Books for Blokes – Cristina Sanders' blog

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.

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?

The Heart in Winter – 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.

The Curiosity – Book review

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…

Caledonian Road

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?

Cloud Cuckoo Land – book review

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.

So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

Norwegian Wood, chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way – book review

Norwegian Wood, by Lars Mytting

This is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable books I know. Odd, because it is full of men with axes living in freezing temperatures in remote forests, involving strenuous physical labour. All the hard work is for the benefit of the person snug by the fireside, tucked away from the harsh world outside. That’s us. The lucky readers.

Sixteen Trees of the Somme – book review

Sixteen Trees of the Somme, by Lars Mytting

There is something about Norwegian writing that reminds me of Irish literature. It’s so centred on place, it’s the being there that grounds the story. We are different here, these stories say, our culture is wrapped around our traditional ways based on a history, geography and climate that are distinctly our own. It’s like the country itself has a voice. We are beginning to understand this power in New Zealand writing and could take lessons from these countries, for sure. Lars Mytting’s voice is profoundly Norwegian. There is always the expectation of snow on his boots and trolls under the woodpile.

Sixteen Trees of the Somme has a long reach. The base of the story is a Norwegian farm – mostly in the snow but summer visits occasionally – and it’s a mystery and a history and a resistance story and has love and travel and coming of age, a history of gun making and an obsession with trees and their particular wood and so many other things. Lots of secrets to unravel. It kept me spellbound.

The Demolition of the Century– book review

The Demolition of the Century, by Duncan Sarkies

Tom is in insurance. Things turn bad when he checks up on a highly insured horse that dies unexpectedly and is quickly buried. There are sock-fulls of cash involved. He’s also got a failing marriage and a young boy, Frank, who he is meant to be collecting from school, but he is late because the gangsters are after him. I feel no sympathy for this character. Yet.

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