Paul Moon, author of the controversial new book Killing Te Reo Maori, argues that making te reo Māori a compulsory school subject is the worst thing we could do to preserve the language. To paraphrase Nietzsche, “te reo Māori is dead, and we have killed it.” Well, not quite, but it is possibly only a … Read more
Vincent O’Sullivan assesses the 1957 Chrysler of New Zealand writing, Allen Curnow, the subject of a 700-page biography by the late Terry Sturm. “A big one.” It’s a phrase you’ll come across several times in reading Allen Curnow. It could be a fish caught off Kare Kare, a talent another writer didn’t have, an implied assessment … 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
A charming extract from a new book on the great 19th century naturalist Henry Suter. In December 1896, Hugo Schauinsland, director of a newly opened natural history museum in Bremen, travelled to New Zealand and called on Suter at his home in Christchurch. Schauinsland provided him with his desiderata and Suter did his best to … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the two Unity stores. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) Fake news. 2 Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (Picador, $35) The book that got made into the movie. 3 Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Canongate, $23) … Read more
New verse by the poet laureate of New Zealand, Selina Tusitala Marsh. How To Woo Your Husband I will sing a Song of Solomon upon you whose very teeth I thought I knew whose rate of calcification was by my very calculation worked out these 21 years of marriage through from my own … Read more
The second instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here. December 12, 1:56am The humility of my condition. It’s only when I approach the cancer clinic I see all the other wanderers and strays either coming away or walking in the same direction. … Read more
Guy Somerset compares the new novel by Jennifer Egan to Winona Ryder’s performance in Stranger Things. It’s not a compliment. Historical fiction is a friend to no novelist. As if the challenges and perils of writing a novel weren’t mountainous enough already: character, plot, place; voice, perspective, psychology; pace, shape, language; closely observed worlds — … Read more
An essay by Catherine Robertson, author of the wildly entertaining novel Gabriel’s Bay, on the problems some critics have with ‘women’s fiction’. Two years ago, I reviewed a truly terrible novel. I managed to find one positive thing to say about it, but the bulk of the review was not complimentary. The author wrote to … Read more
This week’s best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the world. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Profile Books, $23) Named one of the 20 best books of non-fiction of 2017 at the Spinoff Review of Books. 2 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) … Read more
RIP Buster Stiggs. The legend who played in New Zealand’s first punk band, Suburban Reptiles, and later with his old schoolmate Phil Judd in The Swingers, died this month aged 63. In 2016 we excerpted a memoir in progress that he wrote for Phantom Billstickers magazine Café Reader. We reprint it below. Hastings Boys isn’t … Read more
No one has ever produced a political exposé quite like Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, writes Danyl Mclauchlan. Journalists are supposed to protect their sources. But not all sources deserve to be protected and the best journalism, Janet Malcolm famously observed in The Journalist and the Murderer, often comes from … Read more
Scott Hamilton’s The Stolen Island is an investigation into the people-snatching raid on the Tongan island of ‘Ata in 1863. In this excerpt, he writes about visiting ‘Eua, the island where the survivors of the raid were re-settled. This story was first published 27 February 2017. In 2013, I took a group of students on … Read more
Hera Lindsay Bird talks with George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo, the stand-out novel of 2017. This story was first published on 8 May 2017. I first started reading George Saunders because someone told me to. I don’t always read what other people tell me to read, because there are only so many unhappy … Read more
‘Now I’m old and introspective and critical,’ writes Scarlett Cayford, ‘let me tell you why the young adult fiction penned by New Zealand women in the 90s is some of the best in the world.’ This story was first published 21 June 2017. When I think back to the first books I read, my first … Read more
An essay by Welsh writer Rhydian Thomas on getting the bash, again and again, since moving to New Zealand. The moral of the story: fuck Hamilton. This story was first published on 15 August 2017. The truck pulls over at the end of the Tauranga harbour bridge and the driver’s out before any of us … Read more
The top 10 best-sellers of the year at Unity Books in High St, Auckland. 1 Hit and Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan & the Meaning of Honour by Nicky Hager & Jon Stephenson (Potton & Burton, $35) God, really? The bulk of the sales must have been in the opening week, or fortnight, … Read more
The top 10 best-sellers of the year at Unity Books in Willis St, Wellington. 1 Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, $30) Number one: huzzah! In the old days of New Zealand literary awards, any kind of book – fiction, verse, memoir, whatever – was eligible to win the grand prize and pocket … Read more
All week this Christmas week we count down the best six books of 2017. Number one: Driving to Treblinka by Diana Wichtel. ‘It is a story that will make all who read it a better human being,’ says reviewer Dr David Galler. We come into this world imbued with the spirits of our ancestors. It … Read more
All week this Christmas week we count down the six best books of 2017. Number two: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, reviewed by Spinoff cartoonist Toby Morris. Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo (Particular Books, $40) is available at Unity Books.
All week this Christmas week we countdown the best six books of 2017. Number three: the first book in Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy, La Belle Sauvage, described by our London correspondent Scarlett Cayford as ‘just about perfect’. I was doubtful. I saw Pullman speak on the banks of the very river that takes centre stage in La … Read more
All week this Christmas week we countdown the best six books of 2017. Number four: Art Sex Music, the memoir by musician Cosey Fanni Tutti, whom reviewer Kiran Dass describes as ‘a staunch, fearless woman with backbone’. “I don’t like acceptance. It makes me think I’ve done something wrong.” – Cosey Fanni Tutti. In the last … Read more
All week this Christmas week we count down the best six books of 2017. Number five: the wild and exciting Milk Island, by Rhydian Thomas, described by reviewer Joseph Barbon as ‘teetering thrillingly on the brink of bad taste’. As well as being the most conspicuous absence from the recently-announced Ockham Prize longlist, Rhydian Thomas’s … Read more
All week this Christmas week we countdown the six best books of 2017. Number six: Naomi Alderman’s feminist sci-fi novel The Power, described by Andra Jenkin as a metaphor for the #MeToo movement. Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power has a fantastic premise: women are suddenly able to inflict pain and death at will. They can shoot … Read more
New verse by Tayi Tibble, who was awarded the prestigious Adam Prize at Victoria University’s IIML this week. In the 1960s an Influx of Māori Women Move to Tinakori Road in their printed mini dresses. Grow flowers on white stone rooftops to put in their honeycomb vases. Dust the pussy-shaped ashtray their husbands … Read more
The best-selling books at Unity Books in Auckland and Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37) Ugh. 2 La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman (David Fickling Books, $35) Please refer to the best books of the year at the Spinoff Review … Read more
Okay so of course that one by George Saunders that won the Booker is among the best 20 novels of 2017 – but what were the others? Funny you should ask! The Power by Naomi Alderman (Penguin, $26) The novel for our times. It’s a sci-fi feminist allegory of a society in which women are in charge, … Read more
A guide to the 20 very best books of non-fiction – essays, memoirs, biographies, even a cookbook and a self-help book for God’s sake! – published in 2017. The Mother of All Questions: Further Feminisms by Rebecca Solnit (Granta, $27) These succinct essays focus on the importance of empathy, the white noise around silence, and the silencing … Read more
Freya Daly Sadgrove, a bookseller at The Children’s Bookshop in Wellington, chooses the very best picture books, chapter books and YA novels of 2017. PICTURE BOOKS THE BEST: I Just Ate My Friend by Heidi McKinnon (Allen & Unwin, $27.99) I’ve seen a bunch of picture books featuring monsters this year, and the trend seems … Read more