Extract: In a new book about censored letters in New Zealand, the author tells the strange story of a German woman who dressed as a man and may have established a “lesbian network”. Letter from Katherine Early to Hjelmar Dannevill, November 1915 I don’t know whether it will be possible to see you again, I … Read more
New verse from Syrian-New Zealand poet and high schooler Mohamed Al Mansour. In Lebanon I had a big football team, twenty-three players and two captains. My two best friends in the team were Ali Ahmad and Mohamed. Ali Ahmad is fast and Mohamed is tall. We played in the same place every time. The ground … Read more
Foxton author Anne Hunt backgrounds the legal challenges she faced when she published her book about a woman who accused her therapist of rape. Content warning: suicidal ideation and rape My 2003 book Broken Silence was published too long ago to capture a readership mesmerised by the complexities of the #MeToo movement. It documented the … Read more
A series of haiku by Twitter bard Uther Dean. Haiku Sue tore up her will, Drank the serum. Fuck the kids. She’d live forever. * My latest mantra: ‘None of this is important. You have enough love.’ * My man-size pillow Has a single hand to hold And a … Read more
New work by Fern Flat poet Sugar Magnolia Wilson. Spent The night sky is full of stars but we are more clever than most – we know they are just burned bones. Nothing beautiful – not space sailors blown from their ships – the light from treasure quickly grasped in … Read more
New poetry by Semira Davis. Into the garden come into the garden where your mother and uncle lean the bamboo corpses into triangle arches for the beans the garden where the earth reads your palm and the life line the love line the heart line are dirty and mud come into the garden and … Read more
The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 best-seller list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in Willis St, Wellington and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, $33) “I read a few pages of the Sally Rooney book. It may say … Read more
Jeremy Hansen pays tribute to author Peter Wells, who died yesterday – exactly a week after the launch of his final book, Hello Darkness, a memoir of living with his fatal illness. The past is a foreign country, especially if you were gay before the internet existed. In 1993 I was 23 years old and … Read more
The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 best-seller list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington – which today was confirmed as one of three bookshops in the world shortlisted for the prestigious The London Book Fair International Excellence … Read more
A poem by the great Fleur Adcock from her book Collected Poems, launched this week. Toads Let’s be clear about this: I love toads. So when I found our old one dying, washed into the drain by flood-water in the night and then – if I can bring myself to say it … Read more
We conclude our week-long examination of the poet James K Baxter, and a new book of his letters, with an essay by the poet’s great-grandson Jack McDonald about his Nana, Baxter’s wife, the author and Māori leader Jacquie Sturm. “I was minding a four-year-old great-grandson, and we went down to the beach. We made a … Read more
All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books revisits the great poet James K Baxter, on the occasion of a new book of letters. Today: CK Stead remembers Baxter, in this extract taken from his memoir in progress, South-East of Everywhere. Early in 1966 the Otago University Students’ Association invited me to Dunedin. I was to be there for … Read more
New poetry (untitled) by Wellington writer Gregory Kan. I thought that the things I loved were places I could always go back to but the spaces between things become places themselves and threaten to swallow me whole. I thought that knowing in just the right way would be enough to … Read more
The only published and available best-selling book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 best-seller list recorded every week at at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Samoan Queer Lives by Dan Tualapapa McMullin and Yuki Kihara (Little Island Press, $35) Edited and written by fa`afafine, who share … Read more
An essay in praise of Amazon by Kirsty Wright, a Southland erotic romance author who is ‘killing it’ thanks to sales generated by the online empire. Sarah Forster’s story in The Spinoff, headlined “In Which Amazon Goes to War with NZ Bookstores”, suggested Amazon is the enemy, taking money away from local brick and mortar … Read more
The only best-selling books chart published and available in New Zealand is the weekly top 10 chart recorded at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Fast 800 by Dr Michael Mosley (Simon & Schuster, $35) We look forward to AUT diet researcher George Henderson’s review next week at The Spinoff Review … Read more
Catherine Robertson’s latest novel What You Wish For has raced to the top of the best-seller charts – but what she really, really wants is to win a prize for being funny. There’s a writing prize I really want to win. When I say really, I mean reallyreallyreallyreally ad infinitum. It’s the Comedy Women in … Read more
An essay by Sarah Forster from Booksellers New Zealand about the threat that the Amazon-owned Book Depository poses to bookstores – and, ultimately, readers. Every time I tell somebody that Amazon owns Book Depository, they’re surprised, astonished, aghast. So let’s put that on the record. Amazon purchased Book Depository in 2011. And they’re here to … Read more
Every week on The Primer we ask a local business or product to introduce themselves in eight simple takes. This week we talk to Jo McColl about Unity Books Auckland’s new offshoot just down the road: children’s bookshop little Unity. ONE: How did little Unity start and what was the inspiration behind it? I’ve been longing … Read more
Maurice Gee – recently named the author of the best New Zealand book of the past 50 years – writes a memoir of the boy who had a dark, terrifying idea for a game: “You be a girl, eh, and I’ll be a man climbing in the window.” Content warning: This excerpt contains a threat of sexual violence. I doubt that … Read more
New verse by Wellington poet Tayi Tibble. Ode to Johnsonville’s Cindy Crawford 1. Once at a Jehovah’s Witness convention an old frightened man pleaded, Adrienne? Is that you? His face was a screwed-up ball of God-fearing agony and, accused, I blurted, No! I’m just her daughter! I remember the relief in his features; it was … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the two Unity stores. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) Fake news. 2 Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (Picador, $35) The book that got made into the movie. 3 Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Canongate, $23) … Read more
Guy Somerset compares the new novel by Jennifer Egan to Winona Ryder’s performance in Stranger Things. It’s not a compliment. Historical fiction is a friend to no novelist. As if the challenges and perils of writing a novel weren’t mountainous enough already: character, plot, place; voice, perspective, psychology; pace, shape, language; closely observed worlds — … 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
This week’s best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the world. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Profile Books, $23) Named one of the 20 best books of non-fiction of 2017 at the Spinoff Review of Books. 2 Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff (Little Brown, $38) … Read more
The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the Southern Hemisphere. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Drawn Out: A Seriously Funny Memoir by Tom Scott (Allen & Unwin, $45) Much is anecdotage, a life well-told, by the great cartoonist who reminds readers that he has also excelled as a playwright, film-maker, and TV script writer. 2 … Read more
Flash fiction writer Sandra Arnold on the time a hot air balloon ride went horribly wrong and could easily have gone a lot, lot worse. In 1992 one of my former students announced that he’d passed his pilot’s license exam, and wanted to thank all the teachers for helping him learn English and adjust to … Read more
Jane Westaway reviews CK Stead’s ‘thoroughly 21st century novel’ about intellectuals in Paris. Much action in the general run of literary fiction seems to be prompted by characters who make an awful mess of things. Consequently, about a third of the way in and if the writing is less than excellent, I find myself wanting … Read more
New verse by Northland writer Briar Wood. Kuramārōtini So the story goes that trickster Kupe cheated his friend into diving overboard to free the lines then paddled rapidly away. Some hoa. Best to know that legendary navigators take huge risks and do not make the safest companions. Ākuanei— she asked herself— … Read more