Former criminal lawyer Ross Burns assesses Ian Wishart’s new book on the Marlborough Sounds killings, Elementary (Howling at the Moon, $38.99) Nothing about the Sounds murders has been elementary. Following the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope from Furneaux Lodge on New Year’s Day 1998, there was a huge, albeit apparently flawed, police investigation. … Read more
Steve Braunias has an amazing idea that just might revolutionise sales of New Zealand books. William Gibson – “author of Neuromancer, etc”, as he languidly describes himself on his Twitter account – added to his collection of over 60,000 tweets yesterday when he wrote Funny! But hang on. Wait. That’s actually genius. The … Read more
Guy Somerset takes on the new novel by Julian Barnes. Martin, Ian, Julian – those Brits, how they like to dabble in Eastern Europe. For the most part, it’s been reviewing the latest Bohumil Hrabal or Ivan Klima in one of the weekend newspapers or an approving nod to Milan Kundera or Josef Skvorecky in … Read more
In which philosopher Raymond Bradley ponders whether any part of us survives in any meaningful way when we’re dead. What happens to us when we die? Is survival of our bodily deaths a real possibility? Ask yourself, first, how you conceive of survival. What would it be like for you yourself to survive your bodily death? … Read more
We conclude our week-long coverage of the Angus Gillies trilogy Ngati Dread in unhappy circumstances. Here endeth the Spinoff Review of Books’ week-long coverage of the Ngati Dread books about the Rasta uprising in Ruatoria in the late 1980s, and it endeth badly, kind of bitterly. Thus the headline, taken from an angry email. Don’t you … Read more
Music journalism legend Murray Cammick – Murray the Cam! – served as both publisher and editor of Rip It Up, but few events in his long career were as strange as the time he attended the launch of a Herbs album in Ruatōria, right in the middle of the Rasta uprising…. I was publisher of … Read more
A personal essay by Talia Marshall (Rangitane ki Wairau, Ngati Kuia) in response to Ngati Dread by Angus Gillies, a journalist who investigated the killings, arsons, and various assorted apocalyptic madness during the Rasta reign of terror in Ruatoria: “A book about stoners you should never read stoned.” Ruatōria. Ruatōrea, a place or an idea, a Valhalla … Read more
The live email interview is a form which no one seems to practice but will almost certainly revolutionise journalism, possibly. It has the zip and tension of meeting in the flesh, and writing questions and answers adds a kind of literary dimension. This interview with Angus Gillies took place last night (Monday). Gillies is a TV3 … Read more
One of the most remarkable books ever written about crime, race, religious voodoo, and the New Zealand way of life and death is the Ngati Dread trilogy by journalist Angus Gillies. He self-published these three very strange and quite epic accounts of a five-year period (1985-1990) when there was a kind of Maori Rasta uprising … Read more
A pantoum by Wellington writer Claudia Jardine. My Iron Cervix Whilst muttering all for my sexual prime, I lay on the bed and tried not to faint. The doctor was having a hard time so the nurse held my arm, a pre-emptive restraint. I lay on the bed and tried not to faint, … Read more
Nelson journalist Charles Anderson reviews 438 Days, by John Franklin, a modern classic of narrative journalism. The forever temptation for a journalist is to make it absolutely explicit in their story that he or she has engaged in actual journalism. These days, some readers might be confused as to what ‘actual journalism’, actually means. To … Read more
Simon Grigg examines 550 exhausting pages of often intense events, music, movies, books, essays and violent conflict as analysed in 1966, by music savant Jon Savage. David Bowie died while I was reading this book and there was a sort of clearly unintended irony in the fact that the biggest musical event of 2016 will be the … Read more
An extract from Boundaries, a collection of essays and verse by the holy philosopher king of Central Otago, Brian Turner. What locals call Black’s Hill is a steep climb on the main road which takes you up from Ophir in the Manuherikia Valley and down into Poolburn in the Ida Valley. It’s about four kilometres to … Read more
The Ex-Girlfriends Are Back From the Wilderness The ex-girlfriends are back… emerging once again from the tree shadows… into the primordial burlesque of autumn with their low-cut… reminiscences… and soft, double ironies… trembling once again into their opulent… seasonal migration patterns a corsage of wilting apologies tethered to the bust… The ex-girlfriends are back…with their … Read more
Olwyn Stewart pens a farewell to friend, poet and playwright David Lyndon Brown, who passed away late last year. My friendship with David Lyndon Brown began sometime in the very early nineties, at Poetry Live in the Shakespeare Tavern. One night he asked me to read a poem of his to the audience, whether out of … Read more
Peter Wells, the director of Samesame but different, the two-day celebration of NZ’s queer writers, on the profound impact of two classic novels. My brother was older than me by two years. He was also gay. He was ahead of me in this, and his adventures both frightened me and lured me forward. Why frighten? Because … Read more
First Lady tells the story of Liz Roberts, the first New Zealander to undergo full sex-change surgery. Alison writes, ‘This chapter is a big contrast to the glamorous, gossipy parts of Liz’s story that took place in 1960s London, and the Australia theatre scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Liz had been in prison before, albeit a … Read more
Don’t biff it and don’t burn me either I was thinking About how French women In the magazines Obey the law of decades When it comes to their hair Ascending the matron ladder And shutting their witch down With knee length hems. I said I’ve gone normal With the tree this year son Lies! I … Read more
Our recent list of the greatest New Zealand works of non-fiction featured a glaring lack of books by and about Māori. We invited a panel of indigenous experts to come up with an alternative Top 50. The Spinoff straight messed up. When it published its list of 100 greatest New Zealand works of non-fiction last … Read more
Rosemary McLeod reviews Unearthly Landscapes, New Zealand’s early churchyards, cemeteries and urupa by Stephen Deed (Otago University Press, $50.00). Death can bring out the worst in people. Families seethe their way through funeral services, burials and lawyers’ offices, and yes, they also mourn the person who has gone forever, though they have different ways of … Read more
Ian Wishart’s new book Elementary went on sale last week, promptly got pulled from bookstores scared off by a threat of legal action, then was put back on the shelves. The following excerpt makes it clear that Wishart believes people have been duped into thinking Scott Watson is innocent of the murders of Ben Smart … Read more
Voznesensky Voznesensky meeting his girlfriend in the rain is taking place tonight. There’s the same telephone box, late fifties, Voznesensky & girlfriend rooting like rattlesnakes. The whole world is shaking. Voznesensky himself is shaking. It must be love, he thought. Or a bad night. Or good … Read more
In which we take a deep breath and declare the best 50 works of New Zealand non-fiction – books, journals, and various assorted printed material. Yow! Right then! Let us continue with the countdown to the greatest works of non-fiction ever published in New Zealand, as selected by a conscientious, hand-wringing panel of male and … Read more
A Spinoff special: we list the best 100 works of non-fiction ever published in New Zealand. Because the Guardian is running its list of the 100 greatest non-fiction books next week, the Spinoff thought we’d get in first – and present the 100 greatest works of New Zealand non-fiction right now, right here, spread over … Read more
From his best-selling book The Scene of the Crime, Steve Braunias imagines the innocent explanation for Mark Lundy on the night his wife and daughter were murdered. Everything in the following version of events of an unsolved family tragedy — well, apart some of the dialogue, travelogue, and various assorted details pertaining to sleep — … Read more
Stephanie Johnson reviews Sir Jonathan Bate’s biography of Ted Hughes, a forensic account of his doomed marriage to poet Sylvia Plath. There are people who still blame Ted Hughes for the suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath, who famously gassed herself soon after he left her. Their two small children, Frieda and Nicholas, were in … Read more
Ruby Porter reviews Murray Edmond’s first book of prose, four wild visions of a surrealist New Zealand featuring everyone from Winston Peters to Franz Kafka – ‘a kind of punk rock Fred Dagg’. Strait Men and Other Tales is Murray Edmond’s first book of prose – four linked short stories, dark and funny, artificial and … Read more
Patricia Highsmith’s second novel The Price of Salt dealt with an obsessive lesbian relationship in an era of homophobia so severe her agent warned of career suicide. Peter Wells reviews the book, reissued and retitled Carol, and finds a ‘daring masterpiece’ which offered a glimmer of hope in the ‘gloom zone’ of the 1950’s. Graham Greene called her ‘the … Read more
In this excerpt from Dan Carter: My Story the All Blacks’ first five details the physical and emotional agony of the injury which ended his 2011 World Cup campaign on rugby league field in Wellington. Taken from Dan Carter: My Story by Dan Carter and The Spinoff editor Duncan Greive, published by Upstart Press and priced at $49.99 … Read more