fiction

Haunted by Home

March 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Shana Chandra

Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles (Canongate Books, 2022), 272pp, $25; Sign Language for the Death of Reason by Linda Collins (Moth Paper Press, 2021), 141pp, $37.99; Island Notes: Finding my place on Aotea Great Barrier Island by Tim Highman (Cuba Press, 2021), 156pp, $38

The notion of home is both fragile and tenacious. It is an indication of our need for stability throughout the constant change that is life. We think of homes as solid: a house sturdy on the ground, our parents immortal, our country never changing. But all is eroded slowly by ravages of time or in an instant. A house is never as big as it was in our childhood eyes; our parents fade with age until they disappear. Our countries become smaller, too, as we travel away from them and look back; shores are washed-away; earthquake fault lines bring down towns; a war declares that a country is no longer ours. We often think of home as outside ourselves, not within us, despite it being something we hold precious in our mind—which may be why the notion of home seems so elusive. Each of the Aotearoa authors in this review either directly references or subtly hints at different notions of what home might be: they search for it, commemorate it, comment on it, or try to remember it, sometimes all at once. [Read more…]

A Fool in Love

March 1, 2023 Leave a Comment

Jack Ross

The Frog Prince by James Norcliffe (Random House New Zealand, 2022), 302pp, $36

I suppose one reason I’m fascinated by Grimms’ Fairy Tales—or, rather, the Brothers Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), very few of which are actually about fairies—is because it’s the first book I ever read from cover to cover in German. At the time, I felt it was a good choice because I was already (I thought) familiar with the formulaic language of most of the stories (Es war einmal: Once upon a time). As it turned out, though, the experience taught me something about the nature of translation, which I’ve not been able to forget since. [Read more…]

The Past as Possibility

December 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Catherine Robertson

By the Green of the Spring by Paddy Richardson (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2022), 312pp, $37.99; Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press, 2022), 326pp, $37

A Listener review of The Luminaries charged Eleanor Catton with being ‘another New Zealand writer escaping into the past’. It’s true that many of our authors have been drawn to write at least one novel set in history, but with such variety of intent that the actual escape seems the least of their motives. There are novels that shed light on past injustice, both societal and individual; that give new life to voices marginalised or erased at the time; that aim to provide a more nuanced context for the present; or that simply can’t wait to share an absolute cracker of a tale. There are novels that are sweeping in scope and those that are intimate and personal. Some are based on scrupulous research, while others play fast and loose with the facts. The past is less a foreign country than an entire universe of possibility. [Read more…]

Plotting Pasifikafuturism

November 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Sally Blundell

Na Viro by Gina Cole (Huia, 2022), 352pp, $35

Tia Grom-Eddy steers the carved kauri drua into the ocean current, the sail billowing and flapping above her. Wind in her face, the blue-black night sky alive with stars, she begins the long journey from Aotearoa along the Kermedec Trench and on, to the Lau archipelago, calling on the ancestral navigation skills that taught her ‘how to keep your body in tune with tides, flows, currents, animals, signs. The ways of her Fijian and Tongan and Mayuro ancestors, always guiding her.’ A few chapters on, Tia is using the same ancient methods of wayfinding to navigate another kind of drua, the Pawta, a huge, rock-like, voice-responsive, extra-terrestrial spaceship built by the inhabitants of far-away Thrae. Aboard the Pawta, she now rides the currents and swells of the mighty Tijen galactic whirlpool, in search of her sister, thought to be trapped in a tiny probe deep in the turbulent vortex. [Read more…]

A Matter of Judgement

November 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Chris Else

Slow Down, You’re Here by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence and Gibson, 2022), 206pp, $25

I am not sure how to tackle this review. I am tempted to call a spoiler alert because it is impossible to discuss this novel in any depth without giving away a plot twist that the reader deserves to experience without warning, as I did. On the other hand, if I assume my audience consists only of people who have already read the book then maybe I don’t need to talk about the plot at all. This, though, will make for a review that would be incoherent to other potential readers. It seems therefore that my ideal audience is people who are curious about the book but don’t actually intend to read it. I hope there aren’t many of you for I think this is an interesting novel that asks some serious questions and deserves to be read despite some stylistic quirks that I found irritating. [Read more…]

Of Magpies and Mountains

October 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Gina Cole

Butcherbird by Cassie Hart (Huia, 2021), 356pp, $25

Cassie Hart’s supernatural thriller Butcherbird won the 2022 Sir Julius Vogel Award for best novel. Hart has previously self-published novels and novellas as well as short fiction under pen names J.C. Hart and Nova Black. Butcherbird is her first work published by Huia. It is a project Hart worked on as a participant of Te Papa Tupu, a writers’ incubator designed for emerging Māori writers. Hart writes speculative fiction and paranormal romance, and Butcherbird sits more towards the supernatural, horror, suspense side of speculative fiction. It is set in rural Taranaki where Hart grew up and, fittingly, Taranaki Maunga features as a guardian-like presence in the book, watching over events as they slowly unfold in the narrative. [Read more…]