A Sky Full of Fire

A Sky Full of Fire, by Sarah Ell

Alice and her ‘Aunt Hen’ arrive at our very own wonder of the world, the Pink and White Terraces, in 1886, as the mountain prepares its worst beneath them. Hen is hiding under her large hat shrouded with tulle and showing jaunty rings, a dramatic touch, suggesting someone not recently bereaved but in communion with the dead. Indeed she is a charlatan, playing psychic tricks on paying customers and hiding behind her fakery. Alice is escaping the life of a working girl in Melbourne. Despite her horrible past she is beautiful and savvy, with a kind heart for fellow sufferers. She deserves better than Hen. They are not the only tricky characters in Tarawera in the days before the mountain erupts. Another newcomer, Cyprian Marsh, has been on Alice’s trail from Australia.

Continue reading “A Sky Full of Fire”

One Day a Taniwha–book review

One Day a Taniwha, by Tīhema Baker

I was in the car listening to Pip Adam’s conversation with Tīhema Baker on Better off Read, Episode 162 and he sounded so brilliant I had to make a stop to buy the book. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a hard-hitting novel and very good, though I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone (read on…)

Our narrator of One Day a Taniwha, Hepa, has a terrific literary voice. He had me exhausted, tearful, commiserative, frustrated, angry, all of those both with him and for him. Baker sure knows how to tuck you under the wing of his character and take you along for the emotional ride, all told like a mate spilling the heartfelt beans into your compassionate ear. He’s going through shit, but trusts that you’ll be there for him. He’s not ranting into the void. He’s talking to you.

Continue reading “One Day a Taniwha–book review”

The Other Catherine – book review

The Other Catherine, by Lauren Keenan

Lauren Keenan (Te Ātiawa ki Taranaki) is making a name for herself writing strong women’s stories of our past told from alternating Māori and Pakeha viewpoints. Both The Other Catherine and her previous novel, The Space Between, follow this device. It soon becomes clear that, though the lives of these women from the outside may appear very different, their lived experiences have distinct similarities. They struggle, love and fear, find joy in small things, have unfulfilled desires and hope for a better future. Throw these experiences into a colonial context: women’s lack of agency and political power, poor sanitation and health, hard work and lives dependent on the mercy of men, and you’ll find a compelling story.

Continue reading “The Other Catherine – book review”

Mother Mary Comes To Me – book review

Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Arundhati Roy

Anyone who fell in love with The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy, will be drawn to Mother Mary Comes to Me, to understand how she could write such an extraordinary novel. This is her memoir, and just as bold and in-your-face as fiction, with the drama of Indian life, the outsized personalities, the confusion, the heat, the colour, the overwhelming sense of chaos that seems to define life on the subcontinent. The feeling that your life isn’t yours to own – just by being a woman in India you are liable for so much to so many.

In Roy’s case the overwhelming suffocating feeling of debt is to her mother. Bloody hell. Mothers!

Continue reading “Mother Mary Comes To Me – book review”

Ministry for the Future

Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson has gone into the future for us, and things are as we all, surely, anticipate. The world is burning and flooding and we are wiping species from the planet with aplomb. We have soiled the bed. Civilisation, basically, has fucked itself. This is not so much a catastrophe story (though it certainly begins that way), but a genuine and extraordinary exploration at what we might do afterwards to save what is left before the apocalypse.

I can see why Barack Obama called it his book of the year for 2020. Maybe if it had been published before he left office he might have kick-started a better response, instead of kicking the can up the road so future current numpties could blow it up. In Ministry for the Future the disaster of climate change somehow doesn’t (as we’re praying) miraculously come right by itself but escalates at an alarming rate. Who’d have thought? The UN sets up a ‘Ministry For the Future’, a body protecting the rights of future citizens from known harms committed by their ancestors. That’s us. The après moi le déluge generation. What a brilliant scenario.

Continue reading “Ministry for the Future”

Sophie, Standing There

Sophie, Standing There, by Meg Mason

It’s a dull title, but apt. Sophie stands there a lot, waiting around for people to need her. I thought Meg Mason’s previous novel, Sorrow and Bliss was a terrifically clever (and dare I say funny in the context of mental illness?) description of an awkward, dysfunctional woman. I loved it. I felt such sympathy for the character. But my God. Sophie. There’s nothing particularly funny in this story, not funny haha, not funny peculiar, not funny clever, which is a shame as Meg Mason is absolutely capable of all three. But if you’re feeling down and enjoy a bit of schadenfreude to cheer you up, Sophie’s your girl.

Continue reading “Sophie, Standing There”

Whistler – book reveiw

Whistler, by Ann Patchett

I was over a third of the way through this book and asking myself, what’s with the horse on the cover? My God, Ann Patchett is an incredibly clever writer. I’m a huge fan: The Dutch House, Tom Lake, State of Wonder are all big favourites of mine. Whistler is the best of all of them. Don’t worry about the horse. The horse will come back.

Continue reading “Whistler – book reveiw”

George is on the way

George, a novel by Cristina Sanders

It’s no secret that George Grey is the subject of my next historical novel and I’m not at all embarrassed to say that I have dipped into the speculative realm to give him a bit of swag.

Bateman Books have taken George on, and I’ve sent the final (final final final) proofs off today. Hooray! I let George have an early read. He liked it.  The rest of you will have to wait until February.

A Waiter in Paris – book review

A Waiter in Paris, by Edward Chisholm

Paris is a city of illusion, according to Chisholm in his brilliant memoir, A Waiter in Paris. He dives into its dark side. Nonetheless, he does the city no harm at all. The long hours, grim streets and all-night bars throw a bohemian romance over all the misery as if the behind-the-scenes exploitation and squalor he describes are a necessary background patina to the bright lights above. Think Moulin Rouge and the painted girls dying of consumption. What’s a star without night?

Continue reading “A Waiter in Paris – book review”

Land – book review

Land, by Maggie O’Farrell

Firstly, what an incredibly beautiful cover! The colours of rich earth and moody sky and deep wells in the Irish landscape that a reader might fall into and never find their way back as happened to several characters in this book, though we’ll never really know why. This is a novel dripping with the mist of superstitions, damp with hidden meanings, fractured with the bones of ancestors lying under the soil. A worthy successor to Hamnet, then, and absolutely ripe for those happy to believe in the hocus pocus of sacred springs and gollum-like fish. Judging by book sales, that’s a great many of us. ‘Give me the ring, it says’ (the fish).

Continue reading “Land – book review”