After years of hammy performances and ropey writing, The Bad Seed represents a landmark for New Zealand serialised drama. Duncan Greive reviews. Serialised New Zealand television drama is something of a paradox. It’s our most lavishly funded screen form – a single season will often cost more than the entire current affairs programming sector gets … Read more
This Sunday, two Charlotte Grimshaw novels come to the screen in the form of The Bad Seed. She writes about the experience of having her work adapted for TV. This month, a small team arrived at my door. As part of publicity for the adaptation of my novels The Night Book and Soon into TV … Read more
The full list, with mild critique, of the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. O’Sullivan is a tough sonofabitch and the favourite to take the crown but he’s up against big hitters. Kidman has experience, stealth, and the popular vote. Jones goes in hard and doesn’t let up. Makereti has to be taken seriously and you can never … Read more
All week this week we present the best books of 2018. Today: the 20 best novels. Previously: the best kids books, poetry books and non-fiction books of 2018. Past Tense by Lee Child (Bantam, $38) Reacher. Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33) Was the Irish writer’s love story the best novel of 2018? From the forthcoming … 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
Charlotte Grimshaw endures a novel full of ‘knowing and coy references to real people’ in New Zealand literature. I have a friend who refers to a certain weekly newspaper column as “the Seventh Form essay.” I recalled this description recently while reading Anne Kennedy’s new novel, The Ice Shelf. “Seventh Form essay” not only implies writing … Read more
“Tyrants around the dinner table, fake news inside our heads”: Charlotte Graham-McLay celebrates the new novel by Auckland writer Charlotte Grimshaw. When I was a kid and nicked books from my parents’ bedroom because I’d run out of my own (the trick was to write down the page the bookmark was on, demolish the whole … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw writes about the forces behind her new novel: “Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un. The posturing. The bizarre hairstyles, the violence and cruelty. The narcissism…” May 2016, London We were staying in a small flat with a roof terrace. I typed sitting outside at a picnic table. I’d written pieces about Karl Ove Knausgaard … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews a new collection of letters by Sylvia Plath – most written to her mother, whom she both loved and loathed. So much has been written about Sylvia Plath that reading her letters involves a continual reference beyond them, to all that’s known about her life. As I grappled with this enormous, hardcover book, … 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
We cross live to Matahiwi marae in Hawkes Bay, where Charlotte Grimshaw reports from a ceremony to honour the new poet laureate – her father, Karl Stead. The Poet Laureate had been summoned to a weekend at Matahiwi Marae in the Hawkes Bay, for a ceremony to honour his appointment. He was invited to bring … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw examines anonymous literary sensation Elena Ferrante, and the place of the ‘self’ in written work. I,I,I… Some time after the Christchurch earthquake, I visited the city. I hadn’t been there since before the disaster, and I was shocked by the devastation in the centre, and in particular by the number of multi-storey buildings that … Read more