Books editor Catherine Woulfe runs through her favourites. This is a joyfully subjective list, in no particular order, and with no real thought for how many are novels or non-fiction or non-fiction with illustrations, or whatever. They’re just books I flat-out love. Some we’ve covered during the year but others, equally deserving, completely whooshed past … Read more
This short story, The Unremembered, appears in the new collection Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, alongside stories from celebrated Australian and New Zealand writers such as Tulia Thompson, Renee Liang and Witi Ihimaera. There was this woman named Rona. She was the one pulled up to the moon for swearing. Rona was ordinary – wife, … Read more
Libraries pay a lot for their ebooks, and each copy ‘expires’ after a certain number of loans. Here’s why that’s fair. There are times I feel as if some librarians don’t like authors much. Last week, for instance, when I read Rebecca Hastie’s Spinoff piece, which began as a guide to making the most of … Read more
Eamonn Marra’s debut novel makes a study of the mundane: sanding a fence, heating baked beans, three pizzas for $29.99 delivered. Alie Benge reckons it belongs somewhere between Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante. It was about page three of 2000ft Above Worry Level. A feeling burst inside me: the joy of recognising something so beautiful … Read more
‘The beautiful are cruel, the cruel are sad, the demons are capable of good.’ Maria McMillan reviews the new novel by Elizabeth Knox, bound to be one of the year’s biggest local releases. Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book has an awful lot going on. I’m still working it out. It’s a story about Taryn Cornick … Read more
Ruby Porter’s debut novel, Attraction, is a lucid, layered story of three young women on a road trip across the North Island. It’s one of the best books we’ve read this year. Here, Ruby writes about her grandmother – who is not like the grandmother in her book – and Levin, and how the two … Read more
Eileen Merriman has whipped out three fine novels for young adults since debuting in 2017. Moonlight Sonata is her first crack at writing for adults. In this first chapter Merriman sets up a beatific family holiday – New Year’s, the beach, deckchairs and drinks – and injects a dose of abject wrongness. They see the … Read more
A fledgling writer asks five of the best how they are striking a balance between work – as in, for proper money – and writing. We like writers to be poor, but in a sexy way – black clothes from the op-shop, a windowless flat, and an endless supply of wine and cigarettes, but no … Read more
Last year prolific – and profitable – author Steff Green quit her day job to write full-time. And she’s creaming it. Responding to a recent Spinoff essay by Stephanie Johnson, she says it’s time for the old school to drop the scorn and learn from those nailing self-publishing. This story was published in June 2019. … Read more
Four decades after holding a mirror up to Kiwi masculinity with the sensational play Foreskin’s Lament, Greg McGee is back with Necessary Secrets, a new novel that asks the same question: whaddarya? At a time when we might feel we’ve reached peak old privileged white bloke, it’s a brave writer who devotes the first 61 … Read more
Broadcasting legend Elizabeth Alley reviews Loving Sylvie, the gorgeous, ephemeral new novel by Elizabeth Smither. A bride is rowed across a grey-green lake to her wedding. She rehearses her new name, “Sylvie Grace Taverner,” as the waters lap the boat. There’s a black swan and a flotilla of ducks. The oarsman is her grandfather Kit, … Read more