George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo is the year’s most talked-about novel, and there’s much excitement that the author will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival in May. Wyoming Paul reviews what may be a masterpiece. A year into the Civil War, a tormented President Lincoln visits his 11-year-old son’s crypt in the cemetery. He holds … Read more
In which cartoonist Toby Morris draws a review of the best-selling Trump book, Insane Clown President. * * Insane Clown President by Matt Taibbi (Penguin, $40) is available at Unity Books.
Right now at the Civic, the audience screams are spiking right off the charts. And with good reason: the Auckland Arts Festival show Horror is scary good, says Alex Casey. I’ll admit it. I once hit a werewolf over the head with my handbag. In my defence, he did lunge at me in a haunted house … Read more
And there’s more to come. With 10 days still to run, Simon Wilson takes stock of the Auckland Arts Festival. The rain came down and you had to be a hardy soul (and living in an unflooded house), not to stay home. But then it stopped and look at this weather now – and the … Read more
If you see only one show in the Auckland Arts Festival, says Simon Wilson, make it The Encounter. Its short run starts tonight. Every arts festival has a special show. It bedazzles, but that’s not all. It jolts your senses and your sensibility, and has such a depth of theme and strength of creative expression … Read more
In the Arts Festival play Cellfish a drama teacher invites a bunch of prisoners to do a Shakespeare class – and it’s not why you think, says Simon Wilson. The rain came down and then it stopped and nothing got cancelled. Five shows opened in the Auckland Arts Festival on Wednesday and this one, Cellfish, … Read more
Josh Hetherington takes a trip to the dark, battered heart of Appalachia in the pages of the international best-seller – and number one at the Unity Books chart – which offers “a unique and valuable insight into Trump’s America”. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance is a raw and visceral account of the life of a … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books looks at Scott Hamilton’s brilliant new book, The Stolen Island, his investigation into the people-snatching raid on the Tongan island of ‘Ata. Today: Michael Field reviews a masterclass in combining Pacific history with story-telling. Back in 1981, a reformed and repentant British colonial administrator, Henry Maude, had … Read more
David Eggleton surveys the life and times of the one and only Allen Ginsberg – the manic and delirious poet who dedicated himself to “writing down newspaper headlines from Mars”. Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926, the same year as James K Baxter, and just as Baxter rapidly became New Zealand’s best-known and most prolific … Read more
Louise O’Brien walks through the gloom of Ali Smith’s latest novel, set in a racist, malicious, post-Brexit England. Ali Smith’s latest novel is a beautifully written and rather glum vision of the state of the world today. The first in a planned seasonal quartet of novels, Autumn was published unusually quickly after the events it … Read more
A new edition of George Orwell’s 1984 appears just as a new ruler of doublespeak and fake news casts his shadow over the world. Philip Matthews re-examines the novel that serves as a prophecy. Winston Smith works in a fake news factory. If you had read that sentence a year ago, you might have had … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews a new study which claims methamphetamine abuse in the Nazi regime. In the 90s, when the Berlin Wall had just come down, German novelist Norman Ohler began experimenting with ecstasy and LSD. After learning that drugs were widespread in the Nazi era, he got the idea to write a novel on … Read more
Ian Fraser on a new, brilliantly told account of the famous 1862 killings on a remote track between Nelson and Marlborough. It’s hard to imagine anyone telling the story of colonial psychopath Richard Burgess (1829-66) better than Wayne Martin in this gripping and vivid history. Step by step, Martin shows the leader of the Burgess Gang following … Read more
Been outside the house this summer? Actually done one of the Great Walks? John Summers reviews a new book which ponders the nature of the hike, the tramp, the trail. It’s felt like a secret shame, but in more than 15 years of tramping, I’ve always stuck, rigidly, myopically to the track. Once, early on, … Read more
Gary Steel surveys two new biographies by two old foes from the Beach Boys – Brian Wilson (genius) and Mike Love (asshole), and finds the asshole’s book is better. In the left corner, the drug-fucked genius, the Bach of modern pop: BRIAN WILSON! In the right corner, the craven villain that everyone loves to hate, the … Read more
You’ve seen all the other best-of books lists and as the saying goes: they’re shit! Yeah nah this is the only one you need, as the Spinoff’s team of democratic experts bring together literary fiction, New Zealand stuff, and total fucking awesomely readable junk. Commonwealth (Bloomsbury, $33) by Ann Patchett The Spinoff’s choice as the best novel … Read more
Linda Burgess reviews the Spinoff’s choice as the best book of 2016 – Anne Sebba’s extraordinary portrait of women in occupied France, Les Parisiennes. You’d like to think that if the barbarians did come through the gate, you’d at the very least make it clear you didn’t welcome them. You’d even hope, that given the usual … Read more
All week this week we recommend the very best, A-grade quality, guaranteed good books for Christmas. Today: Elizabeth Smither reviews the medical memoir by Middlemore sawbones Dr David Galler, Things That Matter. I have a weakness for books written by doctors – medical books, autobiographies, reminiscences that combine medical information and terminologies with the humanity of the … Read more
All week this week we recommend the very best, A-grade quality, guaranteed good books for Christmas. Today: Melinda Johnston reviews the Sarah Laing book/comic, Mansfield and Me. Sarah Laing is a novelist, comics artist, blogger and poet with a large and devoted following. From what I’d seen of Laing’s other comics, such as Let Me … Read more
All week this week we recommend the very best, A-grade quality, guaranteed good books for Christmas. Today: Holly Walker reviews Commonwealth, a stunning novel by Ann Patchett. It creeps up on you, this novel. It opens in 1964, at a christening party in suburban Los Angeles. Bert Cousins shows up uninvited with a big bottle of gin. The … Read more
“I need to be extraordinary,” said English writer Angela Carter, and her biography attests that she got her wish. Marion McLeod reviews the life story of a woman who described her anorexia as “attempted suicide by narcissism”. AS Byatt recalls first meeting Angela Carter in 1969. “A very disagreeable woman stomped up to me, and said, … Read more
Chelsea Winter! Force of nature, success story, brand. But can she, you know, cook? Food writer Delaney Mes does her best to persevere with the recipes and the puns in the new cookbook Scrumptious. It’s been four years since Chelsea Winter tearily made her way into New Zealand cooking show history when she was crowned the winner of the late, … Read more
The return of Catherine Chidgey has been greeted as a literary event, but her fruity, humourless prose fails to impress Jane Westaway. From time to time a reviewer strikes a novel whose external circumstances threaten to disrupt the intimate relationship between the reader and the fiction. The Wish Child – Catherine Chidgey’s first novel in … Read more
Philip Matthews reviews CK Stead’s new short story collection, which has been longlisted for the 2017 Ockham national book awards. To review CK Stead is to negotiate personal and political minefields. Let’s cover the personal first. Every reviewer of Stead worries that they might be poking a bear with a stick and cautiously expects a … Read more
Everyone said The Sellout, winner of the Man Booker prize, was “satire”. Everyone except the author – and Spinoff reviewer Charlotte Graham. “This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man,” begins the 2016 Man Booker prize-winning novel The Sellout, “But I’ve never stolen anything.” The urge to giggle awkwardly at this line is acknowledged … Read more
Brian Turner wades through the hyperbole in Brendon McCullum’s biography, and recalls the old saying: “Self-praise is no recommendation.” On the front flap of the cover of Declared, the blurbist trumpets Brendon McCullum “could reduce the world’s bowling elite to quivering wrecks”, and “As a captain… his influence has been so profound it will likely change the way … Read more
Marion McLeod reviews a new biography of the great novelist Beryl Bainbridge – which reveals that she wrote an unpublished manuscript inspired by the Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch. This is the first full-length biography of Beryl Bainbridge, the brilliant Liverpudlian novelist, born a decade before the Beatles, died 2010. I’m leaving the birth date vague: … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw on the selfie novels of acclaimed English writer Rachel Cusk. Rachel Cusk’s previous novel, Outline, was a narrative experiment that followed her divorce memoir Aftermath. The author’s voice – her world view – was so strident and solipsistic in Aftermath that she was accused of being a “brittle little narcissist.” In Outline, Cusk … Read more
The weekly best-seller chart at Unity stores in Auckland and Wellington, for the week just ended: October 21 AUCKLAND STORE 1 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harvill Secker, $40) by Yuval Noah Harari “The epic, widely celebrated Sapiens gets the sequel it demanded – a breathless, compulsive inquiry into humanity’s apocalyptic, tech-driven future”: … Read more