Catherine Robertson

The Strength of Eggshells by Kirsty Powell (Cloud Ink Press, 2019), 320pp. $29.99; Sprigs by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, 2020), 438pp, $30

The thread that binds these two novels is one of gender expectations within New Zealand society, and the dark side of conforming to the narrowest definitions of the roles of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Both novels show that going against these expectations is never easy because they are most often enforced by peers, friends and family. It is one thing to be rejected by a wider faceless society, and quite another to be shunned by those you love and look up to. [Read more…]

Chris Else

Nothing to See by Pip Adam (Victoria University Press, 2020), 380pp, $30

Pip Adam is one of our most innovative writers. She is one of a group of accomplished stylists to come out of the International Institute of Modern Letters but she also has sufficient grip on standard narrative conventions to successfully play around with them.

Her first novel, I am Working on a Building, is told backwards from narrative present to past and turns on the idea of constructing a replica of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, on New Zealand’s West Coast—I guess, in defiance of the Alpine Fault. In The New Animals she twists the expectations of conventional plot structures. The first two-thirds of the book are tightly focused on a group of disparate characters preparing for a fashion show, shifting point of view in a claustrophobic exploration of intergenerational attitudes; the last third dives off in a new direction as one of the characters, barely mentioned up to this point, swims out to sea and keeps on swimming through the Waitematā Harbour into the Hauraki Gulf and on. The shape of the novel feels like an apostrophe or, perhaps more aptly, a flea with a compact body and a pair of long back legs that propel it suddenly in a new direction. In Adam’s latest novel, Nothing to See, the convention she explores is unity of character. [Read more…]

Emma Gattey

Īnangahua Gold by Kathleen Gallagher (KingFisher Publishing, 2018), 183pp, $30; In the Time of the Manaroans by Miro Bilbrough (Victoria University Press, 2020), 300pp, $40

Through a third lockdown in the United Kingdom, I’ve had the immense pleasure of devouring two works by New Zealand authors, both indelibly marked by aroha ki te taiao (love of nature). One, a slender historical novel of emotional heft. The other, a masterwork memoir of—to borrow the language of the author Miro Bilbrough—‘feral dreaming’.

First, Īnangahua Gold. This beautiful nugget of a book is thriftily bound in what must be recycled paper, but is worth its weight in gold. Kathleen Gallagher’s compact yet expansive novel time-switches between 1857, tracking an odd threesome’s westward trek along the Hurunui River on the East Coast of the South Island, and 1877, centring on the West Coast settlement of Īnangahua. The 1857 expedition party is led by Raureka, Ngāi Tahu guide and exemplar of mana wāhine (power/strength of women), and Murphy, a recent Irish immigrant who occasionally flares up into anti-British, anti-imperial ire at their paymaster, Pepper. The latter is a credible caricature of the colonial Englishman abroad, and desperate to ‘be the first Englishman to cross’ the Southern Alps and thus win naming rights to the pass. Pepper is volatile, racist, a least-favoured son. One moment, he cannot believe he is travelling with ‘a Māori Princess and an Irish scholar gypsy’, and the next, he resents ‘that Irish scoundrel’ and ‘that Māori servant’. He is terrified of this unfamiliar, unbiddable land and those who love it.  [Read more…]

Victor Billot 

Dance Prone by David Coventry (Victoria University Press, 2020), 394pp, $35

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me.

It was twenty years ago today.

History never repeats …

David Coventry’s Dance Prone goes back to the mid-1980s, to a pre-rave, pre-irony, pre-grunge universe, out in the flatlands, where the post-war American Dream is progressively sinking under its own weight. To think, 1985 was only 18 years after the release of Sgt Pepper’s. It’s nearly twice that length of time between 1985 and now. Yet that border decade between THEN and NOW spreads its shadow for generations. The Summer of Love is a historical curiosity in black and white footage, whereas the 1980s still seem within reach, in a strange kind of way—at least for Gen Xers like author David Coventry or this reviewer. [Read more…]