for fiction. “A young woman is forced into a relationship with an … Read more
Jesse Mulligan reviews the new cookbook by Jamie Oliver. His calm and measured verdict: It stinks. I made three dishes from this cookbook and they all stank. One of them was the pot-roasted cauliflower, a recipe pushed hard in the Jamie Cooks Italy publicity materials, and one I was deliciously excited about. I love cauliflower, … Read more
An essay by novelist Kirsty Gunn, who claims New Zealand fiction remains besotted with dreary issues of national identity. Quite a while ago now, I wrote a novel about a boy growing up, who loves the sea, loves to surf, and who has a day in the middle of summer when the sea seems to want to … Read more
A personal essay by Paula Harris: “I was admitted, under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, to the secure unit of the psychiatric ward just after noon on Friday…” Content warning: This essay contains references to suicidal ideation which may be confronting for some readers. It was Friday the 13th. That isn’t … Read more
New verse by Auckland writer Murray Edmond. A new song of allegiance (apologies to R.A.K. Mason) Curnow Glover Brasch have fled (Stead’s still trying to get in bed) Manhire is my kind of guy It’s hard to say exactly why I bunked with Hunt now he’s drunk Come on mate don’t … Read more
Only 60 shopping days till Xmas! Get in early and peruse the week’s bestt-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Karori Confidential by Leah McFall (Luncheon Sausage Books, $25) Witty, luminous collection by the Sunday magazine columnist. So many zingers! “Karori is like Gloriavale without the … Read more
Welcome back to Papercuts, our monthly books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass. The 2018 Man Booker has been announced! But is it worth reading? We take a deep dive into a new Papercuts favourite, The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy. The review on The Spinoff Review of Books this week … Read more
Fleur Adcock reviews Philip Temple’s vividly presented biography of the great Titirangi author Maurice Shadbolt – and sets the record straight about an alleged phone message she left for her ex-lover, provoking his (third) wife to throw a chicken at him. The prologue of Philip Temple’s biography of Maurice Shadbolt features an entertaining anecdote in which my … Read more
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more succinct summary of the way that sexual violence lives in the air that we breathe,” writes Alex Casey of Boys Will Be Boys. I’ve never written a book review before, so I’m assuming it’s totally canon and intelligentsia to start by talking about the cover. Boys Will … Read more