A new weekly feature at the Spinoff Review of Books: the best-selling books at the Auckland and Wellington stores of Unity Books. THE BEST–SELLER CHART FOR THE WEEK JUST ENDED: May 20 UNITY BOOKS AUCKLAND 1. A Little Life ($35) by Hanya Yanagihara The best book of 2015; love and a great many characters in a big, … Read more
Holly Walker reviews the working-class white New Zealand fuck-ups, suicides and predators in Tracey Slaughter’s amazing new story collection deleted scenes for lovers. “It is possible to say it,” says one of Tracey Slaughter’s narrators in deleted scenes for lovers, steeling herself to name the cancer that is eating her body from the inside. She … Read more
Elspeth Sandys reviews Barkskin, the enormously long and also deeply profound novel by Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx. Before Eleanor Catton wrote The Luminaries I would have said that the Americans were to blame for the new vogue for long – very long! – books. Three of Jonathan Franzen’s novels are all over 500 pages long. … Read more
Rosemary McLeod reviews I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her (Fourth Estate, $34.99) by Joanna Connors. Women used to read romantic fiction, the kind in which everyone lived happily ever after, following tribulations such as which dress to wear, and whether or not to surrender to a masterful … Read more
Fair to describe Buster Stiggs as a legend. He was in New Zealand’s first punk band, Suburban Reptiles, and then joined his old schoolmate Phil Judd in The Swingers, who created maybe the greatest song in NZ rock history – ‘Counting The Beat’. He recently penned the first part of a memoir in the autumn … Read more
The most exciting new poet in New Zealand letters takes on her most complex subject yet – Monica Geller, from Friends. Monica Monica Monica Monica Monica Monica Geller off popular sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S Is one of the worst characters in the history of television She makes me want to wash my hands with hand … Read more
Kiran Dass interviews Dutch novelist Herman Koch, a guest at the Auckland Writers Festival. Dutch author Herman Koch writes cracking good thrilling page-turners filled with repellent and flawed characters who despise each other, are driven by sex and power and who will make you wince and laugh. In The Dinner, he examines how far two … Read more
Poet Chris Tse won two awards at last night’s Ockham NZ Book Awards – best first book of poetry, and best dressed male. He tells the truth about those swans on his shoulders. Something I wasn’t prepared for heading into the Ockhams ceremony was the number of people who would want to touch me. I … Read more
Forget Craig Marriner! We have a new strangest-ever winner of a New Zealand book award. Woah! The award for best dressed female went to Stella Chrysostomou, manager of Page and Blackmore bookstore in Nelson, and the best dressed male prize went to poet Chris Tse, who wore like these feathery swan things on his shoulders, sort of like … Read more
A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “No, the book awards are next door.” Mein gott! The book awards are on tonight, in a matter of hours, any minute! There will be so many intellectuals as well as publishers. And the thing that will be occupying the thoughts and anxieties of just … Read more
As the tension builds towards tomorrow night’s Ockham national book awards, Graeme Lay shudders to recall the time the award for best novel went to a bogan – and Steve Braunias barges his way in at the end of the story, and adds a highly unusual postscript. Book awards are wonderful. They’re also fraught. Glittering … Read more
Two new poems by the amazing David Eggleton, a finalist in next week’s Ockham national book award for his noisy book of visions, The Conch Trumpet (Otago University Press). Floral Clock Dawn’s orange soak rinses the copper lid that floats over Noel Lane’s kava bowl back of the War Museum, the front’s white colonnade, and Ferro-Concrete … Read more
All week this week we focus on books and authors nominated for next Tuesday’s Ockham national book awards. Today: a goddamned epic interview (6000 words!) with fiction finalist Patrick Evans, conducted by Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias. The live email interview is seldom practised but will revolutionise journalism as we know it, … Read more
An excerpt (lightly edited – the least it needed! So many semi-colons!) from the masterful biography Maurice Gee: Life and Work, by Rachel Barrowman (Victoria University Press). In this early chapter, she writes of Gee as a young, unhappy misfit in Wellington, putting up with James K Baxter and enjoying his time as a hospital … Read more
All week this week we feature a book or author nominated in next Tuesday’s Ockham national book awards. Today: Holly Walker is given a rare interview with fiction finalist Patricia Grace. Since becoming the first Māori woman to publish a book of short stories in English in 1975, Patricia Grace has always made a commitment … Read more
All week this week we feature books and authors who are nominated for next week’s Ockham national book awards. Today: Steve Braunias gazes upon the wonders of one of the four finalists for best book of illustrated non-fiction. Here is one of the reasons New Zealand Photography Collected (Te Papa Press) by Athol McCredie is … Read more
New verse by Wellington writer, academic and editor Harry Ricketts. Having trouble with your relationship? You may or may not be to blame. Don’t delay ‒ contact Dumper & Co today. Does he or she play home and away? Suspect them of being bi, straight or gay? Having trouble with your relationship? Some like it … Read more
Yesterday we published a furious denunciation of slam poetry which felt like it demanded a counterweight. Comedian and performance poet Penny Ashton – the founder of Poetry Idol – offered her services, and we gladly accepted. Today I happily pulled on my bohemian attire – including a T-Shirt that says “Feminist Buzz Killing It” – and sat down … Read more
Whena Owen reports on the slow gutting of Te Papa Press. Farewell afternoon teas are a very Wellington ritual where public servants gather around the nearly departed, politely chatting and nibbling at gluten-free cake. The team leader’s speech will first attempt a joke then list the many virtues of their subordinate who is finally handed vouchers and … Read more
Opinion: Andrew Paul Wood wishes a pox upon slam poetry, that “horrid practice” which is currently in vogue and features in the upcoming Auckland Writers Festival. (Read performance poet Penny Ashton disagreeing with him here.) “I can’t bear these accounts I read in The Times and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and … Read more
A kind of Barry Crump of the sea, AJ Peach has written a ripping memoir of his fishing life in his self-published book Roughy: Fishing the Mid-Ocean Ridges. The following excerpt sees our hero hook up with his old mate Stu, stop off at a stripclub in Wellington, and sign onto a Ukrainian fishing vessel. … Read more
New verse by Wellington poet Claudia Jardine, who previously thrilled and disturbed Spinoff readers with her poem ‘My Iron Cervix.’ Ode to Goon So there’s me, sprawled across the bed eating bits of biscuit like Bacchus, and you, half out of a suit, looking at me as if I’m street-art you scraped off a wall … Read more
Guy Somerset reviews Goodnight and Good Riddance: How 35 Years of John Peel Helped Shape Modern Britain by David Cavanagh When I was a boy, culture was delivered on a Thursday by Mr Pavitt. Or was it Pavett? Perhaps even Pavit or Pavet? If you had a name like Pavitt/Pavett/Pavit/Pavet, you’d be used to people … Read more
Steve Braunias recommends the best of the 2016 Pulitzers. The 2016 Pulitzer Prizes – recognising the best journalism in America, and nominating some of the best books in the the world – were announced earlier today. You ought to have a read of some of these things. They are, as judges didn’t say, fucking fantastic. … Read more
As a kind of prequel to Tim Murphy’s excellent court transcript story on the Spinoff yesterday, Steve Braunias exhumes a previously unpublished 2011 column on his own c***-related tribulations. It was originally written for Metro magazine, but editor Simon Wilson refused to publish it. Last Christmas [2010] I landed myself in another fine mess when I pressed SEND. Claire … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle, Volume 5 by Karl Ove Knausgaard There was no plot, I wanted to entwine the internal with the external, the neural pathways in the brain with the fishing smacks in the harbour… – Karl Ove Knausgaard If you’ve ploughed through Volumes One to Four of Karl Ove … Read more
One of New Zealand’s best and most illustrious book editors, Stephen Stratford (“I am a polite person, mostly”), vents about having to deal with writers and publishers. What I dread #1 When meeting someone new, the question I most dread is, “What do you do?” It is really hard to answer. As a freelancer, I do … Read more
Giovanni Tiso reviews Broken Vows, a biography of Tony Blair by Tom Bowers. There was that time Tony Blair dropped a jar full of honey in the kitchen, and got down on his knees to clean up the mess with a brush and pan. Or that other time when the bath was overflowing upstairs and … Read more
As editor of the superb new collection of essays in Dispatches from Continent Seven: An anthology of Antarctic science, Rebecca Priestley has chosen wisely and wittily. Her book includes a frightening vision of natural disaster by Kathryn Smith, who examines how a rapidly warming ocean has encouraged the invasion of the complete bastards of the … Read more