The best-selling books this week at the Unity Books stores in Willis St, Wellington and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 No One Home: A Boyhood Memoir in Letters & Poems by Keith Westwater (Makaro Press, $25) Publisher’s blurbology: “No One Home tells the story of Keith Westwater growing up in 1950s New Zealand. At … Read more
Steph Matuku reviews the new book by Parris Goebel – dancer, superstar, role model for Polynesian youth. Parris Goebel is so driven and motivated I had to read the book lying down just to catch my breath. Short story: realised at a very young age that she loved dance and dropped out of school at … Read more
Adi Leason tells the full, unlikely story of the Catholic activists who invaded the government’s surveillance station at Waihopi, and deflated its famous dome. It was after 5pm when Manu and I finally arrived in Picton. Sam and Father Peter were waiting for us in a rental car. We joked around about a last supper and … Read more
New verse by Wellington writer Claudia Jardine. The Vodka Rondeau In the spare room there is a bed below the mould and rusted red of the top flat’s hot water tank, which burst and made the room so rank that you can’t sleep there clear-headed. We are the deaded; few drinks bled … Read more
The week’s best selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey (Macmillan, $38) From the office of the President, tweet 1: “James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the … Read more
Elizabeth Knox – whose novel The Vintner’s Luck has been named by Spinoff readers as the best New Zealand book of the past 50 years – reaches into her sunhat and plucks out the name of a lucky winner in our amazing book prize. The Spinoff Review of Books recently published the entire list of … Read more
The week’s best-sellers at the Unity Books stores in Willis St, Wellington and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Plundering Beauty: A History of Art Crime During War by Arthur Tompkins (Lund Humphries UK, $70) “There is a surprising amount of art crime in New Zealand,” Tompkins recently said in an interview in Lawtalk, the … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books celebrates the rich, fascinating history of New Zealand literature. Today: Paula Green remembers Gloria Rawlinson, Auckland’s ‘famous young poet’ of the 1930s. Postscript by Steve Braunias. Gloria Rawlinson seemed old and frail in her wheelchair when I met her in the early 1990s. I was working at Auckland’s Art Gallery Bookshop, and … Read more
The best-selling books this Easter at the two Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Victoria University Press, $36) Essays edited by two lecturers in religious studies at Victoria University. Chapters include “Remembering Jesus … Read more
Stephanie Johnson luxuriates in the new Julian Barnes novel – a story of adultery which “wrestles with the deepest conflicts of human existence.” Julian Barnes may be seen as a leading exponent of the Hampstead novel. This is, in England, a pejorative term, even though great writers such as Margaret Drabble and Margaret Forster have … Read more
Anthony McCarten is nominated for Oscars and wins Baftas for the films he writes, such as The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour. The New Plymouth-raised writer is also a novelist with a devoted following in Germany. He reports from his latest tour. My book tour is nearing its end. The book I am touring has lost … Read more
We continue our occasional – and occasionally insanely depressing – series which investigates whether literature exists in the provinces. Becky Manawatu looks for signs of bookish life in Westport. The Buller Rural Education Activities Programme Hall on Henley Street in Westport smells like a church and is decked out with those wooden school chairs that force you … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores on Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand edited by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain (Victoria University Press, $40) Essays edited by two lecturers in religious studies at Victoria University. Chapters include “Remembering Jesus … Read more
Elizabeth Alley celebrates the latest novel by the masterly New Zealand writer Vincent O’Sullivan. Is there anyone else like Vincent O’Sullivan? His new novel traces several generations of a New Zealand family, from 1947 to 2004 with the brief, revealing return to 1938 at the book’s end; it opens as the novel’s over-arching character, Stephen, leaves … Read more
We continue our occasional series which investigates whether any literary activity exists in the provinces. David Hill reports from his “entombment” in Taranaki. A lot of authors born in Taranaki have left the province on a permanent basis, to become successful or dead. The successful ones are Anthony McCarten and Stuart Hoar from New Plymouth; Dinah Hawken, Gaelyn … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson (Pan MacMillian, $35) Number one! How come? 2 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (Allan Lane, $40) Famous people called Jordan: 1 Jordan B Peterson 2 … Read more
Linda Burgess reviews the biggest-selling book at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington in the weekend – Salt Fat Acid Heat, a cookbook like no other. At one of Samin Nosrat’s two sessions at the New Zealand Festival’s writers and readers festival in Wellington last weekend, Nosrat referred to herself as a stalker. This, she explained, was … Read more
New verse by Maraea Rakuraku, taken from a new anthology in English and te reo (translated by Jamie Cowell). when does it start? It’s not waving a flag, holding a banner, knowing what postcolonial theory means and when to use it, memorising quotes and lining them up like soldiers that are sent out in waves … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at Unity Books stores in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON 1 The Cage by Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books NZ, $38) “Two dishevelled strangers, perhaps fleeing a catastrophe, are given shelter in a hotel in a town in a country near enough to being New Zealand….Unsettling questions are raised by the story. Who watches … Read more
Michele A’Court grapples with an uncomfortable truth about the Rose McGowan memoir – it’s a diatribe that tells us how to think. It is a tricky thing to review a memoir, particularly one as dark as this. What you want to do is talk about the book – the writing, the storytelling, the structure and … Read more
Charlotte Graham-McLay talks to acclaimed Australian author Charlotte Wood – who is appearing at the New Zealand Festival this weekend – about sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and ‘angry women’. A journalist launches a national enquiry into sexual harassment and is accused of doing it “for clicks”. The Australian media decides to name the woman who … Read more
New Zealand fantasy writer Steffi Green interviews Charlie Jane Anders, author of the smash-hit novel All The Birds in the Sky, ahead of her appearances this weekend at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Like all literary genres, fantasy and science fiction are replete with common tropes. We love stories of sword-fights and space trekking … Read more
We reveal the shortlist of this year’s national book awards. Magazine writer Diana Wichtel, Wellington novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam and some other authors have made it onto the shortlist of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Spinoff Review of Books names these two authors straight off the bat and ahead of everyone else because we rate their … Read more
Spinoff literary editor Steve Braunias previews two big events – tomorrow’s announcement of the Ockham national book awards shortlist, and this weekend’s Writers and Readers programme at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Most weeks go by in the New Zealand literary scene without comment, without incident, without joy and triumph and alcoholic depravity. But … Read more
This week’s best-selling books at Unity Books in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 After Alexander: The Legacy of a Son by Jan Pryor (Heddon Publishing, $30) “The prologue in Jan Pryor’s memoir begins exactly 33 years to the day since her son died from cot death…The reader is drawn into the anguish of the … Read more
Craig Marriner was a nobody who won the 2002 book of the year award with his first novel Stonedogs, a raw, rough, street-wise tale of bogan life. His second novel sank without trace – and so did Marriner, who disappeared. He returns after a long absence with an evocation of life and literature in his … Read more
Mary Macpherson talks to a brilliant Texan photographer who makes portraits of men and the land in the disappearing American West. In the bulging shelves of our photobook collection, there’s a select area reserved for the most significant and deeply loved works. One of these books is a tall slim volume with a metal spine … Read more
For 20 years, the second Māori King, Tāwhiao, governed Rohe Pōtae (the King Country) as an independent state. Tāwhiao also sailed to London in an attempt to see the Queen; the mission is described in this extract from a new study of that 20-year reign. Going to London to see the Queen was a rare … Read more
New verse by Kaipara writer Sam Hunt. My eldest brother the Atheist died Waitangi Day. No word from him no sign in vision or dream. He’s gone and gone for good like he said he would. My other brother, Jonathan, may he finds what he lives for a Catholic hereafter … Read more