Light Keeping, by Adrienne Jansen
This is a book full of big skies and troubled horizons. There is trauma and drama in the pulsing light. There’s a car spinning sideways and a small wooden railing, orphaned children, loss of purpose, loss of hope, a dinghy rowed out to sea. The light is both a beacon and a searcher, highlighting trouble at sea, trouble at home.
Continue reading “Light Keeping – book review”Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, by Josie Shapiro
Partly, this book is the story of a woman running the Auckland marathon. There’s a lot of determination, a lot of pain, much questioning and self-doubt. It is a tactical race, and we get the feel early on that our runner, Mickey, knows what she is about and is in it to win it. This race runs alongside the story of how our woman came to be here, next to the ocean, running her heart out. I thought the marathon was superbly written (and run) and I was with Mickey through all the pain and the euphoria.
Continue reading “Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts –book review”Lioness, by Emily Perkins
Bypass the weird cover. The book beyond is bright and clever – a story of Wellingtonians not usually open for scrutiny, people with big money and flash houses but still, for all their entitlement, real people with relatable problems: complex families, children, ageing, white-lies that go bad, temptation.
Therese Thorne married money. Trevor was twenty years older, his wife had left him and he swooped in on pretty Theresa, changed her name, got her tooth fixed and folded her into his life with his business empire, his houses, his four children and their accoutrements. He set her up with a homeware business and she built up a chain of Therese Thorne shops selling lovely, darling things to lovely darlings. At their holiday house in the Sounds, a young guest suggests to Therese (as they’re peeling potatoes) they’re like the ‘help’. She’s insulted but it seems a fair comment. “Bunting, strings of lights, fat outdoor candles in glass jars, tick, tick, tick. Booze cabinet housing ancient gin and sweet holiday liqueurs, tick. Beer fridge, crated wine delivery, tick. Kayaks, rowboat, paddleboards, fishing gear, boardgames, tick.” Trevor is in his seventies now and they’re still having good sex. Tick. So far, so PA with benefits.
Continue reading “Lioness – book review”Pet, by Catherine Chidgey
Very creepy, very noir, if domestic New Zealand, circa 1970, can be called noir. The story certainly starts off sweetly enough. Our girl, Justine, is in class, trying to please the new teacher, Mrs Price. Everyone is. Mrs Price is young, new in town, and glamourous. Hot, she’d be called today. She also has a tragic past: a husband and daughter, dead in a car crash. Justine watches as she selects her pets and desperately wants to be the one asked to stay behind to wipe the board, or empty the bins, but these jobs go to the popular kids. Justine, and best friend Amy, are not part of the cool crowd. They go home to each other’s houses, rate the prettiest girls in the class in order: Melissa first, others depending on haircuts and body parts, and then they select each other as fourth. Pretty enough, but not up there. They are kind to each other. They talk about boys, and buying a first bra. There’s nothing creepy here, yet. Just a whiff of foreboding. Chidgey is a clever writer. It’s all good until it isn’t.
Continue reading “Pet – book review”Empire City by John E Martin
It would be silly to call this a ‘review’ of Empire City, as it will take me a few years to get through this tome properly, but I am so happy to have it, to drool over it and to put it on my desk as a kind of dual use research/paperweight. I bought it last week from Unity in Wellington on a recommendation from an historian without a second thought and then realised it weighed nearly 1.7kg and I was on a trip around the motu with only carry-on luggage. Worth every lug.
Continue reading “Empire City”Polaroid Nights, by Lizzie Harwood
I can rant a day away about the plethora of novels that get their emotional punch by entertaining readers with rape and murder. What sort of twisted society are we that this is offered everywhere we turn? And we justify our enjoyment of it: watched it for the psychological drama, read it for the great writing. You have to say that. You can’t say I loved the excitement of thinking about vulnerable people being tortured.
I read Polaroid Nights over the weekend. Great characters, sparkling writing. But it’s the story of a serial rapist and murderer and the woman he stalks. I asked my publisher (from whose shelves I’d pinched the book) why such a good writer would make up a plot so clichéd. She told me it’s not made up. It’s real.
Continue reading “Polaroid Nights–book review”Pearl in a Whirl, written by Catherine Robertson, illustrated by Fifi Colston
I finally made it to Wardini’s today to pick up a couple of copies of Pearl in a Whirl, the fundraiser for those affected by cyclone Gabrielle. The recent book launch was cancelled because of the threat of new flooding. How very apt.
Continue reading “Pearl in a Whirl – book review”By the Green of the Spring, by Paddy Richardson
A much anticipated sequel to Through the Lonesome Dark, By the Green of the Spring takes our three young people: Otto, Clem and Pansy on with the lives that hung in a troubling denouement at the end of the first book. There is also Lena, Pansy’s daughter, who takes up the story of her parents’ lives through a child’s eyes.
Continue reading “By the Green of the Spring – book review”Landed, by Sue McCauley
I went to the launch of Landed. I took a couple of friends to the Dannevirke Library at 6pm last Friday and the place was heaving. Sue McCauley has a strong local fan base and she can count me in. It felt like the whole town was there and they were all buying her book. Made my heart sing. And then Sue took the chair (kind of perched, she’s little), and entertained us. The microphone was unnecessary, she has a good story-telling voice and she told us some anecdotes, gave out thanks, made some self-deprecating jokes and read from her book. She sort of tried to put us off buying the book, saying there’s no real story, it doesn’t follow proper book rules in terms of structure. Nothing happens. Course she didn’t put anyone off.
Continue reading “Landed – book review”Poor People with Money, by Dominic Hoey
I really wanted not to like this book. The too-cool-for-school, attention seeking badass author didn’t sound promising, with his snarly comments about moving to Detroit or LA (wooo) because he’s been left out of the NZ lit club. He has a lovely line in his poetry where he is:
…condescended to by people
who have never been punched in the face
which is a brilliant way to categorise people, but a $40k grant? Just saying. When he didn’t make the longlist for the Ockhams this year he said ‘Man there’s dogs they would give that award to over me!’ Thanks. (I’m on the shortlist). What a charmer.
