Legendary playwright Roger Hall pays tribute to the great satirist John Clarke, whose posthumous book Tinkering has been a runaway best-seller this summer. When my 1998 memoir Bums on Seats was due to published, I had the nerve to ask John Clarke if he would write an introduction. He did so, offering a lengthy, elaborate … Read more
The third instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here and part two here. January 16, 3:27am I set off on my pilgrimage to the oncology clinic in the spirit of my first day at school, with associated nerves and too much baggage … Read more
Spinoff literary editor Steve Braunias surveys the current state of payments for book reviewing in New Zealand. As literary editor of the Spinoff Review of Books, I think about important new books, and about brilliant, thoughtful reviewers, but mostly I think about money. The budget is tight. I crouch over the pennies like a miser, … Read more
A dramatic excerpt from a new memoir by Dave Greenberg from the Westpac rescue helicopter service. Includes kicker. I was off flying duty but at work catching up on paperwork when around lunchtime the helicopter was called out for an urgent transfer of a patient. About 35 minutes later, ambulance control called asking if our backup … Read more
The week’s best-selling titles at Unity Books in Auckland and Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) “Here it is, the encyclopedia of Trump the Idiot all in one compendium”: Forbes. 2 Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (Hachette, $22) Sci-fi. 400 years from now mankind … Read more
Two refugees are shut in a small cage and fed through a hole in the wires: Stephanie Johnson reviews The Cage, the claustrophobic, dystopian novel by Lloyd Jones. The back cover blurb for The Cage describes the contents as “a profound and unsettling fable”. It’s a little-known fact that very often writers themselves pen these descriptions … Read more
Dunedin journalist Helen Speirs investigates a controversy swirling around Robbie Burns. Robert “Robbie” Burns, Scotland’s national poet, feted worldwide, author of “Auld Lang Syne”, commemorated in Dunedin with a handsome statue overlooking the Octagon, one of the immortals of literature – and, now, accused as a “sex pest”, a rapist, “Weinsteinian”. Scottish poet Liz Lochhead has unleashed a storm … Read more
Today is Valentine’s Day but for two very rich authors, every day is a day for romance. Nicholas Sparks and Danielle Steel go head-to-head in a battle for the trashy romance crown. Ten year old me browsed the books tables at the school fair. At 3pm, stalls were winding down and the tired volunteer mums … Read more
Amanda Robinson meets five Auckland writers who are stunningly good at a much-derided art form – spoken word poetry. Perhaps the most cringeworthy phrase in all the arts, the one that makes everyone recoil, including most poets, is “spoken word poetry”. But when it’s good, when a poem reading ends and you realise you’ve been … Read more
The high priest of New Zealand non-fiction, Martin Edmond, reveals the curious genesis of his latest book. One day in the summer of 2013 I received a letter from James McNeish. He said he had a proposition to put to me – but that I would have to go to Wellington to find out what … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in Auckland and Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) The Wolff who cried, “Oh boy!” 2 The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young (Faber, $23) “The author has deep faith in cows having individual personalities … Read more
New verse by Dunedin writer Michael Hall. After… The organs begin shutting down is there a panic in the body’s house – a few resigned to stay like, in war, before the rat-a-tat advancement merely miles away of the grey enemy a hasty packing someone saying leave the piano, leave it another sits, … Read more
‘The world is divided into two principles: order and chaos. Order is male and chaos is female.’ Danyl Mclauchlan investigates the strange philosophy of number one best-selling author and thinker Jordan B Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life. Professor Jordan B Peterson is having a moment. I’d never heard of him – such is the … Read more
Author Paula Morris, who hosts Nigella Lawson live onstage at the Aotea Centre tonight, shares her own cooking journey. When I moved to England in 1985, to study at the University of York, I couldn’t cook. Not a single thing. I hadn’t learned much at home because my mother disliked cooking and couldn’t stand anyone … Read more
Rachel Stewart reviews the bovine love letter, The Secret Life of Cows. Even though I’m likely New Zealand’s harshest critic of modern dairy farming, I’ve always enjoyed the company of cows. I’ve worked with them for years. And played with them. And frolicked in the grass with them. And slept with them. As a kid … Read more
An excerpt from Tinderbox, the new memoir by Wellington writer Megan Dunn. One night shift at Borders Islington the alarm on the ground floor went off just after 8pm and a bum stumbled out of the fire doors in a brown corduroy suit. “What were you doing?” I asked. “That area is for staff only.” … Read more
The best-selling books of the week at Unity Books in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) All-gorilla TV, all the time, and other revelations. 2 The Cage by Lloyd Jones (Penguin, $38) We look forward to Stephanie Johnson’s forthcoming review. 3 … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews a new collection of letters by Sylvia Plath – most written to her mother, whom she both loved and loathed. So much has been written about Sylvia Plath that reading her letters involves a continual reference beyond them, to all that’s known about her life. As I grappled with this enormous, hardcover book, … Read more
Philip Matthews on the Alanis Morrissette of literature – yelping, abrasive 90s has-been Martin Amis. The 1990s come flooding back as you read The Rub of Time, a collection of essays, features and reviews by Martin Amis. It’s so 90s it should require a soundtrack by Alanis Morissette or the Cranberries. Was there ever a more 90s … Read more
The best-selling books at Unity Books in Auckland and Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) 2 Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37) 3 The Power by Naomi Alderman (Penguin, $26) 4 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by … Read more
Poet Hera Lindsay Bird talks to Megan Dunn, author of a brilliantly funny new memoir about working at a failed bookstore while experiencing a failed marriage and making a failed attempt to write a novel. I first met Megan Dunn the year after I had graduated from a writing programme and had to emerge back into reality … Read more
Vincent O’Sullivan assesses the 1957 Chrysler of New Zealand writing, Allen Curnow, the subject of a 700-page biography by the late Terry Sturm. “A big one.” It’s a phrase you’ll come across several times in reading Allen Curnow. It could be a fish caught off Kare Kare, a talent another writer didn’t have, an implied assessment … Read more
Han Kang won the international Booker Prize for her depressing novel The Vegetarian. Her follow-up, The White Book, is even bleaker, writes Wyoming Paul. A 22-year-old woman has given birth to a premature baby girl, alone in her house in a remote area, with no way to call either her husband or a doctor. During the birth she … Read more
A charming extract from a new book on the great 19th century naturalist Henry Suter. In December 1896, Hugo Schauinsland, director of a newly opened natural history museum in Bremen, travelled to New Zealand and called on Suter at his home in Christchurch. Schauinsland provided him with his desiderata and Suter did his best to … Read more
The second instalment of Peter Wells’ diary of life with cancer, republished from his private Facebook with permission. Read part one here. December 12, 1:56am The humility of my condition. It’s only when I approach the cancer clinic I see all the other wanderers and strays either coming away or walking in the same direction. … Read more
An essay by Catherine Robertson, author of the wildly entertaining novel Gabriel’s Bay, on the problems some critics have with ‘women’s fiction’. Two years ago, I reviewed a truly terrible novel. I managed to find one positive thing to say about it, but the bulk of the review was not complimentary. The author wrote to … Read more
RIP Buster Stiggs. The legend who played in New Zealand’s first punk band, Suburban Reptiles, and later with his old schoolmate Phil Judd in The Swingers, died this month aged 63. In 2016 we excerpted a memoir in progress that he wrote for Phantom Billstickers magazine Café Reader. We reprint it below. Hastings Boys isn’t … Read more
Scott Hamilton’s The Stolen Island is an investigation into the people-snatching raid on the Tongan island of ‘Ata in 1863. In this excerpt, he writes about visiting ‘Eua, the island where the survivors of the raid were re-settled. This story was first published 27 February 2017. In 2013, I took a group of students on … Read more
Hera Lindsay Bird talks with George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo, the stand-out novel of 2017. This story was first published on 8 May 2017. I first started reading George Saunders because someone told me to. I don’t always read what other people tell me to read, because there are only so many unhappy … Read more