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26 April 2024
Lioness by Emily Perkins
A new Emily Perkins novel is a rare thing (the last being The Forrests in 2012). She’s been writing plays and teaching. And what good things they are. Her take on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which played at the Theatre Royal a few years ago, was superb. So lucky us, it’s a Donna Tart moment this year with the Lioness. It’s always nerve-wracking when a favourite author has a new work. Will you still like their style? Can you resist the temptation to compare? And will this grip you as other writings have? So, the book lands. The novel cracks in from the start with our protagonist, Therese having average sex with her older husband, and then discovering, a few pages in, the Viagra tucked away in the suitcase. You sense an unravelling is to begin. Life is too neat. Therese too plastic. Later you realise, malleable. Not by circumstance, rather by choice. A choice to have her ‘dream’ homewares brand, to please everyone even at the loss of her own identity, and to stay quiet when she would rather speak out. You can wear the silk jumpsuit, attend the right events, and host the perfect party, but the girl from the Valley will still appear unexpectedly. There are sneaky tell-tale clues of her other life, of her other self. The drink of choice, rum and coke, the occasional slip in language, and the pulse of something wild just under the surface. This surface will crack open when her developer husband has the spotlight of a fraud enquiry turned on him. Conveniently, in the downstairs apartment is another middle-aged, middle-class (although not quite as privileged or wealthy as Therese) woman, Claire, having an epiphany or crisis — take your pick. While reading this I had the same discomfort as when I read Rachel Cusk’s Second Place. These people — what’s wrong with them? It’s hard to like any of them, even Therese and Claire (the first you have some empathy for, the second yeah, okay, break out if you really need to), especially those adult children who treat Therese (wife number two and not their mother) appallingly. They are universally horrendous. So, what keeps you there, with the Lioness? The writing, as ever, is excellent; Perkin’s observations are squirmingly spot on; the irony and social commentary eviscerating. I loved this more once I closed the pages and left those characters behind. Much like Cusk’s Second Place, it will make you shudder and laugh simultaneously.
There had been some strong gusts of wind in the night, he said, and the leaves of the banana tree, no, he corrected himself, the fronds of the banana palm, no, he re-corrected himself, nothing seemed right, the leaves of the banana plant, a more general term is always safer when unsure, the leaves of the banana plant he could see from the bathroom window were shredded and were this morning little more than a fringe of fibres tossing from each stem, or spine, perhaps, looking like those things that American cheerleaders wave about, whatever they are called, he didn’t know, not having taken an interest in American cheerleaders, are those things waved by American cheerleaders on sticks, though, he wondered, perhaps he should stop making similes with things he knew nothing about, perhaps he should stop making similes altogether, a simile is lazy, after all, in any case the leaves, whatever they looked like, looked silly, if silly can be a property of nature, silly enough to be used by an American cheerleader, or possibly a Morris dancer, he wondered, no, they’re either handkerchiefs or sticks, but the leaves of the banana plant were each a switch fringed with ribbons, silly, perhaps, a jester’s baton perhaps, but undoubtedly an evolutionary exemplar, everything in nature is an evolutionary exemplar, he thought, with the possible exception of human beings, or of myself at any rate, he thought, everything is an exemplar of the ineluctable operations of nature, why else would a banana leaf, or frond, whatever, unfurl itself pre-perforated like a seagull’s quill, bad simile, we won’t go there, if not to be torn apart along those perforations by the wind, when the wind is strong enough, shredding itself into ribbons rather than snapping, if not to protect its functions at the expense of looking silly, that is certainly the way the way of nature, he thought, I could certainly learn something from that. He was having trouble concentrating, he said, he was having trouble thinking really at all, even on the odd occasion, like today, when he had a little extra mental space, or mental time, mental space and mental time being the same thing even more obviously than physical space and physical time, so to call it, this extra mental space-time is, more than anything, a big internal vacuum, a big empty space (or time) for thoughts to reveal their clinamen unimpeded by practicalities, a tendency usually recognised as dissipation, but also, at least in theory, the circumstances in which thoughts might unexpectedly swerve towards each other, collide and make new thoughts. No sign of that, at least for me, he thought. I have sat down to write my weekly review, time is running out, and here I am, thinking about banana leaves, or banana fronds, not that I even have any strong feelings towards banana leaves or banana fronds, though I do, I suppose, hold banana fruit in a positive light even though the banana fruit is undoubtedly also silly, here I go again, and I am not even sure which book I will review. I have read many books recently, he declared, I have read many books and I have put many books aside half-read, or read in some proportions either greater or less than a half, I have read more and finished less, he said, even than usual, I have immersed myself in sentences, paragraphs and chapters but emerged quite dry, I do not know what to review, he said, perhaps, he thought, I will call my piece Why I Have Not Read Any of My Books, an explanatory text, perhaps, to Why I Have Not Reviewed Any of My Books, though it is not true that I have not been reading, he protested, I have been reading many books, far too many, he said, I have this pile here, by the bed, all of which I have been reading and enjoying but all of which I have stopped reading and moved on to reading something else, I have not finished a single book this week, he admitted, with the exception of All My Cats by Bohumil Hrabal, a book of which he had read something a little over half some weeks ago and had put aside unfinished, perhaps there is hope for the rest, he thought, perhaps I will come back to these books by the bed, or at least to some of them, finish them off and write reviews, as if, he thought with passing irritation, the purpose of my reading was to write reviews, I promised myself I would never read for that reason, and I must remind myself not to finish reading a book for any reason than the reading itself, whatever that means, he thought, there is little sense in that statement. “What are we going to do with all those cats?” Hrabal’s wife asks throughout Hrabal’s book, All My Cats, for there are, over the years, a varying but large number of cats at the Hrabals’ country cottage in Kersko, near Prague, some of whom just arrive and start living there but most of whom are the offspring of other cats already living there, as desexing cats does not seem to have occurred to Hrabal or to Hrabal’s wife, or perhaps was not common practice in Czechoslovakia in the period about which the book was written. Hrabal’s love for the cats is immense and respectful, he is a perceptive and sensitive companion for the cats, he seems to feel greater affinity for the cats than for humans, especially than for his neighbours, but Hrabal is a man who is easily overwhelmed, a man also constantly resisting the urge to hang himself from the willow tree beside the stream, as the fortune teller had told him he would, and he succeeds in this, he died falling from a hospital window after he had written this book, obviously. The greater Hrabal’s love for all his cats, the greater Hrabal’s feelings of guilt about those times when he has taken certain of his cats and killed them in the old mail sack in the shed, killed them for there being too many of them, for their demands being too great for Hrabal, both practically and emotionally, and Hrabal’s capacity to love ensures that his guilt will never be assuaged, his guilt grows more intense over the years, so much so that he even buys a brown car. How lucky you are, say Hrabal’s friends and acquaintances, to have this cottage at Kersko, bought with the income from your literary success, this cottage at Kersko to which you can go and write, to which you can go and enjoy the mental space and the mental time, the same thing, in which thoughts reveal their clinamen and collide with other thoughts to make that writing happen, but for Hrabal the mental space and the mental time spent in his cottage in Kersko are entirely filled with his cats, with his love for his cats and his guilt about killing his cats, and his time and his space are a torment, Hrabal could have made a torment of anything, the cats are central and everything else, from his accident in his brown car to his attempts to rescue a swan frozen into the river, gain their meaning for Hrabal from their relationship to the love-guilt axis he has with his cats. All of Hrabal’s writing is an elaboration on this love-guilt axis, or on the love-guilt axis of the characters in his books, a love-guilt axis that draws its authenticity from the love-guilt axis of their author. Hrabal shows, he thought as he wondered if he would be able to write a review of Hrabal’s book, whether he had enough mental space and mental time to write such a review, Hrabal shows how the mental space and mental time required for writing is also the mental space and mental time that runs what could be termed a constant existential risk, why else would we construct our normal lives, so to call them, our cultural and social and practical lives, so carefully to minimise our mental space and our mental time, if not to avoid the realisation of an underlying existential void, if not to avoid what he called, offhandedly, a Kierkegaardian moment of enlightenment, an intolerable recognition of the meaningless, purposelessness and ennui that assail us from all sides and at every moment but which we avoid thinking about by deceiving ourselves. Thank goodness for love and guilt, he thought, do I have enough of either? He had not finished reading his books and he had not written his review, but then he had not done any of the many other things he had also intended to do during the day, he had not changed the washers in the dripping taps or sorted out his clothes draw, he had not dealt with the borer in the bathroom, he was not quite sure what he had done, other than think about banana leaves, thoughts he wished now that he had not thought, or written about at least. So much for mental time and mental space, he thought.
This well written, cutting portrayal of social mechanics will make you look differently at those around you. “After marrying the older, wealthier Trevor, Teresa Holder has transformed herself into upper-class Therese Thorn, complete with her own homeware business. But when rumours of corruption gather around one of Trevor’s property developments, the fallout is swift, and Therese begins to reevaluate her privileged world. Emily Perkins weaves multiple plotlines and characters with impressive dexterity. Punchy, sophisticated and frequently funny, Lioness is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity.” —Ockham judges’ citation on short-listing the book for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
Out of the carton and into your hands!
Click through to our website to order these newly released books:
The End of Ends by Tadeusz Bradecki (translated from Polish by Tadeusz Bradecki and Kate Sinclair) $40
“In the great tradition of Sterne, Calvino, Kundera and Cervantes — the tradition of dancing playfully on the edge of the abyss of all knowledge — this book by the late great Polish theatre director Tadeusz Bradecki is about nothing less than everything. God, death, theatre, teleology, post-modernism, Marxism, ghosts on stage and off, two millennia of storytelling: it’s all here. In honour of the device of the play-within-a-play, it contains vivid verbal restagings. In honour of the tale-within-a-tale, it contains a whole small novel. Because of course it does. Anyone miserable at being marooned on this island of cynical banter and self-protective irony should read The End of Ends to be reminded of what it sounds like when art is taken seriously.” —Francis Spufford
”The author of this book is a consummate actor, director and theatre manager. He is also a dramatic writer, exceptional in his field and we can see this in his book both an original form and a ground-breaking freshness of thought. This is supported by an impressive erudition and original humour which makes it both wise and hugely enjoyable.” —Krzysztof Zanussi
”A delightful book on aesthetics generally as on Bradecki’s own area of expertise, the theatre … It combines the heights of critical theory with the ageless and incoherent impulse that sends us ordinary folk to theatres for solace, affirmation and enlightenment. The End of Ends is the playbook, the guide, the user’s manual on how the pilgrim soul should relate to the arts.” —Thomas Keneally
”Tadeusz Bradecki entertains, elucidates, and surprises at every turn. What begins as a series of witty and fiendishly astute essays exploring the roots and interconnectedness of story segues into an extraordinary example of “practice what you preach”. He brilliantly and playfully weaves into this non-fictional narrative a time-bending love story, which reflects and perfectly complements what has come before. Bravo.” —Sarah Lotz
”Bradecki’s whistle-stop tour through two thousand years of dramatic literature is breathtaking. But even more moving is the infectious relish with which he shares his love of his subject. The sheer joy he takes in these texts not only arouses our curiosity, it also quickens the pulse.” —Declan Donellan
”The End of Ends is a dazzling tour through the craft, philosophy and history of telling stories. It’s a Russian doll of wit, insight, charm, erudition and storytelling itself — and is exactly the kind of thing every creative writing student should be compelled to read.” —Danny O’Connor
Lioness by Emily Perkins $25
“You know how we say we devoured a story, and also that we were consumed by it? Eating and being eaten. It was like that with Claire, for me.” From humble beginnings, Therese has let herself grow used to a life of luxury after marrying into an empire-building family. But when rumours of corruption gather around her husband's latest development, the social opprobrium is shocking, the fallout swift, and Therese begins to look at her privileged and insular world with new eyes.In the flat below Therese, something else is brewing. Her neighbour Claire believes she's discovered the secret to living with freedom and authenticity, freeing herself from the mundanity of domesticity. Therese finds herself enchanted by the lure of the permissive zone Claire creates in her apartment - a place of ecstatic release. All too quickly, Therese is forced to confront herself and her choices - just how did she become this person? And what exactly should she do about it? New edition.
“It will make you shudder and laugh simultaneously” —Stella
”The most exciting novel I've read in ages. I gulped it down, so readable, so EXCELLENT about people. Read it.” —Marian Keyes
”A coolly ironic look at modern womanhood. This is an excellent novel.” —The Times
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes $37
The four Flattery sisters — Olwen, Nell, Maeve and Rhona — were left to cobble together their own makeshift adolescence after the death of both their parents. Decades later, all four of them have found success in their respective fields, all of them boasting PhDs and, in Nell's case, a healthy clutch of Instagram followers. Still, none of the sisters have come to terms with their parents' deaths, choosing to focus instead on bigger problems — food insecurity, climate change, post-Brexit capitalism — to avoid confronting this trauma. When Olwen disappears, Nell, Maeve and Rhona attempt to find the sister they no longer know, a woman who wants desperately not to be found. Their search will force the siblings to bridge the isolation that has grown between them, and face the past they thought they could bury. Full of laugh-out-loud wit and clear-eyed observations, The Alternatives is a story of sisterhood and belonging, of loss and connection, written with Caoilinn Hughes' trademark intelligence and razor-sharp prose.
”A brilliant, brainy book about the bravery of following one’s own path while also remembering the value of community.” —Guardian
After Nora by Penelope Curtis $38
In early 1920s England, Nora’s life is in a state of flux: leaving one husband for another, she embarks on a new existence on the margins of the cultural and political elite, trying to hold onto her aspirations as a painter, along with her relationships. In late 1960s Glasgow, young biologist Maria de Sousa wrestles with her feelings for an older colleague, Adam Curtis – the author’s father. The unclear connection between the two impels the narrator, fifty years later, to seek out answers in Lisbon: what really happened between Adam and Maria? After Nora bridges three generations, and moves between London, Paris, southern England, Scotland, Jamaica and Portugal, touching on key scientific discoveries, artistic and historical landmarks, the Carnation Revolution and a global pandemic. Penelope Curtis offers sensitive portraits of those whose lives she has had to imagine in order to understand, in an ambitious novel that movingly resurrects a past whose remnants still permeate the present. Poignantly revealing the forces which check personal callings, the novel also explores, among other things, the ways in which love is balanced with creative independence. Penelope Curtis is an art historian and former director of the Tate Gallery, whose novel imagines the life and motivations of Nora, the grandmother she never knew but whose paintings she inherited. Curtis envisions Nora as a woman deeply struggling to identify her sources of self-worth. This account of her grandmother’s doubts as to the importance of her own art is accompanied, too, by that of another woman: the Portuguese scientist Maria de Sousa, who had worked in Glasgow with Curtis’s father, also a scientist, and whom the author eventually met in Lisbon, after her father’s death. After Nora is a three-part novel that talks of the meaning of creative independence through the lives of three generations. It touches on the ways in which morality can check artistic, professional and emotional callings, and exert a binding and compelling power over these. The novel also underscores the limits of knowledge, of others and the self, attempting all the while to recreate the nature of past loves.
How to Win an Information War: The propagandist who outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev $40
In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat the powerful Nazi propaganda machine, which crowed victory and smeared its enemies. However, inside Germany, there was one notable voice of dissent from the very heart of the military machine — Der Chef, a German whose radio broadcasts skilfully questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens. But what these audiences didn't know was that Der Chef was a fiction, a character created by the British propagandist Sefton Delmer, just one player in his vast counter-propaganda cabaret, a unique weapon in the war. As author Peter Pomerantsev uncovers Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the global response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern-day investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to seduce and inspire the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of information wars.
”Elegant, effortlessly readable. Essential reading for the new dark age of disinformation.” —Jonathan Freedland
”Original. Pomerantsev digs deep into the past history of information warfare, in order to help us understand how to fight charlatans and fear mongers in the present.” —Anne Applebaum
”Excellent, carefully researched and beautifully written. To be read by everyone seeking perspective on all the lies of war and all the wars of lies.” —Timothy Snyder
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan $25
In her acclaimed second short-story collection, the author of Small Things Like These shows Ireland and the Irish wrestling with the past in various ways. A long-haired woman moves into the priest's house and sets fire to his furniture. That Christmas, the electricity goes out. A forester mortgages his land and goes off to a seaside town looking for a wife — he finds a woman eating alone in the hotel. A farmer wakes half-naked and realises the money is almost gone. And in the title story, a priest waits on the altar for a bride and battles, all that wedding day, with his memories of a love affair.
”Perfect short stories.” —Anne Enright
”Breath-taking.” —Irish Times
”Her stories are as good as Chekhov’s.” —David Mitchell
A Book of Rongo and Te Rangahau by Briar Wood $30
Briar Wood reimagines the lives of Rongo and Te Rangahau, nineteenth-century wahine toa, tupuna of Ngapuhi, in radiant verse. The collection also stretches across time into today's world with poetry about contemporary Northland. Illustrated within, with much historical information, and cover art by Nikau Hindin.
”A time machine stretching from stories told and reimagined, an invitation to Aotearoa's past running parallel with how history impacts today.” —Anne-Marie Te Whiu
Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy $25
In London Zoo, Professor Darrylhyde is singing to the apes again. Outside their cage, he watches the two animals, longing to observe the mating ritual of this rare species. But Percy, inhibited by confinement and melancholy, is repulsing Edwina's desirous advances. Soon, the Professor's connection increases as he talks, croons, befriends — so when a scientist arrives on a secret governmental mission to launch Percy into space, he vows to secure his freedom. But when met by society's indifference, he takes matters into his own hands. A trailblazing animal rights campaigner, Brigid Brophy's sensational 1953 novel is as provocative and philosophical seventy years on. An electric moral fable, it is as much a blazingly satirical reflection on homo sapiens as the non-human — on our capacity for violence, red in tooth and claw, not only to other species, but our own. New introduction by Sarah Hall.
”Pitch-perfect.” —Ali Smith
”So original.” —Hilary Mantel
”Stunning.” —Isabel Waidner
”Her beastly, risky best.” —Eley Williams
”Flawless.” —Sunday Times
”Ingenious.” —Observer
The Edge of the Plain: How borders make and break our world by James Crawford $37
No matter where you turn, it seems that the taut lines of borders are vibrating to — or even calling — the tune of global events. Today, there are more borders in the world than ever before in human history. Beginning with the earliest known example, Crawford travels to many borders old and new: from a melting glacial landscape to the conflict-torn West Bank and the fault-lines of the US/Mexico border. He follows the story of borders into our fragile and uncertain future — towards the virtual frontiers of the internet and the shifting geography of a world beset by climate change. As nationalism, climate change, globalisation, technology and mass migration all collide with ever-hardening borders, something has to give. And Crawford asks, is it time to let go of the lines that divide us?
”A richly essayistic account of how borders make and break our world, from Hadrian's Wall to China's Great Firewall.” —Guardian
”The borders that mark our world are either ineffective, inhumane, or both. The Edge of the Plain asks us to envision alternatives.” —New York Times
”Erudite and engaging. A fine book.” —The Irish Times
Why We Remember: The science of memory and how it shapes us by Charan Ranganath $40
We talk about memory as a record of the past, but here's a surprising twist: we aren't supposed to remember everything. In fact, we're designed to forget. Over the course of twenty-five years, Charan Ranganath has studied the flawed, incomplete and purposefully inaccurate nature of memory to find that our brains haven't evolved to keep a comprehensive record of events, but to extract the information needed to guide our futures. Using fascinating case studies and testimonies, Why We Remember unveils the principles behind what and why we forget and shines new light on the silent, pervasive influence of memory on how we learn, heal and make decisions. By examining the role that attention, intention, imagination and emotion play in the storing of memories, it provides a vital user's guide to remembering what we hold most dear.
The Nineties: A book by Chuck Klosterman $37
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems — The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, the world changed a lot, more than we realised. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. There were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived — the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.
"In The Nineties, Klosterman examines the social, political and cultural history of the era with his signature wit. It's a fascinating trip down memory lane." —Time
"An engaging, nuanced and literate take on the alternately dynamic and diffident decade." —Washington Post
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin $23
Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are beautiful. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick, and you can't get older. In Elsewhere, death is only the beginning. Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she is killed in a hit-and-run accident. It is a place very like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backwards from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driving licence. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. She doesn't want to get to know a grandmother she's never met before and have to make all new friends. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Or is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?
"Every so often a book comes along with a premise so fresh and arresting it seems to exist in a category all its own. Elsewhere is such a book." —New York Times Book Review
Yukie’s Island by Yukie Kimura, Kōdo Kimura and Steve Sheinkin $38
It's 1945, the final year of World War II. Yukie Kimura is eight years old. She lives on a tiny island with a lighthouse in the north of Japan with her family, and she knows that the fighting that once felt so far away is getting closer. Mornings spent helping her father tend to the lighthouse and adventuring with her brother are replaced by weeks spent inside, waiting. At some point, Yukie knows, they may be bombed. Then, it happens. One Sunday, bombs are dropped. The war ends soon after that. Everyone tells Yukie there's nothing to be scared of anymore, but she's not so sure. So she watches and she waits — until a miraculous sight finally allows her to be a child again. This is the true story of Yukie Kimura told in her own words, co-created with her son, illustrator Kodo Kimura, and co-written with bestselling Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin.
A selection of books from our shelves.
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Read our latest NEWSLETTER and find out what we’ve been reading and recommending (and what Stella has been doing with some quinces).
19 April 2024
I thought for a while that horse racing was a sort of sport, and I wondered if there were other sports in which the people participating in them were relatively unknown, horse racing being done in the name of the horses, after all, not in the name of the jockeys, whereas cycle racing is done in the names of the cyclists not in the name of their bicycles, and then I realised that horseracing is not a sport at all, but a kind of competition more akin to marbles, a competition of ownership, in which the jockeys are just what make the horses go, the jockeys are the augmentation of the prowess of the horses with the will of their owners, nothing more, implants, marginal figures along with the other unknown persons whose collective efforts both enable and are obscured by the horses that they serve. But this marginalisation, together with the peripatetic nature of these professions, makes the contained human society of the racecourse backstretch such a fascinating and, for want of a better word, such a human one. In small worlds what would otherwise be small is writ large, and what would otherwise be unnoticed is made clear. Kathryn Scalan’s wholly remarkable novel Kick the Latch is ostensibly the edited-down text of the Sonia half of a series of interviews between Scanlan and a longtime horse trainer (and subsequently prison guard and later bric-a-brac dealer) named Sonia, conducted between 2018 and 2021. Certainly there is a pellucid quality to these first-person accounts, the voice and language of Sonia are strongly delineated and very appealing to read, and the insights gleaned from them into the life of their narrator, from her hard-scrabble girlhood to her hard-scrabble but colourful life around the racetrack and beyond, are entirely compelling. In these twelve sets of titled anecdotes, Scanlan has succeeded in making herself entirely invisible (the text’s invisible but vital jockey), which shows invisibility to be a cardinal virtue for an author or an editor — and it is uncertain which of these labels applies itself most suitably to Scanlan’s achievement in making this book. Perhaps all good writing is primarily editing, primarily on the part of the writer themselves (and secondarily by any subsequent editor). Anyone can generate any amount of text; it is only the ruthless and careful editing of this text (before and after it is actually written down), the trimming and tightening of text, the removal of all but the essential details and the tuning of the grammatical mechanisms of the text, that produces something worth reading. The virtues of literature are primarily negative. I first came across Scanlan with her first book, the poignant and beautiful Aug 9—Fog, which was made by ‘editing down’ a stranger’s diary found at an estate sale into a small book of universal resonance. Kick the Latch could be said to be an extension of the same project: an applied rigour and unsparing humility by Scanlan that makes something that would otherwise be ordinary and unnoticed — found experiences from unimportant lives, as are all of our lives unimportant — into something so sharp and clear that it touches the reader deeply. What more could we want from literature than this?
I was beguiled initially by the cover of this book, then the title, then the recommendation by Megan Hunter (author of The Harpy and The End We Start From), and after that the description. Forty women in an underground bunker with no clear understanding of their captivity. Why are they there? What was their life before? And as the years pass, what purpose do the guards, or those who employ the guards, have for them? The narrator of this story is a young woman—captured as a very young child—who knows no past: her life is the bunker. The women she lives with tolerate her but have little to do with her and hardly converse with her. She is not one of them. They have murky memories of being wives, mothers, sisters, workers. They know something catastrophic happened but can not remember what. The Child (nameless) is seen as other, not like them, not from the same place as them. The Child has been passing the days and the years in acceptance, knowing nothing else, but her burgeoning sexuality and her awareness of life beyond the cage (she starts to watch the guards, one young man in particular), limited as it is to this stark underground environment, also triggers an awakeness. She begins to think, to wonder and ask questions. As she counts the time by listening to her heartbeats and wins the trust of a woman in the group, The Child’s observations, not clouded by memories, are pure and exacting. We, as readers, are no closer to understanding the dilemma the women find themselves in, and like them are mystified by the situation. Our view is only that of The Child and what she gleans from the women—their past lives that are words that have little meaning to her, whether that is nature (a flower), culture (music) or social structures (work, relationships)—this world known as Earth is a foreign landscape to her. When the sirens go off one day, the guards abandon their positions and leave. Fortunately for the women, this happens just as they have opened the hatch for food delivery. The young woman climbs through and retrieves a set of keys that have been dropped in the panic. The women are free, but what awaits them is in many ways is another prison. Following the steps to the surface takes them to a barren plain with nothing else in sight. What is this place? Is it Earth? And where are the other people? Will they find their families or partners or other humans? The guards have disappeared within minutes—we never are given any clues to where they have gone—have they vapourised? Have they left in swift and silent aircraft? The women gather supplies, of which there are plenty, and begin to walk. I Who Have Never Known Men is a feminist dystopia in the likes of The Handmaid’s Tale or The Book of the Unnamed Midwife but is more silent, more internal and both frustrating and compelling. I found myself completely captivated by the mystery of this place and the certainty of the young woman. The exploration of humanity and its ability to hope and love within what we would consider a bleak environment, and the magnitude of one woman to gather these women to her and cherish them as they age is exceedingly tender. The introduction by Sophie MacKintosh ( author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread), which I recommend reading after rather than before, adds another layer of meaning to the novel. I Who Have Never Known Men is haunting and memorable—a philosophical treatise on what it is to be alone and to be lonely, and what freedom truly is.
A selection of books from our shelves.
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The Three Dimensions of Freedom
The abattoir has an unspoken centrality to Brazilian rural culture, just as it has in New Zealand. In Ana Paula Maia’s superbly, sparely written novel, set in a slaughterhouse in an impoverished and isolated corner of Brazil, the established tension between repetitive killing and the unthinking acceptance functionally necessary for its continuance — for both humans and cattle — is unbalanced by something seemingly beyond the contained and ritualised world of rural meat production. What is it that is driving the men, and the animals, to madness and murder?
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100 Years of Darkness: Poems about films and film music by Bill Direen $30
The 76 poems of 100 Years of Darkness pays homage to a century of cinema and its music. The films are drawn from Japan, U.S.A., France, Germany, Russia/Ukraine, Vietnam, Sweden, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, Lebanon and other places. Since only a few of them have been released in all countries, the chosen films are itemised by means of a detailed index of sources at the close. This makes it easy for film and music lovers to find the directors and years of first appearance — to eventually see the films for themselves. The book’s cover design represents aspect ratios used worldwide between 1888 and the present.
The Sky is Falling by Lorenza Mazzetti (translated from Italian by Livia Franchini) $38
First published in 1961, Lorenza Mazzetti's The Sky is Falling (Il cielo cade) is an impressionistic, idiosyncratic, and uniquely funny look at the writer's childhood after she and her sister are sent to live with their Jewish relatives following the death of their parents. Bright and bucolic, vivid and mournful, and brimming with saints, martyrdom, ideals, wrong-doing and self-imposed torments, the novel describes the loss of innocence and family under the Fascist regime in Italy during World War II through the eyes of Mazzetti's fictional alter ego, Penny, in sharp, witty (and sometimes petulant) prose. First translated into English as The Sky Falls by Marguerite Waldman in 1962, with several pages missing due to censorship, the novel has been out of print in the anglophone world for many years. Livia Franchini's beautiful new translation carries over the playfulness and perverse naivete of the original Italian. Recommended!
Amma by Saraid de Silva $38
Singapore, 1951. When Josephina is a girl, her parents lock her in a room with the father of the boy to whom she's betrothed. What happens next will determine the course of her life for generations to come. New Zealand, 1984. Josephina and her family leave Sri Lanka for New Zealand. But their new home is not what they expected, and for the children, Sithara and Suri, a sudden and shocking event changes everything. London, 2018. Arriving on her uncle Suri's doorstep, jetlagged and heartbroken, Annie has no idea what to expect — all she knows is that Suri was cast out by his amma for being gay, like she is. Moving between cities and generations, Amma follows three women on very different paths, against a backdrop of shifting cultures. As circumstance and misunderstanding force them apart, it will take the most profound love to knit them back together before it's too late.
Ticknor by Sheila Heti $40
On a cold, rainy night, an aging bachelor named George Ticknor prepares to visit his childhood friend Prescott, now one of the leading intellectual lights of their generation. Reviewing a life of petty humiliations, and his friend's brilliant career, Ticknor sets out for the dinner party-a party at which he'd just as soon never arrive. Distantly inspired by the real-life friendship between the historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, Ticknor is a witty, fantastical study in resentment. It recalls such modern masterpieces of obsession as Thomas Bernhard's The Loser and Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and, when first published in 2006, announced the arrival of a charming and original novelist, one whose novels and other writings have earned her a passionate international following.
"A perceptive act of ventriloquism, Ticknor rewards thought and rereading, and offers a finely cadenced voice, intelligence and moody beauty." —The Globe and Mail
"Confoundedly strange and fascinating." —Quill & Quire
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft $40
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets - and deceptions - of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself. This hilarious, thought-provoking debut by award-winning translator and author Jennifer Croft is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe's last great wildernesses.
”Croft writes with an extraordinary intensity.” —Olga Tokarczuk
”Mischievous and intellectually provocative, The Extinction of Irena Rey asks thrilling questions about the wilderness of language, the life of the forest, and the feral ambitions and failings of artists.“ —Megha Majumdar
”Generous and strange, funny and disconcerting, The Extinction of Irena Rey is a playground for the mind and an entrancing celebration of the sociality of reading, writing, and translation written by a master practitioner of all three.” —Alexandra Kleeman
Six-Legged Ghosts: The insects of Aotearoa by Lily Duval $55
Why isn’t Aotearoa famous for its insects? We have wētā that can survive being frozen, weevils with ‘snouts’ almost as long as their bodies, and the world’s only alpine cicadas. There is mounting evidence that insect numbers are plummeting all over the world. But the insect apocalypse isn’t just a faraway problem – it’s also happening here in Aotearoa. In recent years, we have lost a number of our native insects to extinction and many more are teetering on the brink. Without insects, the world is in trouble. Insects are our pollinators, waste removers and ecosystem engineers – they are vital for a healthy planet. So why don’t more people care about the fate of the tiny but mighty six- legged beings that shape our world? Richly illustrated, and including more than 100 original paintings by the author, Six-legged Ghosts: The insects of Aotearoa examines the art, language, stories and science of insects in Aotearoa and around the world. From te ao Māori to the medieval art world, from museum displays to stories of the insect apocalypse, extinction and conservation, Lily Duval explores the lives of insects not only in Aotearoa’s natural environments, but in our cultures and histories as well.
Talia by Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) $30
Short-listed for the 2024 Ockham Book Awards, The poems in Talia are a critique of hometowns, an analysis of whakapapa, and a reclamation of tongue. It is an ode to the earth the poet stands on, and to a sister she lost to the skies. It is a manifesto for a future full of aunties and islands and light.
”This is a collection so movingly steeped in aroha, in the power and reach and traffic of love. It is a poetry collection to put on repeat, to lose and find your way in. I love it.” —Paula Green
Ninth Street Women — Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five painters and the movement that changed modern art by Mary Gabriel $40
Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting — not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come. Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation.
A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros $25
By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history ... The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life. In A Philosophy of Walking, a bestseller in France, leading thinker Frederic Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B-the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble-and reveals what they say about us. Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other. New edition.
Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four women who wrote the Renaissance by Ramie Targoff $38
In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare's England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-16th century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the 17th century to publish a book of original poetry - a feminist take on the crucifixion, or Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman — about the plight of the Jewish princess Mariam. Then there was Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist, who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to rob her of her land in one of England's most infamous inheritance battles.
Champ by Payam Ebrahimi and Reza Dalvand $35
Abtin is nothing like the rest of his family. The Moleskis are fiercely competitive sports champions, and they expect Abtin to become a great athlete too. But Abtin is a reader, an artist, and has his own way of doing things. Despite his family's best efforts, Abtin remains stubbornly himself. Wanting his family to be proud of him, he comes up with a plan to make them happy: a plan that doesn't go quite as expected.
Heresy: Jesus Christ and the other Sons of God by Catherine Nixey $40
“In the beginning was the Word,” says the Gospel of John. This sentence — and the words of all four gospels — is central to the teachings of the Christian church and has shaped Western art, literature and language, and the Western mind. Yet in the years after the death of Christ there was not merely one word, nor any consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. There were many different Jesuses, among them the aggressive Jesus who scorned his parents and crippled those who opposed him, the Jesus who sold his twin into slavery and the Jesus who had someone crucified in his stead. Moreover, in the early years of the first millennium there were many other saviours, many sons of gods who healed the sick and cured the lame. But as Christianity spread, they were pronounced unacceptable — even heretical — and they faded from view. Now, in Heretic, Catherine Nixey tells their extraordinary story, one of contingency, chance and plurality. It is a story about what might have been.
"How on earth could an ancient Greek word meaning 'choice' come to be used exclusively negatively to mean heresy? Catherine Nixey, expert in the darkening age of Late Antique religiosity, has all the answers, brilliantly resurrecting a teeming plurality of non-canonical, non-orthodox, and above all allegedly non-Christian ideas and practices with cool intellectual clarity and vivid literary skill.” —Paul Cartledge
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s hidden histories by Amitav Ghosh $38
When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels, ‘The Ibis Trilogy’, ten years ago, he was startled to find how the lives of the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising at all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history was swept up in the story. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, memoir and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China and redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself. Moving between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in the making of our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
”Ghosh has reinvented himself as a superlative commodity historian. In his new role, he has surpassed many seasoned historians in his ability to synthesise a wealth of research with remarkable intellectual clarity and suggestive simplicity. There's a quietly subversive element to Smoke and Ashes for which Ghosh deserves to be commended.” —The Times
Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide: Essential greetings, phrases and tikanga for every day by Scotty Morrison $24
This little book that really will fit into your pocket is your guide to using te reo Māori in every day situations, from introductions to conversations, online and in person. Carry the essentials with you, and develop confidence in: * Basic pronunciation * Greetings * Dates and times * Pepeha * Whakataukī * Karakia * Iwi names * and much more.
All Through the Night: Why our lives depend on dark skies by Dani Robertson $40
Why darkness is so important – to plants, to animals, and to ourselves – and why we must protect it all costs. Darkness is the first thing we know in our human existence. Safe and warm inside the bubble of the womb, we are comfortable in that embracing dark. But as soon as we are bought into the light, we learn to fear the dark. Why? Some 99 per cent of Western Europeans live under light polluted skies, but what is this doing to our health? Our wellbeing? Our connection to the cycles of nature? Our wildlife, too, has been cast into the harsh glare of our light addiction, with devastating impacts.
In this book Dani shares with you the excitement and adventure she has found when everyone else is tucked up in bed. She explores constellations and cultures, enjoys environmental escapades, all whilst learning why we are addicted to light and why it is ruining our lives. She’ll show you why the darkness is so important and why we must protect it all costs.
Quince Philosopher
A kava bowl of quinces had been glowing beautifully in the living room, but now it was time to act. Recently I found some ancient jelly in the cupboard. Quince circa 2002. It looked fine, as in no mildewy mouldy stuff, but it’s incredibly dark red,in fact probably black. Consuming this doesn’t seem likely, but it did remind me how delcious quince jelly is. Saturday it rained. Perfect for hot work at the stove. Reaching for Kylee Newton’s The Modern Preserver revealed not only a lovely jelly recipe (Quince and Cardamom), but also Membrillo (paste). I had enough quinces for both, so grabbed a sharpish knife and some muscle power, and began. This was a two-day job, as the recipe required an overnight straining for the jelly liquid. (In fact, this wasn’t necessary, as most of the juice drained through almost at once.)
While the first batch was cooking, I flexed my muscles for the peeling and coring of the remaining quinces. This is when you need to focus on the end result! We once made Quince Paste for Christmas gifting and I remember it, rightly or wrongly, being quite a process. This Membrillo recipe included lemion peel and vanilla and smelt wonderful smimmering away gently. The quinces changed colour to a beautiful rich yellow, ready to whizz into that soft puree. And then it was back on the stove! And plenty of stirring. Making this again, I would cook the quinces for a bit longer in each stage. I stuck with the recipe timing, but whether it was the type of quince or our sluggish element, I didn’t quite capture the glowing red of the jelly as you will see below. Anyway the fruit was soft and the fragrance wonderful, and ready for the final slow slow bake in the oven. The tempature instruction being: your lowest possible setting!
Here I broke the rules a little, and spooned my puree into small paper cases, thinking they would make good serving sizes. And half a round is perfect for snack! (That lovely plate is made by Esther. @ceramicsbyesther). And the Membrillo is delicous. Definitely worth the effort.
And so to the next day’s work! The jam pan (inherited from my nana) came out of the bottom cupboard to do its hard work. More boiling and stirring! It required a stool nearby for resting. While the recipe indicated 20 minutes of gentle boiling (once the liquid had come to the boil), I almost doubled the time (possibly the result of our timid element) keeping a close eye on that terrible disappoinment called burning! (It didn’t burn.) I wanted a firm jelly, but not rubbery, and watching closely, testing frequently, and noting the changes in consistancy and colour, was worthwhile. I like this recipe. The cardamom is subtle and the small amount of lemon juice takes the edge off the sweetness, but not by much. The colour of quince jelly is divine. A glowingly satisfying result.
Postscript: We did eat dinner. It was a yellow theme. Pumpkin season. Hurrah for $4 Crowns!
This tasty dish from one of my favourite Ottolenghi’s: Flavour. Cinnamon, star anise, a little heat with chilli and black pepper, pumpkin and onions roasted, on a bed of tomato-infused couscous and layered with spinach from the garden. Perfect for autumn.
Every purchase of a cookbook from VOLUME during April goes in the draw to win a copy of Portico by Leah Koenig.
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12 April 2024
Wherever humans gather they begin to do each other harm. The size of human gathering that optimises this harm is called, in England, a village. Neither small enough for differences to be accommodated nor large enough for them to be ignored, a village allows its inhabitants full exercise of their capacities for intolerance, for suspicion, for collective cruelty. In Max Porter’s poetic and affecting short novel Lanny, a couple move to one such village with their highly imaginative son, Lanny. The first part of the book is told in the alternating voices of the parents and of Pete, the elderly artist from whom Lanny receives art lessons. Lanny’s mother is trying to pull out of a period of depression, writing a crime thriller, and his father continues to commute to London, both a presence and an absence in the lives of the other members of his family. We see the ethereal Lanny through their eyes, but it is perhaps Pete who identifies most with his original ways of thinking and original ways of seeing. Narrated in the voices of these characters, the text provides access only to what they are prepared to acknowledge, leaving uncertain spaces. There is a fourth ‘voice’ in this first part of the book, that of ‘Dead Papa Toothwort’, a personification of a force of nature suppressed in modern life, a principle of decay and regrowth, assailing social fixity and seen primarily in its negative aspect as a force of destruction or death. From beneath the structures of stultification that comprises, to Porter, English village life, even Englishness itself, from the land, from growing and rotting things, from nature, comes the force that will bring down those structures. The first part of the book is saturated with ominous feeling as Toothwort approaches and wanders the village. As with the plant from which he gets his name, Toothwort is parasitic: like death, he has no form but the form he borrows, no words but the words he borrows. “He does the voices,” writes Porter, after Shakespeare, referring to himself, perhaps, as much as to his character. The Toothwort sections are comprised largely of odd snippets and freighted phrases such as are overheard in passing the conversations of others, lines often arranged on the page in a typographically eccentric way like the verbal detritus they are. Just as Toothwort uses phrases gleaned from the village to remake into his purposes, so does the author. A text always contains the ominous presence of the author’s intention, the author as a fateful presence, constructing the sentences but at the same time drawing them towards their death. Toothwort appears in the guise of ordinary things because the ordinary really is full of horror and the kind of undoing that he represents. He is “reckoning with the terrible joke of the flesh and the rubbery links between life and death.” Toothwort wanders the village and ‘chooses’ Lanny, the being most like himself. The second part of the book is told in myriad unattributed but distinct voices of people in the village, along with Lanny’s parents, Pete, and people involved in the search for Lanny after he disappears. These muttered, declaimed, gossipped or published passages demonstrate how, after a crisis is not quickly resolved, the worst aspects of people often come to the fore and people speak and act their prejudices, suspicions, jealousies and resentments, using them to vault to conclusions that relieve their uncertainty. Pete is beaten, Lanny’s mother slurred, anyone with a difference resented or suspected. The village builds itself into an unhealthy state of what could only be called excitement. These ‘external’ snippets are uncomfortable. The reader, like the villagers, is a voyeur, implicated in the crisis that exists for and because of those - villagers and readers - who observe and shape the crisis. We jump to conclusions and reveal our prejudices as do the villagers. We resent the author who reveals us to ourselves as the stories of the voyeurs swamp the facts (or, rather, the absence of facts). The third part of the book begins in the most internal of modes: the dreams of those closest to Lanny (his parents and Pete), dreams of Toothwort-catalysed possible Lannys and possible fates for Lanny. The sequence resolves into a dream of Lanny’s mother, of how Toothwort reveals Lanny to her in this dream, of how she wakes, “breathes in the flesh particles of generations of villagers before her and it tastes like mould and wet tweed,” and finds him, and of what comes after. Lanny’s mother is “caught between what is real and what is not,” however, and I can’t excise my suspicion that the entire sequence, including its resolution, is her dream or desire, a ‘possible’ but not necessarily ‘true’ story, a trajectory in her mind, a disengagement from other, external, possibly more ‘true’ stories - but isn’t fiction always like this? This is a remarkable book. Porter has the uncanny ability to evoke the ordinary and then make it reveal a certain beauty and depth and horror just as it slips away from our ability to hold it in our minds.
What is it about cooler months that make puzzling so appealing? I enjoy all sorts of puzzles, of both the word and number variety, but love the challenge of a jigsaw puzzle with its bonus of a visually compelling end result. So it's ideal to have a birthday in March and to receive a fresh jigsaw in the time for autumnal rains and darker nights. I'm loving The World of the Brontës. Before even finding those sides and corners I had to read the little story of the Brontës and get the lowdown on the family, the many characters, the houses and the pets which are dotted throughout the puzzle to find. Centre stage of this puzzle is the great and terrifying fire at Thornfield Hall depicted by lively swirling flames. There's the moody moor for Catherine's ghost in a colour palette of bruised purples and in a surreal sky of pinks and yellows the world of picture books and fantastical land of Gondal. Having read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall last year (aloud), I was pleased to see the inclusion of the long-suffering, but defiant, Helen Huntingdon with her young son included, even if at her feet are her painting materials cast asunder. And of course, there are the Brontës themselves, Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte, Bramwell, Emily and Anne. The houses are both the real and the imagined, and the piecing together of these similar looking bricks and stonework is a pleasurable exercise with small clues in the window surrounds, roof structure and tile colours. In other words, not obvious, but neither impossible. The illustrator Eleanor Taylor has included so many wonderful details from the Brontë sisters' ouvres and cleverly melded these many elements into a cohesive image. Great fun and a compelling distraction.
There were some exciting arrivals this week. Click through to our website to secure your copies.
Marlow’s Dream: Joseph Conrad in Antipodean Ports by Martin Edmond $45
Before Joseph Conrad’s writing career was established in 1899 with the serialised publication of Heart of Darkness, he was a merchant seafarer and eventually a shipmaster of vessels that regularly sailed between Europe and its antipodes, with several visits to Australia and New Zealand, stopping at numerous other ports along the way. In Marlow's Dream, Martin Edmond shows in vivid detail how Conrad both collected and began to arrange the tales that would later appear in his fiction during these voyages. Intertwining Conrad's biography with his own, Edmond demonstrates how Conrad's stories were lifted straight out of his experiences as an itinerant mariner who had spent many days in antipodean ports between 1878-93.
"No writer has more to tell us about our oceanic past and its human dramas than Joseph Conrad. Now Martin Edmond adds something new to Conrad's world, a hard thing to do. By placing Conrad among the Antipodean people he knew and the Antipodean ports he frequented as a sailor, the fictions become more vivid, more real, while the raffish cosmopolitanism of old Australasian port life becomes less remote. We are closer both to Conrad and the past. A marvelous achievement!" —Simon During (University of Queensland)
"Edmond wants to understand Conrad's fiction from the inside, and he wants to do this in a way that will make sense to an audience wider than the limited readership of academic literary criticism." —Andrew Dean (Deakin University)
Ash by Louise Wallace $30
Thea lives under a mountain — one that’s ready to blow. A vet at a mid-sized rural practice, she has been called back during maternity leave and is coping – just – with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss’s search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy. But something is shifting in Thea – something is burning. Or is it that she is becoming aware, for the first time, of the bright, hot core at her centre? Then comes an urgent call. Ingeniously layered, Ash is a story about reckoning with one’s rage and finding marvels in the midst of chaos.
”I have not felt this seen by a book, ever. Ash worked through me like a drug: I will be going back again and again. The craft is exquisite, the comedy deeply satiating. What Louise Wallace has achieved in Ash is a monumental call to all the women who have been called good girls and bitches with the same breath. Ash simmers and smokes with honesty. It makes sparks fly.” —Claire Mabey
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma (translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey) $35
What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can't live without them?This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma's deceptively simple What I'd Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives — how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.
”What makes What I’d Rather Not Think About rise above the average mourning novel is its utter authenticity. Posthuma associates, philosophises, links memories to everyday actions, draws on films and television series and tries to interpret in a laconic, light-footed and pointed way. ‘Less is more’ with Jente Posthuma. And again, she seems to be saying: nothing is “whole” here, in the subhuman. Everything rumbles, frays, and creaks.” —Nederlands Letterenfonds
White Nights by Urszula Konek (translated from Polish by Kate Webster) $40
White Nights is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them.
”The book’s strength lies in its ability to capture the intense, dreamlike quality of its setting, where the natural phenomenon of ‘white nights’ serves as a backdrop for the characters’ introspective journeys. White Nights is a dark, lyrical exploration of the ways in which people seek meaning and belonging in a transient world.” —International Booker Prize judges’ citation
The Russian Detective by Carol Adlam $65
An exquisitely drawn graphic novel, a crime thriller with a strong feminist vein, set in nineteenth century Russia. Journalist and magician Charlie Fox returns to her home town of Nowheregrad to investigate the murder of a glass manufacturer’s daughter, but learns some things about herself, too. Lovingly done, well researched, and full of delights and surprises.
”Could not be more rich or more beautiful if it tried. This is a book that replays multiple readings — its illustrations are so deeply atmospheric and so inordinately beautiful.” —Observer
Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong (translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae) $40
Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century.
”Mater 2-10 is a vital reminder that, while the Berlin Wall may have fallen, the Cold War lives on in a divided Korea. It traces the roots of postwar persecution of labour activists smeared as ‘commies’. Decades of torture of political opponents in Japanese-built prisons are revealed as a ‘legacy of the Japanese Empire’. Hwang’s aim, he writes, was to plug a gap in Korean fiction, which typically reduces industrial workers to ‘historical specks of dust’. Not only does he breathe life into vivid protagonists, but the novel so inhabits their perspective that we share the shock and disbelief as their hard-won freedom is snatched away.” —Maya Jaggi, The Guardian
Also in stock by Hwang Sok-yong: At Dusk.
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz) $25
“I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing. ‘Say something!’ she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.”
Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a new masterpiece, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath, and political struggle.
”Bibiana and Belonisía are two sisters whose inheritance arrives in the form of a grandmother’s mysterious knife, which they discover while playing, then unwrap from its rags and taste. The mouth of one sister is cut badly and the tongue of the other is severed, injuries that bind them together like scar tissue, though they bear the traces in different ways. Set in the Bahia region of Brazil, where approximately one third of all enslaved Africans were sent during the height of the slave trade, the novel invites us into the deep-rooted relationships of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous peoples to their lands and waters – including the ways these communities demand love, gods, song, and dream – despite brutal colonial disruptions. An aching yet tender story of our origins of violence, of how we spend our lives trying to bloom love and care from them, and of the language and silence we need to fuel our tending.” —International Booker Prize judges’ citation
A Different Light: First photographs of Aotearoa edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins $65
In 1848, two decades after a French inventor mixed daylight with a cocktail of chemicals to fix the view outside his window onto a metal plate, photography arrived in Aotearoa. How did these 'portraits in a machine' reveal Maori and Pakeha to themselves and to each other? Were the first photographs 'a good likeness' or were they tricksters? What stories do they capture of the changing landscape of Aotearoa? From horses laden with mammoth photographic plates in the 1870s to the arrival of the Kodak in the late 1880s, New Zealand's first photographs reveal Kingi and governors, geysers and slums, battles and parties. They freeze faces in formal studio portraits and stumble into the intimacy of backyards, gardens and homes. A Different Light brings together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries — Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Alexander Turnbull Library and Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena. Beautifully presented, with many of the images never before published.
The Home Child by Liz Berry $45
In 1908, Eliza Showell, twelve years old and newly orphaned, boards a ship that will carry her from the slums of the Black Country to rural Nova Scotia. She will never return to Britain or see her family again. She is a Home Child, one of thousands of British children sent to Canada to work as indentured farm labourers and domestic servants. In Nova Scotia, Eliza's world becomes a place where ordinary things are transfigured into treasures - a red ribbon, the feel of a foal's mane, the sound of her name on someone else's lips. With nothing to call her own, the wild beauty of Cape Breton is the only solace Eliza has — until another Home Child, a boy, comes to the farm and changes everything. Inspired by the true story of Liz Berry's great aunt, this novel in verse is an evocative portrait of a girl far from home.
”A profound act of witness to a long injustice, and a beautifully crafted conjuring of a life lived as truly as possible.” —Guardian
Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The selected letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O’Reilly edited by Peter Simpson $65
The painter Colin McCahon and the librarian Ron O'Reilly first met in 1938, in Dunedin, when McCahon was 19 and O'Reilly 24. They remained close, writing regularly to each other until 1981, when McCahon became too unwell to write. Their 380 letters covered McCahon's art practice, the contemporary art scene, ideas, philosophy and the spiritual life. Dazzling in their range, intensity and candour, the letters track a unique friendship and partnership in art. Simpson's selection represents the first time these letters have been transcribed and collected in what is an act of great generosity to future scholars. It adds a new dimension to an understanding of McCahon and his career and is a rich and lively addition to any art lover's McCahon library. O'Reilly's son Matthew O'Reilly and McCahon's grandson Finn McCahon-Jones contribute insightful essays that round out the unique perspective the letters afford. The book is illustrated with 64 images, all discussed in the letters.
Krabat and the Sorcerer’s Mill by Ottfied Preussler (translated from German by Anthea Bell) $30
New Year's has passed. Twelfth Night is almost here. Krabat, a fourteen-year-old beggar boy dressed up as one of the Three Kings, is traveling from village to village singing carols. One night he has a strange dream in which he is summoned by a faraway voice to go to a mysterious mill — and when he wakes he is irresistibly drawn there. At the mill he finds eleven other boys, all of them, like him, the apprentices of its Master, a powerful sorcerer, as Krabat soon discovers. During the week the boys work ceaselessly grinding grain, but on Friday nights the Master initiates them into the mysteries of the ancient Art of Arts. One day, however, the sound of church bells and of a passing girl singing an Easter hymn penetrates the boys' prison: At last a plan is set in motion that will win them their freedom and put an end to the Master's dark designs.
"One of my favorite books." —Neil Gaiman
worm, root, wort… & bane by Ann Shelton $54
Artist Ann Shelton’s latest book, worm, root, wort… & bane delves into the rich history of plant-centric belief systems and their suppression. Part artist scrapbook, part photo book, part quotography, and part exhibition catalogue, this publication explores the medicinal, magical, and spiritual uses of plant materials, once deeply intertwined with the lives of European forest, nomadic, and ancient peoples. worm, root, wort… & bane re-assembles fragments of historical knowledge alongside the first 19 artworks from Shelton’s photographic series, i am an old phenomenon (2022-ongoing). The plant sculptures photographed are constructed by the artist, who has worked with plants since childhood and long been interested in the history of floral art and its expansive gendered resonances. Overflowing with 300+ images and quotations, this book traces the loss of plant knowledge held wise women, witches, and wortcunners in post-feudal Europe, as Christianity spread and capitalism emerged. The book follows our changing relationships with plants, through the Victorian era to the present — offering cause to reflect on the consequences of the ongoing estrangement between humans and the natural world.
Before he was catapaulted into the literary sphere at the age of 42 with the publication of Heart of Darkness in 1899, Joseph Conrad worked as a merchant seaman and frequented ports in Australia and New Zealand between 1878 and 1893 (he captained the Otago until he declined to repeat a sugar-trade run between Australia and Mauritius). Martin Edmond does a superb job of tracing Conrad’s ghost in the Antipodes, and reveals how many elements, incidents and characters in his fiction draw directly from his experiences in this part of the world. As always, Edmond’s style, precision and personal, thoughtful approach to writing non-fiction make the book a pleasure to read.
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