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
The weekly Unity Books best-seller chart at their stores in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON STORE 1 Wellington In Your Pocket (Fitzbeck Creative, $25) by Nigel Beckford & Michael Fitzsimons, illustrated by Karolina Slovakova Handy and handsome guide to cool places to go in Wellington. 2 Havana Coffee Works (Phantom House, $50) by Geoff Marsland & … Read more
Steve Braunias conducts the live email interview – the revolutionary journalistic practise trailblazed exclusively by the Spinoff Review of Books – with journalist and author Adam Dudding. Feature image credit: Noah Ferguson-Dudding. Adam Dudding is a feature journalist with the Sunday Star-Times, and his first book My Father’s Island was longlisted on Tuesday morning for … 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
The weekly best-seller chart at Unity stores in Auckland and Wellington, for the week just ended: November 18 AUCKLAND STORE 1 The Shops (Luncheon Sausage Books, $40) by Steve Braunias and Peter Black It’s not really about shops at all, it’s actually an evocation of the profound melancholy and unexpected beauty of ordinary New Zealand … Read more
There are good, standard, engaged reviews; but every once in a while, like never, or just this once, a reviewer (name of Harry Ricketts; Wellington academic, poet, distinguished man of letters) comes along and writes a book review which is beyond meta and just kind of far-out, also brilliant. Spring rain The reviewer was excited when … Read more
Love gone bad, new love, the Māori way of life, and a Pakeha book about life on the marae: Talia Marshall makes the connections. February – Kua Mutu Funny, after such a bright start, how despondent and lonely our love had become, but we tried to repair things by going on a holiday late in … Read more
A personal essay by veteran journalist Chris Barton on what it’s like to be made redundant by the Herald – and his fears for any kind of intelligent, long-form writing in mainstream media. When the end came, in December 2012, it was brutal. I was called to a meeting in an editor’s office. It was immediately clear that, to … Read more
The weekly best-seller chart at Unity stores in Auckland and Wellington, for the week just ended: November 4 AUCKLAND STORE 1 City House, Country House (Godwit, 485) by John Walsh and Patrick Reynolds City houses, country houses. 2 Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harvill Secker, $40) by Yuval Noah Secker “The old trope … Read more
New verse by Auckland writer Amanda Kennedy. When Lorelai broke the curtain rail I was sitting in the kitchen talking to my sister When Lorelai broke the curtain rail. She ran in to announce her crime, trailed off behind her mother to the scene awaiting sentencing, her husky little voice going sorry, sorry, … 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
Queenstown writer Jane Bloomfield has spent the year writing the second novel in her Lily Max series for kids aged 8-12 – the first book was a finalist in this year’s NZ Post Children’s Book Awards, and the sequel is even better. But what else does she get up to in that part of the world? … Read more
Who are the most powerful figures in the new generation of New Zealand literature? The most innovative, the most awarded, the most industrious? A panel of young experts exchanged their views over Snapchat and things like that until they agreed on the top 10. 1 Hera Lindsay Bird But not just for the 46,000+ views … Read more
New verse by poet Michael Hall. Tip Top Bread The sound that a loaf of bread makes when it hits the supermarket floor – is the sound of a heart breaking. No one really hears it, though a few nearby in the aisle might see the person picking, to stoop it up. Then trying to … Read more
The weekly best-seller chart at Unity stores in Wellington and Auckland, for the week just ended: October 28 WELLINGTON STORE 1 Murdoch: The Political Cartoons of Sharon Murdoch (Potton & Burton, $40) by Sharon Murdoch The smash-hit cartoon book by the 2016 Canon Media Awards cartoonist of the year who was born in Invercargill, worked … Read more
Steve Braunias writes about Lucky, the unlucky dog of Mercer, in a new anthology of writing about dogs – dogs as pets, dogs as farm animals, dogs as meals, and other kinds of mutts. The graveyard was across the road from the school, and over the fence from a three-bedroom house on the edge of … 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
Talia Marshall reviews what is likely the year’s most entertaining, readable, and popular New Zealand novel, Daylight Second by Kelly Ana Morey. I remember the Phar Lap skeleton at the old Dominion Museum off Buckle St in Wellington. He was in a glass case just after the Victorian settlers listless in their life-sized dioramas, and … Read more
The great Australian writer Tim Winton talks to Linda Herrick. Australian writer Tim Winton has dedicated his new book of essays The Boy Behind the Curtain to his mum and dad, now in their 80s. His subjects include surfing, asylum seekers, and other issues in the wider world, but a stand-out essay in the collection is … Read more
Margo White reviews the greatest novel ever written from the point of view of an opinionated and somewhat pompous foetus – Nutshell, by Ian McEwan. We might as well start with the novel’s memorable opening sentence: “So here I am, upside down in a woman.” Ian McEwan has said the sentence came to him when … Read more
The weekly best-seller chart at Unity stores in Wellington and Auckland, for the week just ended: October 14 WELLINGTON STORE 1 Broken Decade: Prosperity, Depression & Recovery in NZ 1928-39 (Otago University Press, $50) by Malcolm McKinnon Meticulous new study. 2 Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25) by Hera Lindsay Bird “Take me out … Read more
James Robins reviews the new novel by funnyman Matt Suddain. John Tamberlain, the hero and narrator of Matt Suddain’s second novel Hunters & Collectors, is a successful critic. This is the first sign that we’re dealing with a wild imagination. As if to push the fold even further, we find that Tamberlain is in demand, … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: October 7 Steve Braunias is on a well-deserved break this week and as a result, the best-seller lists are presented without comment. WELLINGTON STORE 1 Constitution for Aotearoa NZ (Victoria University Press, $25) by Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler 2 Like Nobody’s Watching (Escalator … Read more
By day, Newshub’s Angus Gillies is a mild-mannered, smoothie-guzzling news producer. But his alter ego is as the author of violent and hard-boiled crime fiction. His short novels Just Breathe and Boom and Bust reveal Auckland’s underbelly, as does his latest book, Good Cop, Bad Cop. Where does a part-time, wannabe crime writer look for … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews a peculiar new book by a living legend of American journalism. This is the way the publishing career ends for one of the great innovators of literary journalism: not with a whimper, but a bang, the story blowing up in his face. American writer Gay Talese’s latest book – and maybe his … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 30 AUCKLAND STORE 1 The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (Viking, $38) by John le Carré By all means take note of a curious tale in the Guardian by Le Carre’s biographer, who was greatly puzzled at his subject bringing out a … Read more
Christchurch art writer Andrew Paul Wood and Auckland art writer Anthony Byrt shoot the shit about Byrt’s brilliant new book on contemporary art, This Model World. Who makes good art in New Zealand? Who doesn’t? Where do they stand on the wretched Billy Apple, who once nearly killed Duncan Greive’s dog? And much, much more. … Read more