Richard von Sturmer reviews the new novel by Wellington author Carl Shuker – a tense, razor-sharp story of a surgeon who makes a fatal mistake. The story that Carl Shuker tells in his novel A Mistake is delivered in a concise, razor-sharp style without an ounce of fat left on the bone. Such imagery is appropriate: … Read more
Anthony Byrt reviews an impeccably researched but somewhat tortured biography of Theo Schoon – only possibly a great New Zealand artist, almost certainly an anti-Semitic, misogynist, pretentious, belly-aching bitch. Art history is a brutal discipline, which feeds off the corpses of nearly-rans: the artists and dealers and curators and muses and rivals who make up an … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books revisits the great poet James K Baxter. Today: John Newton reviews a new book of Baxter’s letters, in which he calmly reveals he raped his wife. For the rival heavyweights of New Zealand poetry, recent years have brought a boxed-set bonanza. James K Baxter’s Complete Prose (VUP, … Read more
All week this week we feature tangata whenua writings to mark Waitangi Day. Today: “Everything we know about urban Māori is probably wrong”, writes Morgan Godfery, in his review of a new study by Bradford Haami. The first urban Māori were probably eighteenth century Sydneysiders. Until 1912, a laneway near the Australian Heritage Hotel, a … Read more
All week this week we feature tangata whenua writings to mark Waitangi Day. Today: Vincent O’Malley reviews a new history of the battle of Gate Pā. Head up Cameron Road, one of Tauranga’s main arterial routes, a few kilometres out of the city centre and you drive over one of New Zealand’s most important historical sites. … Read more
AUT diet researcher George Henderson beholds the new weight-loss bible by 5:2 diet superstar Dr Michael Mosley – and declares it a triumph, with its “relaxed, considered, co-operative, mindful, repeatable, and hopefully enjoyable approach.” Disclaimer: This is a review of a book that supplies strong medical advice about diet. If you’re interested in it but … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews the latest cookbook by Nadia Lim, and declares it a plate of two halves – half-dumb, half-divine. Bizarre cookbook. A large portion of Fresh Start, Feel Good! by Nadia Lim and her Fresh Start team appears to be the work of a first-class moron. You can lead a horse to water, but you … Read more
George Henderson reviews a rock memoir by Wayne Kramer, leader of the MC5, a 60s band who advocated “Dope, rock and roll, and fucking in the street.” “We have developed organic high-energy guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and destroying millions of minds in the process” – John Sinclair, White Panther Party Programme, … Read more
Linda Burgess on the biggest-selling, most-loved book of summer: Becoming, the memoir by Michelle Obama. Celebrity memoirs are usually written by someone else. I’m fairly sure this isn’t the case with Becoming. There’s a lengthy list of people to thank in the book’s acknowledgements (“Many of my former staff helped confirm critical details and time … Read more
All week this week we count down the five best books of 2018. Number one, the very best: Kim Hill reviews Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. The buzz around young Irish writer Sally Rooney made it very difficult to review Normal People. Even to read it. Would it be as good as everyone insists it … Read more
All week this week we count down the five best books of 2018. Number three: Peter Wells reviews Calypso by David Sedaris. Many people know the sound of David Sedaris’s voice – high, thin, a drizzle of ironic sound. He himself says he has a “lady voice” and part of his shtick is being mistaken … Read more
All week this week we count down the five best books of 2018. Number four: Linda Burgess reviews the Ottolenghi cookbook Simple. Why the hell do people buy recipe books? Someone should do their PhD on the number of people who buy one, use it three times, then go back to the usual 10 things … Read more
All week this week we name and review the five very best books of 2018. Today: Holly Walker reviews the fifth best book, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a novel about the desperate joys of sleep. New York. Late 2000. Our narrator is 27. She is thin, pretty, tall, blond. White. She works at … Read more
Book of the Week: Charlotte Grimshaw reviews the profound final volume of the My Struggle series by the one and only Karl Ove Knausgaard. The first thing to say about The End, the sixth and final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s series, My Struggle, is that it’s 1153 pages long. It’s enormous and it’s a … Read more
Book of the Week: Danyl Mclauchlan reviews a brilliant new biography of Friedrich Nietzsche, who declared, “I am not a man. I am dynamite!” It ended in Turin, on January 3, 1889 when Friedrich Nietzsche shuffled into the Piazza Carlo Alberta. Nietzsche was a sad, solitary figure; he spent his days in Turin’s bookshops, reading … Read more
Book of the Week: In which Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias commissions Murray Edmond to review an anthology of New Zealand poetry – first appearing on the Spinoff Review of Books – published by Steve Braunias The cover of The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand Poems is a photo of someone riding a bike … Read more
Book of the Week: Jane Westaway reviews Colin Hogg’s portrait of poet Sam Hunt. Personal disclosure first. Sam Hunt and I crossed paths back in the 1970s and early 80s, in his Bottle Creek/Battle Hill/Death’s Corner days. His Minstrel-the-dog and first-son days. And at what he would probably dislike being dubbed his peak-celebrity days. He was … Read more
Steve Braunias heads out to New Lynn to ponder two new books on His Holiness of the Church of Enduring Beatlemania, John Lennon. There is a new, beautifully produced and monumentally pompous book about John Lennon, Imagine John Yoko, and the best and most impressive place to inspect this holy relic in Auckland, in New … Read more
Book of the Week: Jane Stafford reviews a vast, thought-provoking study of late colonial New Zealand, when European portrait artists romanticised Māori culture. I have long regarded Roger Blackley as a living taonga, an unfailing resource for anyone working in the field of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial culture. There is no enquiry too recondite, no … Read more
Fleur Adcock reviews Philip Temple’s vividly presented biography of the great Titirangi author Maurice Shadbolt – and sets the record straight about an alleged phone message she left for her ex-lover, provoking his (third) wife to throw a chicken at him. The prologue of Philip Temple’s biography of Maurice Shadbolt features an entertaining anecdote in which my … Read more
The 2019 Man Booker prize is announced next week. Scarlett Cayford reviews two of the shortlisted novels, Milkman by Anna Burns and Everything Under by Daisy Johnson. The first pages of Milkman by Anna Burns feel like the beginning of a dystopian novel. We’re familiar with the conventions: a feeling of being observed, an urgent … Read more
The 2019 Man Booker prize is announced next week. Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews two of the shortlisted novels, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner. Previously in Man Booker Prize Fight Week: Philip Matthews on Robin Robertson and Richard Powers This year’s Bookers shortlist contained a few surprises – including the … Read more
The 2018 Man Booker prize is announced next week. Philip Matthews reviews two of the shortlisted novels, The Long Take by Robin Robertson and The Overstory by Richard Powers. I can’t promise that everyone would necessarily enjoy Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, but you will remain haunted by it. You may have heard it described as the … Read more
Philip Matthews reviews a new memoir of genius director David Lynch, who emerges from the book as a “happy neurotic”. Dougie heard the name and everything changed. If you watched last year’s mesmerising Twin Peaks reboot, Twin Peaks: The Return, you will know what I mean. If you didn’t, spoilers follow. We are deep into episode … Read more
Danyl Mclauchlan examines the latest work of one of the most famous public intellectuals in the world. Five years ago, Yuval Noah Harari was a humble academic, quietly lecturing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he specialised in medieval history. In 2014 his fourth book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – originally published in … Read more
Charlotte Graham-McLay is dazzled by the new novel by JK Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith), which arrived in shops this week and went flying out the door like broomsticks. Crime writers have long specialised in grotesquely, even comically bad men, but if there’s one thing the past year has taught us, it’s that we aren’t always … Read more
Claire Mabey praises a breathtaking new novel by Tina Makereti (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Rangatahi). It’s hard to conjure a concept more offensive than the ethnological expositions, or human zoos, of the 19th and 20th centuries. A few years ago in Edinburgh, I saw the controversial installation Exhibit B by artist Brett Bailey. … Read more
It’s Zep-tember! Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reviews a new rock biog of Led Zeppelin’s unappealing genius, Jimmy Page. What an egg. Strange, and a little dismal, to plod through a 500-page biography of one of the great conductors of rock – who played the guitar like he was ringing up Hell and getting straight through, who turned … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews a memoir by his all-time favourite hatchet journalist. Robin Green! The Robin Green. “Robin Green!”, said the great music author Greil Marcus, when he met her at a Rolling Stone reunion in 2007. “I’ve always wanted to meet you!” Same, and now we all can. I near jumped out of my skin when … Read more