The best-selling books at the two best bookstores on shore. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Leaders Like You: New Zealand Leaders Share Stories of Courage by Nick Sceats & Andrea Thompson (Catapult Publishing, $40) Inspirational ra-ra PR. 2 La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman (David Fickling Books, $35) Pullman! The master returns with … Read more
Lara Strongman declares that Fiona Farrell’s novel about post-quake Christchurch is a work of art. When everything collapses, some people behave with dignity and kindness, while others steal the gates. Fiona Farrell has an elderly Italian woman say this, or at least think it to herself, one night in bed in a sleepout crammed with … Read more
An essay about race, immigration, and KFC by Sri Lankan-born, Hutt Valley-raised novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam. On our way to New Zealand in 1986, we stopped at Singapore Airport. In this of all places, my dad bumped into his brother, whom he hadn’t seen for years. We were going to a new life in New Zealand. … Read more
A memoir of the end of a marriage by playwright Renée. At the age of 50, Otaki author Renée started to write the plays that made her one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed writers. Her focus was on creating work that put women centre stage. Now, at 88, she has written a memoir; it tells … Read more
The best-selling books at the best two bookstores beneath the Sun. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Goodbye Māoriland: Songs & Sounds of NZ’s Great War by Chris Bourke (Auckland University Press, $60) Fabulous new social and cultural history by the author of Blue Smoke. “An impeccably researched account of the influence of music in World War One – … Read more
An essay by Sam Gaskin – with GIFs! – about his old friend and now superstar author Jenny Zhang. In the summer of 2016 Jenny Zhang and I went to Coney Island for a swim. It was overcast, too windy to even face the ocean, but we stripped down to our swimsuits anyway. She tried … Read more
Danyl McLauchlan reviews the new election memoir by baffled sore loser Hillary Clinton. What did Hillary Clinton do after losing the election to Donald Trump? Pretty much what you’d expect: she cried; she prayed; she read books and poems (inevitably by Maya Angelou); she watched movies with her husband; did yoga with her personal instructor; … Read more
Philip Temple reviews a mammoth volume of journals by Landfall founder Charles Brasch – and recalls a harrowing poetry reading which starred a blind man, a Scotsman, and a drunkard. Charles Brasch is principally remembered for founding Landfall in 1947 and, by editing it for nearly 20 years, his profound influence on the course of … Read more
The year’s biggest literary prize – the Man Booker award – is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Louise O’Brien on Ali Smith’s Autumn, and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Unsurprisingly, at least two of the books which made it to the Booker … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in Aotearoa. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, $45) Number one for the second consecutive week; this family memoir is the book to get right now. “Those familiar with Wichtel’s television reviews and features at … Read more
The year’s biggest literary prize, the Man Booker award, is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Linda Burgess reviews Fiona Mozley’s Elmet, and History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. At 29, Fiona Mozley is the youngest writer on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. … Read more
The year’s biggest literary prize – the Man Booker award – is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Philip Matthews on Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1, and the favourite to win, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. What did Paul Auster … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the North Island. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, $45) “I’m privileged to have known Diana for over 15 years as a colleague and a friend. In the early days, she told me a bit … Read more
Margo White reviews Driving to Treblinka, a Holocaust memoir by the widely adored magazine writer Diana Wichtel. Diana Wichtel remembers being told by her Uncle Sy, some 50 years ago, “never forget you are a Wichtel”. Those familiar with Wichtel’s television reviews and features at the Listener will know her for the quality of her … Read more
Gemma Gracewood follows New Zealand essayist and poet Ashleigh Young as she appears at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York. In February, Ashleigh Young received the phone call of a lifetime telling her she had won a massive cash prize for being a great writer. Now it’s September and she is in America to … Read more
From a new anthology of bird writing in New Zealand, the great naturalist Herbert Guthrie-Smith describes the introduction of a bird known by all: the sparrow. This excerpt is from his classic 1921 book Tutira. In October of 1882, a month, that is, after our arrival at Tutira, a small flight of sparrows rested for a … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best book stores above ground. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Out of the Woods: Journey Through Depression & Anxiety by Brent Williams, illustrated by Öztekin Korkut (Educational Resources, $40) A memoir of surviving family violence by the son of a Wellington philanthropist. 2 Cities In NZ: Preferences Patterns & Possibilities edited … Read more
The hotly-anticipated film version of Margaret Mahy’s novel The Changeover opens in cinemas today. Scarlett Cayford examines the peculiar genius of Mahy, and compares the film with the book. I associate Margaret Mahy with colour; I suspect I’m not the only one. Part of the reason is the rainbow wig she wore to all her readings, … Read more
Michael Botur shares his experience with running a Boosted campaign to publish his sci-fi novel. This is the story of how I went about trying to crowdfund my latest novel. If I get enough donations, I’ll shortly wrap up a crowdfunding campaign to self-publish a kickass young adult novel. Moneyland is a YA dystopian sci-fi … Read more
An excerpt from Colin Hogg’s new book The High Road: A Journey to the New Frontier of Cannabis, in which he and his mate Bruce travelled to the US for a tour of legally available dope. Today’s big event is the Budz and Sudz Grow and Dispensary Tour. There’s a big neon noticeboard behind the reception … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores known to science. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903 by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press, $40) “Wellington is revealed as grim, filthy, dangerous to health, and yet, in the course of this idiosyncratic mix of biography and memoir, Yska transforms the terrain into … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reviews A Strange Beautiful Excitement, Redmer Yska’s superb telling of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood and teenage years in Wellington. Samuel Revans, who died in 1888, the year Katherine Mansfield was born, was an enthusiastic promoter for the New Zealand Company. His handbills were distributed in London and went in for a fantastic degree of license, … Read more
Who wrote the novel about a vain, womanising, and corrupt New Zealand political party leader? Who wrote The Spin? In 1996, now-extinct publishers Hodder Moa Beckett copied the idea of Primary Colors, a steamy, silly, best-selling novel of American political life by Anonymous, and rushed out The Spin, a steamy, silly, okay-selling novel of New … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in creation. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The New Zealand Project by Max Harris (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Max! 2 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, $26) “Blessed be the fruit”: Atwood’s sci-fi vision of America as the deeply fucked-up republic of Gilead. 3 Swing Time by Zadie … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books is devoted to poetry in the build-up to the Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday. Yesterday we ran an essay by Helen Hogan, editor of 1970s anthologies of poetry by New Zealand college students; today, an essay by distinguished poet Andrew Johnston, who Hogan published when he … Read more
Every day this week the Spinoff Review of Books is publishing a new poem in the build-up to the Phantom Billstickers national poetry day on Friday. Today: ‘Ascend’ by Bart English Ascend Inspired by Maya Angelou’s “A caged bird” I look Up at the sky And wish that I could fly, To grow … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books devotes itself to poetry in the build-up to Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday. Today: an essay by the remarkable Helen Hogan, who brought poetry to a generation of young New Zealanders. In 1971, I edited an anthology of New Zealand poetry for secondary school … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores known to God. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903 by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press, $40) Brilliant retracing of KM’s footsteps when she lived in Wellington. Charlotte Grimshaw’s review is due to run in The Spinoff Review of Books any day now. 2 A Moral … Read more
An essay by Carl Shuker in response to the shoddy response of most reviewers to the new novel by Wellington writer Pip Adam. Why, he simmers, are so many New Zealand critics so lazy, so patronising, so cheerfully ignorant, and just plain wrong? The finest piece of writing in New Zealand fiction this century happened and you … Read more