Simon Sweetman goes all-out fanboy of a new, tortured memoir by Suede frontman Brett Anderson. The very best music memoirs ignore the tenets of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Patti Smith’s Just Kids. Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. They are about the life, the context in and around the music. And they are about the writing. And so it … 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
Steve Braunias reviews a new biography of Prince Charles by way of wondering when a full account will ever be given about New Zealand’s royal family and the kiingitanga. One of the great forbidden stories of New Zealand journalism is a portrait of the court of King Tūheitia Paki. It’s not exactly open government at … Read more
The best-selling books this Easter at the two Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Victoria University Press, $36) Essays edited by two lecturers in religious studies at Victoria University. Chapters include “Remembering Jesus … Read more
Stephanie Johnson luxuriates in the new Julian Barnes novel – a story of adultery which “wrestles with the deepest conflicts of human existence.” Julian Barnes may be seen as a leading exponent of the Hampstead novel. This is, in England, a pejorative term, even though great writers such as Margaret Drabble and Margaret Forster have … Read more
Anthony McCarten is nominated for Oscars and wins Baftas for the films he writes, such as The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour. The New Plymouth-raised writer is also a novelist with a devoted following in Germany. He reports from his latest tour. My book tour is nearing its end. The book I am touring has lost … Read more
We continue our occasional – and occasionally insanely depressing – series which investigates whether literature exists in the provinces. Becky Manawatu looks for signs of bookish life in Westport. The Buller Rural Education Activities Programme Hall on Henley Street in Westport smells like a church and is decked out with those wooden school chairs that force you … Read more
An extract from a fascinating new book by ex-Hokitika Guardian journalist Cheryl Riley, who tells the stories of remarkable men and women of Westland. Dorothy Fletcher was born in 1927, the youngest of four children to Alec and Isabella Graham, part-owners of the Franz Josef Hotel. Her mother did not keep good health after Dorothy … Read more
New verse by Hamilton writer Therese Lloyd. Roast Lamb for Christmas Dinner, For Example when I think of temporary things like this broken pencil that breaks more with each word or the marriage that I had once and then didn’t, or the way my father drank gin and tonic for breakfast on the last … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores on Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand edited by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Victoria University Press, $40) Essays edited by two lecturers in religious studies at Victoria University. Chapters include “Remembering Jesus … Read more
Elizabeth Alley celebrates the latest novel by the masterly New Zealand writer Vincent O’Sullivan. Is there anyone else like Vincent O’Sullivan? His new novel traces several generations of a New Zealand family, from 1947 to 2004 with the brief, revealing return to 1938 at the book’s end; it opens as the novel’s over-arching character, Stephen, leaves … Read more
We continue our occasional series which investigates whether any literary activity exists in the provinces. David Hill reports from his “entombment” in Taranaki. A lot of authors born in Taranaki have left the province on a permanent basis, to become successful or dead. The successful ones are Anthony McCarten and Stuart Hoar from New Plymouth; Dinah Hawken, Gaelyn … Read more
Brendaniel Weir backgrounds his novel of a gay affair between Pākehā and Māori lovers. My first love was a Māori man. Let’s call him Wiremu. I was 16. He was several years older than me and a whole world more experienced. I can hear the knee-jerk reaction of people reaching for the paedophile/abuser label but … Read more
In 1879, the Whakatane meeting house Mataatua was taken apart and put on a ship bound for Australia, then England: “And so began the wanderings of New Zealand’s most-travelled wharenui…” Seeing Mataatua today, one is struck by its beauty. It is easy to imagine a government official being similarly struck in times past, and thinking … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson (Pan MacMillian, $35) Number one! How come? 2 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (Allan Lane, $40) Famous people called Jordan: 1 Jordan B Peterson 2 … Read more
In memoriam: Golden Bay poet Gordon Challis. Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias writes: Takaka writer Gordon Challis died on March 2. He was 85. His was a discrete presence in New Zealand poetry to the point where he was defined by absence: in 1960, Landfall editor Charles Brasch named Challis as one … Read more
Linda Burgess reviews the biggest-selling book at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington in the weekend – Salt Fat Acid Heat, a cookbook like no other. At one of Samin Nosrat’s two sessions at the New Zealand Festival’s writers and readers festival in Wellington last weekend, Nosrat referred to herself as a stalker. This, she explained, was … Read more
Exclusive: announcing the imminent arrival of hirsute herring-eating huge Norwegian literary superstar Karl Ove Knausgård. Karl Ove Knausgård – widely regarded as the world’s greatest living writer – will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival in May. The announcement is a major coup for the AWF, and the event will surely sell out, pretty fucking quickly. Knausgård, … Read more
The Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reports from the weekend’s events at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Wellington! O city of the institutionalised Māori greeting and the office training day, its steep, high banks pinned with yellow gorse flowers, the sign in Eastbourne that reads in a sing-song rhythm LITTLE BLUE … Read more
New verse by Maraea Rakuraku, taken from a new anthology in English and te reo (translated by Jamie Cowell). when does it start? It’s not waving a flag, holding a banner, knowing what postcolonial theory means and when to use it, memorising quotes and lining them up like soldiers that are sent out in waves … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at Unity Books stores in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON 1 The Cage by Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books NZ, $38) “Two dishevelled strangers, perhaps fleeing a catastrophe, are given shelter in a hotel in a town in a country near enough to being New Zealand….Unsettling questions are raised by the story. Who watches … Read more
Michele A’Court grapples with an uncomfortable truth about the Rose McGowan memoir – it’s a diatribe that tells us how to think. It is a tricky thing to review a memoir, particularly one as dark as this. What you want to do is talk about the book – the writing, the storytelling, the structure and … Read more
Charlotte Graham-McLay talks to acclaimed Australian author Charlotte Wood – who is appearing at the New Zealand Festival this weekend – about sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and ‘angry women’. A journalist launches a national enquiry into sexual harassment and is accused of doing it “for clicks”. The Australian media decides to name the woman who … Read more
New Zealand fantasy writer Steffi Green interviews Charlie Jane Anders, author of the smash-hit novel All The Birds in the Sky, ahead of her appearances this weekend at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Like all literary genres, fantasy and science fiction are replete with common tropes. We love stories of sword-fights and space trekking … Read more
We reveal the shortlist of this year’s national book awards. Magazine writer Diana Wichtel, Wellington novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam and some other authors have made it onto the shortlist of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Spinoff Review of Books names these two authors straight off the bat and ahead of everyone else because we rate their … Read more
Spinoff literary editor Steve Braunias previews two big events – tomorrow’s announcement of the Ockham national book awards shortlist, and this weekend’s Writers and Readers programme at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Most weeks go by in the New Zealand literary scene without comment, without incident, without joy and triumph and alcoholic depravity. But … Read more
This week’s best-selling books at Unity Books in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 After Alexander: The Legacy of a Son by Jan Pryor (Heddon Publishing, $30) “The prologue in Jan Pryor’s memoir begins exactly 33 years to the day since her son died from cot death…The reader is drawn into the anguish of the … Read more
New verse by Palmerston North poet Paula Harris. the life expectancy of a cloud I try to calculate if there is any point to health insurance or retirement savings or planning ahead women in New Zealand have an average life expectancy of 83.3 years giving us 3.3 years more than men … Read more
The return of the patented Spinoff revolutionary live email interview, this time with Peter Wells, author of a new book devoted to the subject of “reclaiming Pākehā history”. Peter Wells is unwell. You may well have read about it in Hello Darkness, his intimate and sometimes harrowing series published at the Spinoff. It records his struggle … Read more