To mark the publication of a stunning collection of black and white photographs taken of a West Coast ghost town, Steve Braunias posts a Sunday Star-Times column he wrote about the place in June 2006. The old always seem to be up and about early, so I phoned Bill Gidley, 88, at his home in … Read more
Antony Millen of Taumarunui was runner-up of the 2016 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award – and used his time at the spacious and splendid Grey Lynn hotel to write 28,000 words of his next YA novel. Yowsa! My Surrey Hotel writing residency really started and ended on the train … Read more
Roy Colbert reviews Women of the Catlins: Life In The Deep South Women have always done it hard in the Catlins, a, I was going to say a remote and difficult area on the South Island’s south-east coast, but the people who live there would have none of that. For townies, it would be remote, harsh, … Read more
Peter Wells reviews Our Young Man by Edmund White. Can an author write too much? A glance down the inside page of Edmund White’s new novel discloses either a staggering productivity (13 novels, six works of nonfiction, three biographies and four memoirs) or an author’s unstoppable urge to create. His seminal A Boy’s Own Story … Read more
Peter King caused an enormous and very welcome stir last week when he mounted a passionate free-market argument which attacked the Book Council, academics, librarians, the Listener, the Spinoff, Creative New Zealand, intellectuals, wine drinkers, cheese eaters, oh yes and writers – basically everyone who runs the seething little village of the literary power elite. Time … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 16 WELLINGTON STORE 1 Hera Lindsay Bird (Victoria University Press, $25) by Hera Lindsay Bird Verse. 2 Nutshell (Jonathan Cape, $38) by Ian McEwan “Nutshell assumes its readers will be literate, thoughtful and cultured. You have to like that.” David Hill, New Zealand … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 9 AUCKLAND STORE 1 Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene (Bridget Williams Books, $15) by Rod Oram “With economies stagnating, politics polarising, societies shattering and ecosystems suffering, I felt an urgent need to go walkabout last September….” Ace business journo Rod Oram … Read more
Sarah Laing reviews The Tidal Zone by Granta Books novelist Sarah Moss. I left this book lying around decoratively before I read it. I snapped a picture and posted it on Instagram. It had such a beautiful cover – an adolescent girl who might have escaped from a Vermeer painting, and lost her pearl earring on … Read more
Wyoming Paul reviews Dear Mr M, the latest novel by Herman Koch, who once again dissects middle-class urban professional fuck-ups. Mr M’s downstairs neighbour is listening when he takes a shower. He’s imagining the scene at his dinner table and the look on M’s wrinkled face when he makes love to his much younger wife. … Read more
Dan Kelly reviews Far and Away: Reporting on the Brink of Change, a collection of reportage by superstar US foreign correspondent Andrew Solomon. The task undertaken by Andrew Solomon in Far And Away, a collection of travel writing and reportage spanning 25 years and some 23 countries, is more than the urge to document and bear … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: September 2 WELLINGTON STORE 1 The Sympathizer (Corsair, $28) by Viet Thanh Nguyen This powerful novel, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, has been in the top 10 for months, and now climbs to number one in both of Unity’s stores. Word … Read more
New verse by Jungian therapist and writer Michael Harlow. The late news This little boy with his new number-one haircut, his heart full of surprise, clutching his end-of-the-year report card to his chest, crossing High Street for the last time—without looking both ways His black and white dog, her snappy tail on fast forward … Read more
Mary Macpherson reviews a massive new photography book devoted to the subject of loving, hating, joyous, miserable families. Take a deep breath before diving into this book. The bitter-sweet experience of family life is laid bare in over 300 photographs across nearly 40 portfolios. The trumpeting of quantity is part of the Photography Now series marketing … Read more
A tribute to writer Russell Haley by Ian Wedde. For Jean and Ian Haley Russell Haley died in the morning on July 4. It may seem inappropriate to follow this by saying that he was the funniest man I’ve ever met, but it feels right. You can’t be as funny as Russell was without being … Read more
Last Monday we ran a piece by Joan Druett on her new biography of 19th century sea captain William ‘Bully’ Hayes, who roamed the Pacific and New Zealand. Michael Field was among those who were concerned that it failed to properly address Hayes’s involvement in ‘blackbirding’; we asked him to write an essay in response … Read more
The best-seller chart at Unity Books for the week just ended: August 26 AUCKLAND STORE 1 White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (Text, $37) Geoff Dyer Reliably unreliable narratives. 2 Things That Matter: Stories of Life & Death from an Intensive Care Specialist (Allen & Unwin, $37) by Dr David Galler Op lit. 3 The Girls (Chatto & … Read more
To mark National Poetry Day, Steve Braunias reveals his correspondence with one of the world’s most celebrated poets. A few weeks ago I thought: hm I know, let’s see if any of the world’s most well-known living poets will write a poem for the Spinoff Review of Books. I drew up a list and got in … Read more
Steve Braunias runs deep surveillance on the judges of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Here come de judge! A dozen of them, as the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards today announces the “12 eminent academics, writers, journalists, librarians, curators, commentators and booksellers” who will judge next year’s awards. Writers who are eligible … Read more
Stephen Daisley will speak in Christchurch and Dunedin this weekend about his novel Coming Rain, which won the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards book of the year. But is it actually any good? Owen Marshall slips on his gown and his powdered wig, and passes judgment. The strongest and best expressed relationships in Stephen Daisley’s award-winning … Read more
Craig Sisterson interviews exciting new crime writer Ray Berard, a hot favourite to win one or even two Ngaio Marsh Awards in Christchurch this weekend. The giant driver of the battered Bluebird didn’t need to screech the tyres or slam the door to announce his presence as he parked on Pukuatua Street in Rotorua. Unfolding himself from … Read more
Linda Burgess examines the case of American novelist Cathleen Schine, who seems more famous for leaving New Yorker film critic David Denby for another woman than she does as a writer who is adored by Meg Worlitzer and Alison Lurie. One of the things you can judge a book by are the author’s acknowledgements. If … Read more
New verse by Wellington writer Jenny Bornholdt Time We woke to spring nuzzling at the window. Winter’s passed, like last night’s hail in the gin. Frozen puddle in the freezer a reminder; like our son’s placenta, still there after eleven years— us frozen by indecision, which tree and where? Sons grown to men. One … Read more
Steve Braunias leads a special Spinoff investigation into fresh claims that 1971 was the greatest year in music ever. David Hepworth makes the fairly audacious but sustained and kind of also really persuasive argument in his new book 1971: Never A Dull Moment that 1971 was the greatest year in the history of popular music. … Read more
Saradha Koirala reviews two teen novels which both deal with girls who have “survived something horrific at the hands of a male classmate”. I will talk literature with anyone who’ll listen. Most recently the ones listening have been clinical psychologists. And yes, I’m sure it’s all very Freudian that my mum and my partner share … Read more
Nick Bollinger reviews What Happened Miss Simone?, the biography of black American singer and activist, Nina Simone. If music is some kind of social barometer, then America is brewing a civil war. It would be hard to find a significant hip-hop or R&B record in the past year that hasn’t raised its voice in anger … Read more
An excerpt taken from the introduction to Dad Goes to the Movies (1941), a World War II diary edited and published by Auckland writer Jaq Tweedie, the daughter of serviceman Les Tweedie. Everything has a beginning and an end, and when I was young I was mostly interested in how things started. I knew my … Read more
Tim Upperton reviews a new collection of essays by Wellington writer Ashleigh Young. Some essayists shine a torch in the darkness, and propose a way forward. Another kind of essayist – the Ashleigh Young kind – whispers, “We are lost, we are lost. Let’s try this way,” and, taking us by the hand, leads us deeper … Read more
An essay by Talia Marshall, taken from her readings of two books published by Bridget Williams – the award-winning Tangata Whenua, and the condensed version, The First Migration: Māori Origins 3000BC-AD1450. 800 years ago, give or take a century, Kupe chased the giant octopus Te Wheke o Muturangi across the vast Pacific ocean away from Hawaiki … Read more
A tribute to the great illustrator Peter Gossage by whanau member and author Paula Morris. Peter Gossage died last weekend. He was not quite 70 years old, but he’d been ill for a long time. I last saw him in late May, at my cousin Tilly’s tangi up at Omaha marae; he was frail, wrapped in … Read more