Cristina Sanders' blog

Ōkiwi Brown

Ōkiwi Brown, by Cristina Sanders

*Currently on the Longlist for the Ngaio Awards!*
The Burke and Hare anatomy murders terrified Edinburgh in the 1830s – innocents smothered and packed fresh for the anatomist’s knife. Burke was publicly hanged before a crowd of thousands. William Hare, after turning king’s evidence against his erstwhile partner, was released. Somewhere south of Dumfries near the small river port of Annan, he was set down from a cart and told to walk on to England and never return. There, he disappears from history.

The Girl From London – book review

The Girl From London, by Olivia Spooner

I started this on a Tuesday night and ended up crying in a café on Thursday morning. I can’t remember when I’ve been so moved by the ending of a story. There is a book within the book. When the former ended a bit too neatly I was a slightly disbelieving, until I realised that actually, well, I’m giving no spoilers, but it’s a war story, after all. I’m not usually known for my tears.

The whole story ties in well with my current interest in stories of those who immigrated to New Zealand down the years, and why they came. Children evacuees from London bombings? I had no idea. Can you imagine sending your children out of a bomb zone, and not to the close countryside, which would be wrenching enough, but through a war-infested sea to an unknown land at the far ends of the earth? And yet people did.

Love In The Time of Cholera–book review

Love in the time of cholera, by Gabreil Garcia Marquez

Love in the time of Cholera is different to every other book I read and for that, alone, I am glad to have read it. Set across decades around the turn of the 20th Century, amid the plagues, wars and the environmental catastrophes of Caribbean Columbia, the story is of lives full of lusty passion. The thing is, I originally read this book in 1985 when it first came out and I was young and naive. Times have changed and I have changed and in the post ‘me too’ environment ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ feels like a misnomer. ‘Dysfunctional sexual obsession in the time of Cholera’ is more accurate, though not so catchy a title.

Gracehopper – book review

Gracehopper, by Mandy Hager

I think Gracehopper is a lovely title for this book. Grace was born during an earthquake in Taiwan and her kiwi mother is rescued by the New Zealand authorities and brings her home. The mother has some serious issues and is reluctant to discuss the past. Grace, with obvious Asian parentage, hops around her, wanting to know her own history but reluctant to send her mother over the edge (again). She breathes. Jeet Kun Do is her stability. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. Energy in. Hold. Spread the peace. It is a graceful martial art.

Norwegian Wood (Murakami) – book review

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood (1987) is considered a masterpiece, and Murakami the best known/ best selling Japanese author outside of Japan. So what is it about this book that hits the buttons? It is torturously sad, the story of a life defined by suicides – the whole book really a nostalgic subtext for the story that might have been told had Toru Watanabe’s college friend not committed suicide at the start. It’s timeless, sometimes beautiful. Pitch perfect. A masterpiece? Yes, perhaps.

Good Material – book review

Good Material, by Dolly Alderton

Andy’s long term girlfriend Jen, with whom has been living for a few years, has broken up with him. He is a scruffy English comedian (I couldn’t help but imagine Josh Widdicombe in the role), not doing so well on the circuit, not hugely ambitious. He thought himself happy with Jen in their ‘tribe of two’ and with their mutual best friends, who have forged ahead, married, started a family while he and Jen roll unburdened into their mid-thirties. The unexpected breakup knocks him sideways. Andy makes his living out of observing others and making comments on the human condition and ‘Good Material’ eventually comes out of his break up. But hell, does he have to suffer for it.

My Friends – book review

My Friends, by Hisham Matar

Any book that offers a description of a face ‘like a landscape liable to bad weather‘ has got my love. This is a writer with poetry in his soul. ‘We shared the city the way honest labourers share tools,’ he says of two young men finding their way around London. He describes a nurse who ‘would gently tuck in my bedsheet like a skilled cook filleting a fish.’ This is classy writing.

The Covenant of Water – book review

The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese

“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!” says a character in the The Covenant of Water. That’s an oldie but a goodie and is perhaps is an apt quote for this book. I’ve never been to India. But with Verghese’s story it felt as though I visited every evening, in that witching hour before sleep, when a book takes me somewhere else. Reading Verghese, as I experienced before with his first novel, Cutting for Stone, is an immersive experience.

The Grimmelings–book review

The Grimmelings, by Rachel King

Undersong: the sounds of a landscape

Chapters in The Grimmelings begin with a curious word or two, just to set the scene. ‘Undersong‘, one of the words to introduce Chapter Four, describes the background noise we live with, all the time. Can you hear it? I’ve got traffic drone at the moment. I’d rather the undersong of the lake, which I’ll call ‘Flitsplish’, as I have a bit of the Scottish in me. Rachel King’s book itself has an undersong: it’s the rhythm and poetry of the best children’s stories. I was mesmerised from the first line.

The same evening Josh Underhill went missing, the black horse appeared on the hill above the house.

Classic.

The Night She Fell–book review

The Night She Fell, by Eileen Merriman

Eileen Merriman is delightful. I shared accommodation with her at a book festival last year and we sat by the fire in the evenings drinking wine and chatting about writing, YA books, families, life. I should have locked my door.

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