Book of the Week: Matt Vance reviews an investigation into “the freaks, maniacs and the greed-addled madmen” who obsessively collect, plunder and steal bird specimens. What is it about birds and obsessives? Birds, like no other animal, seem to bring out the freaks, maniacs and the greed-addled madmen of infinite detail. In June 2009, Edwin … Read more
He viewed Greymouth as “sub-human”, rather wished James K Baxter would STFU, and regarded the poetry of “plump and round” Bill Manhire as “promising”. A new book shares the 1968 diary of Landfall founder Charles Brasch. January 25, 1968 Jim [Baxter] talks so continuously because he is driven all the time by his need to put his … Read more
The week’s best-sellers at the Unity Books stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 New Animals by Pip Adam (Victoria University Press, $30) As winner of the Acorn Prize for fiction, at the recent 2018 Ockham New Zealand national book awards, Adam pocketed $50,000; last week, she did a grand better, … Read more
George Henderson gets to grips with the subject of New Zealand’s white, lucrative, high-fat, glutenous gold: milk. There is probably no food that tests our individual tolerance as much as milk. Personally, I can’t stand the stuff, yet I love some of its products. If you’re gluten intolerant or allergic to wheat, you just avoid that … Read more
Christchurch writer Amy Head on the setting for her new novel – Rotoroa, an island near Waiheke, where the Salvation Army ran a rehab centre for alcoholics. When I first learned about Rotoroa, an island east of Waiheke where the Salvation Army ran a rehabilitation facility between 1911 and 2005 (known early on as an … Read more
As the deadline fast approaches for entries to the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency In Association With The Spinoff Award, Wairarapa essayist and 2017 winner John Summers presents his diary of the prize – a five-night stay in Grey Lynn’s Surrey Hotel. I arrive overdressed. I got up at 5:30am, and wore my overcoat … Read more
David Harbourne travels to an unlikely destination for award-winning wines – the dry, frosty Waitaki Valley, near Kurow in North Otago. The Pasquale Winery is just east of Kurow, a small town in the Waitaki valley. Vines have been planted on a bed of silt and shingle next to the river, each row supported by … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Warlight: A Novel by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape, $35) “It’s as if WG Sebald wrote a Bond novel”: ludicrous statement, The Guardian. 2 Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown and Company, $35) “Arthur Less and Andrew Sean Greer are handsome … Read more
Claire Mabey gave birth to a 34-week-old golden-haired boy in Wellington last week. She also found the time to review a heartbreaking novel about the death of a baby. The writing of this review of Kate Duignan’s novel The New Ships got hijacked half-way by early onset pre-term labour and the arrival of my first born. A … Read more
Serena Benson was the grand winner of the 2017 Surrey Hotel writers residency award in association with the Spinoff. Here she writes about the project she worked on at the Surrey – a chronicle of her drug addiction nightmare. After seven years in recovery, I’ve mustered up the courage to chronicle my journey into addiction … Read more
Apply now for the 2018 writers residency award at the Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Applications are open RIGHT NOW BRO for the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency In Association With The Spinoff Award. New Zealand literature’s coolest writing residency offers cash, accommodation, and pizza. The singularly appealing Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn … Read more
This week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 The New Animals by Pip Adam (Victoria University Press, $30) We actually took out the final, over-egged sentence in Brannavan Gnanalingam’s review on Tuesday but we’ll restore it here: “It’s a masterpiece.” 2 The New Ships … Read more
In the latest in our occasional series which look for signs of literary life in the regions, Kerry Sunderland studies Nelson – and talks to an author whose book is being filmed right this second, in Prague, by some guy called Taika Waititi. Two words: Maurice Gee. Of course literature exists in Nelson; New Zealand’s … Read more
Pip Adam won the Acorn Prize for best novel of the year at the recent 2018 Ockham New Zealand national book awards. Is her book actually any good? Readable? Likeable? Brannavan Gnanalingam – a losing finalist – makes his assessment of her story about fashion hags and bustling millennials on K Road. I held my breath while … Read more
No other road in New Zealand is as rich in history, suffering, war, immigration, hope and hard, hard work as the Great South Road that joins Auckland to the Waikato. Scott Hamilton walked its length and felt its pulse. For the last five years I’ve travelled the Great South Road. My journeys have been spasmodic, erratic, circuitous. They began when … Read more
New verse by Wellington writer Jane Arthur, who pocketed $5000 last week as winner of the 2018 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. Keanu is afraid I am afraid of the dark. But I mean that in a real philosophical way. – Keanu Reeves Keanu must seek out the light. The dark makes him feel so afraid: it’s … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The New Animals by Pip Adam (Victoria University Press, $30) Winner of the Acorn Prize for best novel of the year at last week’s 2018 Ockham New Zealand national book awards. So how come The Spinoff … Read more
Broadcaster Kim Hill reviews the year’s most sensational memoir of family dysfunction, violence, apocalyptic visions, and survival. Memoirs are by their nature spoilers. We know already that the author survived trials and hardship because here’s the book. And so many now: since the modern “misery-memoir” genre (happiness writes white, after all) was boosted in part … Read more
Neil Young, our man in London, reports on Hera Lindsay Bird’s appearance last week at the coolest bookstore belonging to the coolest literary magazine in the English-speaking world. A bowl of cold spaghetti hoops was on the kitchen table. Meghan Markle was on the TV with the sound off. In three days’ time I was … Read more
Auckland – glassy, dusty, unfinished, trying its best – is captured in a new art book by Wellington photographer Mary Macpherson. Big, vibrant, empty, fucked-up, under-construction Auckland. The city looms and loiters in a beautiful new art book – and exhibition, at The Pah Homestead – by Mary Macpherson, a Wellington photographer. “With its fly-overs, by-passes, and often shambolic orchestration of … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 New Ships by Kate Duignan (Victoria University Press, $30) New Zealand novel, praised to the skies this week on National Radio; the Spinoff Review of Books looks forward to the forthcoming review by Claire Mabey. 2 … Read more
A new book of translated Māori verse joins Taika Waititi “in his calling out of language laziness”. So why were the authors ignored by a literary festival looking for new voices? An essay by the book’s co-editor, Vana Manasiadis. Tātai Whetū means constellation of stars. It also means tongue twister. In Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women … Read more
Amy Goldstein wanted to know what happened to the ordinary people impacted by the GFC. Ahead of her Auckland Writers Festival appearance, chaired by Toby Manhire, she tells Duncan Greive about the extraordinary book she wrote about the fallout after GM shut its oldest manufacturing plant. By June of 2008 the global financial crisis had been … Read more
This week’s Ockham New Zealand national book awards marks the 50th anniversary of book awards in New Zealand. To mark the occasion, we asked 50 experts – authors, publishers, academics, booksellers – to name the very best local books published since 1968. And the winner is Plumb. Maurice Gee’s 1979 novel was almost immediately regarded … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster, $50) “This is a very uncool opinion among journalists, but I actually quite enjoyed Clinton’s book. It’s a cautionary tale about how far even the most accomplished women … Read more
Marion McLeod reviews the new memoir by English novelist Rose Tremain, who summons up memories of a girls’ boarding school smelling of “unwashed armpits, dirty hair and menstrual blood.” It’s not strictly relevant, I know, but 10 years ago I interviewed Rose Tremain at her flat in Tufnell Park. I liked her enormously, and not only because she … Read more
The fifth – and final – instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here, part two here, part three here and part four here. April 12, 2:39am I’m back from the dead. The thought struck me today with almost a physical force when I … Read more
“Good sex is feminist sex,” claims Laura Borrowdale, editor of the Aotearotica journal of erotic writing. Reading erotica is one of the fastest ways to see the breadth of humanity and the Aotearotica slush pile holds it all. I can say that with authority, because, as editor, I sit at my kitchen table and read every piece … Read more
An excerpt from Pip Desmond’s best-selling memoir about her mother’s descent into dementia. I read about a hairdresser who had three customers pass away under the hairdryer; she took it as a compliment that they’d felt relaxed enough to do so. That could have been Mum. She had been going to David’s hair salon in Wadestown once … Read more