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, 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”London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe
Hard not to have The Clash in your head when reading this. Their iconic London Calling song was written some 30 years earlier, but I feel the same sense of urgency and high stakes: London is drowning / And I, I live by the river.
Radden Keefe’s London Falling from the outside looks like a cleverly constructed and wildly imaginative crime novel but in fact, is a meticulously researched and impeccable referenced true story of the Russian-financed underworld in London and a boy who gets sucked in.
Continue reading “London Falling —book review”The Heart in Winter, by Kevin Barry
This is an intense Irish love story. An absolute, classic gem of a love story. Our lovers, Tom Rourke and Polly Gillespie, are hapless, feckless and doomed right from the start, but their love never falters. I say it’s Irish because the writer is Irish, the lovers are Irish and they begin their story in an Irish community with lots of drinking. Their all-encompassing love is very Irish. However, Tom and Polly are in Butte, a desolate mining town in the mountains of Montana; 1891, a cold winter. So the story is really a western! So far, so terrific.
Continue reading “The Heart in Winter – book review”Nailing Down the Saint, by Craig Cliff
Craig Cliff’s The Mannequin Makers was such a hit for me recently, I thought I’d give another of his books a whirl. Nailing Down the Saint sounded suitably quirky and it is, indeed, a very odd book. Lots of it I just didn’t get. So much of the detail – music, film, cultural – was out of my frame of reference so the nuances skipped past me. Wet Sprocket and heavy metal TOÄD, anyone? George Costanza’s answering-machine message? I didn’t look any of this stuff up, though it might be funny. And the story rambled on for a very long time without me ever really understanding whether the protagonist was winning, whether he was a genius or a sad weirdo, what the point of the story was. But you know what? I loved it. It felt authentic, in a way even the best New Zealand books seldom do.
Continue reading “Nailing Down the Saint”The First Law of the Bush, by Geoff Parkes
I asked my book guru for a book with plot. I’m writing the outline of a potential novel which needs a properly complicated sub-plot – the sort where a bloke does one little thing that he shouldn’t and things snowball dramatically to a killer twist at the end. Not my usual type of writing, or reading for that matter.
“Read The First Law of the Bush,” said Phil. So I did.
The Curiosity, by Stephan Kiernan
I’m going to give a bookie suggestion right up front. If you’re keen on reading a great story where we bring a man back to life from history, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is the one. It was one of my favourite books of 2024. Stephan Kiernan’s The Curiosity was published a decade earlier, same sort of story, with a modern woman falling for a reanimated gent with all his old-fashioned charms, but it has none of the raunchy chemistry that makes Bradley’s book such a hit. The Curiosity is interesting in parts, but…
Continue reading “The Curiosity – Book review”The Mannequin Makers, by Craig Cliff
I’m always delighted when I find a terrific New Zealand historical fiction from the past that I’ve missed. The Mannequin Makers was published in 2013 by Penguin and now on my list of top NZ hist fict to recommend. This is no sweeping saga of real events, rather a strange small town rivalry that mostly takes place in a shop window. With mannequins. Sounds quirky? Well, yes, in the sense that the story is unconventional and miles away from the usual immigrant saga, but it thankfully misses all the usual shit that comes with ‘quirky’, there is no manufactured cheesiness or forced charm, no ‘found family’ of misfits. Craig Cliff soars above all that.
Continue reading “The Mannequin Makers – book review”Caledonian Road, by Andrew O’Hagan
Well, I’m glad that’s over. I took up the challenge of Caledonian Road on the advice of a writer I admire tremendously and who shall remain nameless and cast into the darkness where people who recommend painful books live. Caledonian Road goes on for six-hundred-and-forty pages, robbing me of time I could have spent with a more enjoyable book. I thought it might be one of those stories that will suddenly click as the characters step off the page and beseech me to care about them. Didn’t happen. So why is it on my recommended reading list?
Continue reading “Caledonian Road”Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
It took me a couple of attempts to get into Cloud Cuckoo Land, and I feel no shame in giving up initially after the first few chapters because there are half a dozen seemingly unrelated stories going forward or backward in different times and vastly different locations. If you want a put-down-and-pick-up story, this is not the right book for now. I came back with more patience, reread from the start and was slowly hooked. It’s absolutely worth the effort, but…
I’ll explain.
Cristina Sanders' blog 