To mark a new edition (new preface and everything!) of the 2014 best-seller The Scene of the Crime by Steve Braunias, we present an extract from the chapter which entwines Rolf Harris and Julian Assange. Unable to think of anywhere I’d rather be during a few days to kill in London, I got the last vacant seat in … Read more
“Horrifying and hopeful at the same time”: Kim Hill reviews Idaho, one of the most acclaimed novels of 2017. A couple of years ago, I was visiting my father’s side of the family in Northern Ireland. As a shy, unhappy English child, I would spend holidays with them. I found them exotic, intimidating, irresistibly attractive. … Read more
“I know it may appear mean-spirited,” says Deborah Hill-Cone, “to write a bad review about anyone who has the courage to speak publicly about their mental illness.” And then she proceeds to write the bad review. Sarah Wilson writes in First We Make the Beast Beautiful, “I’d spent my life agile and I arrogantly traded … Read more
The latest literary funding grants from Creative New Zealand, featuring established novelists, literary festivals, and The Spinoff Review of Books. Where there’s a trough, there’s a snout. 248 applicants competed for the latest Creative New Zealand funding round, and requested a total of $7,486,318. Dream on! CNZ were able to award $2,032,544 in 92 grants. Among them … Read more
The best-selling books in the two best bookstores in the Western world. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Idaho by Emily Ruskovich (Chatto & Windus, $37) We have received Kim Hill’s review of this remarkable, shocking US novel of family life, and will publish it as Book of the Week on Thursday. 2 The Sellout by Paul Beatty … Read more
An essay by Paula Morris on teaching creative writing in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Auckland – Otahuhu. Over the past two years I’ve spent a lot of time in Otahuhu Intermediate School in South Auckland, teaching creative writing as part of a New Zealand Book Council programme. Most of the children there are … Read more
Steve Braunias interviews literary sensation Ashleigh Young, who won the award for best book of non-fiction at last night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Feature image courtesy of Fergus Barrowman. Ashleigh Young was sitting at her Wellington home on the couch last Thursday evening with her cat Jerry (“He’s looking at me a bit disconsolately. Now … Read more
Victoria University Press is nominated for just about everything at tonight’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. How come? Is it a good thing? Or is it a depressing commentary on the sorry little state of New Zealand literature? VUP publisher Fergus Barrowman steps up for the revolutionary live email interview. And the winner is Fergus Barrowman. The … Read more
Who will laugh like a loon and who will cry bitter tears at Tuesday night’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards? CK Stead is shortlisted for the fiction prize; we usually give fiction a really wide swerve at the Spinoff, but today we present his short story ‘Marriage Americano’, taken from his shortlisted book, The Name on the Door … Read more
We conclude our week-long series of encounters with guests due to appear at the Auckland Writers Festival as Rachael King interviews the fairly fucken fantastic Ivan Coyote. Last year, Ivan Coyote stood on stage in front of a sell-out crowd at the WORD Christchurch festival and delivered gut-punching stories of love, gender, body scars, family quirks … Read more
The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Charlotte Graham talks with Susan Faludi, author of the classic 1991 book Backlash. Read more Auckland Writers Festival coverage from the Spinoff here The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan … Read more
The very best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival – the most expansive, the most intelligent – is right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to encounters with guest writers. Today: Simon Wilson talks with Jay Rayner, a man who can demolish the reputation of the poshest restaurant with a single … Read more
The best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival continues right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to long, intelligent encounters with guest writers. Today: Holly Walker talks with Chris Kraus, an American writer who worked for newspapers in Wellington before creating the belated smash-hit feminist novel, I Love Dick. Read more Auckland Writers … Read more
The very best coverage of the Auckland Writers Festival – the most expansive, the most intelligent – is right here, as the Spinoff Review of Books devotes the entire week to encounters with guest writers. Today: Hera Lindsay Bird talks with George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo, the stand-out novel of 2017. Read more … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the Western world. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road by Steve Braunias (Luncheon Sausage Books, $25) Book of the year, obv! The editor of the Spinoff Review of Books eats a street and ponders matters of life and death. 2 The New Zealand Project … Read more
Linda Burgess reviews the latest novel by the prolific Damien Wilkins. Note: the headline was her idea. Any Wellingtonian reading Lifting has to work hard not to see Cutty’s as Kirkcaldie and Stains. Well, it is, isn’t it? A large department store in Wellington, with a piano, and a top-hatted doorman, going through hard … Read more
The good and the great of world literature are about to descend as guest speakers at the 2017 Auckland Writers Festival. Will anyone go off the rails? CK Stead (followed by Steve Braunias, in a postscript) recall writers behaving badly onstage. In my experience problems at readings usually involve booze. I remember Jim Baxter being carried to … Read more
A passionate, intense essay by Taupo writer Chris Eyes, in answer to our innocent question: what kind of literary scene is there in the lake city? Images courtesy of Ben Horgan (@aotearoller). Can I be perfectly honest with you? There isn’t a literary scene here. No-one in Taupo, outside of my friends and family, gives … Read more
The best-selling books at the world’s best two bookstores. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 The New Zealand Project by Max Harris (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Max! Number one in both Wellington and Auckland. He’s cool. 2 Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo (Particular Books, $40) Inspirational role modelling. 3 Rule of … Read more
Who the hell is John Gallas when he’s at home? And is he ever at home? Bill Manhire talks to the elusive, much-travelled New Zealand poet. John Gallas must be New Zealand’s least visible poet. He left the country in 1970, has mostly lived in the UK since then, but is back in New Zealand for extended periods … Read more
Feminist writer Roxane Gay explores the female condition in her new collection of short stories. Some critics have loathed the depiction of women characters who welcome violence; reviewer Holly Walker takes another approach. Roxane Gay is good at opening sentences. Examples from her first short story collection, Difficult Women: “The stone thrower lives in a glass house … Read more
Thalia Kehoe Rowden finds a lot of great reads in the Storylines selection of the best picture books for young kids – but wonders why the hell it is in this day and age that so few authors write about girls, or Māori, or Pasifika. You’re standing in a children’s bookshop, wading through the vast … Read more
Massey University creative writing graduate Sacha Jones was a principal dancer in the Sydney City Ballet – after surviving a teenage diet of cake and laxatives on Saturdays. Her memoir takes a tragi-comic look back at her early dance career. Kelly Barden, a fledgling young dancer, was lithe and lovely and very much built for ballet, … Read more
Zombie fiction! It’s everywhere, some of it’s really good, and all of it feels strangely, terribly relevant to the times we live in. Stacey Campbell walks with the undead. I’ve been reading about zombies. It just kind of happened. As a genre it’s not exactly literary, and yes, The Luminaries is still sitting on my … Read more
An essay by Dr Philip Steer on Lake Tutira in Hawke’s Bay, now an unswimmable toxic dump, but once the idyllic setting for one of the greatest books ever published in New Zealand. Pinea rawatia ki Tutira ra; Ki te ue pata, ki te kai rakau. A ehara e hine i te roto hou; He … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookshops in the English-speaking world. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Good Sons: A Novel of the Great War by Greg Hall (Mary Egan Publishing, $32) “Greg Hall says his first novel is the perfect tribute to family members with strong Oamaru links who fought during World War 1. Mr Hall, … Read more
New verse by Sophie van Waardenberg. unhatched egg/two girls at easter we are helping to cut down the trees they say. we know what the hills will look like when we have finished. they will have burn scars like we have on our wrists from clumsiness, from baking. the dog tastes a hundred empty … Read more
An essay by Finlay Macdonald on a typically brilliant and impossible to categorise work of biographical art by the late James McNeish. A journalist friend of mine once fell foul of the establishment so badly that he was forced to leave the country. It was an unhappy time, and he later suggested he’d like to … Read more
A razor gang at the Auckland Council led to yesterday’s announcement that the city’s libraries are cutting 74 members of staff. Former Auckland librarian Ethan Sills reports. Libraries are magical institutions. It can feel unreal that they still exist, given how fantastical the idea of them seems. Buildings where you can go and borrow books … Read more