fiction

Phantasmagorical Fiction

September 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Vaughan Rapatahana

Bluffworld by Patrick Evans (Victoria University Press, 2021), 371 pp., $35

Bluffworld is a fable of fractious friction, a different kettle of fish to the typical shoal of Kiwi fiction. Yes, I deliberately cast cliché here, for Evan’s wordy novel is like playing a flashy computer game where the reader is constantly grasping at several streams of multicoloured aquatic life all at once: generally, with some success, but not always snaring the prime catch, if indeed there is such in this multi-layered novel. The saga is heavily embedded in Evans’ own experiences of academic life, where there is an endemic requirement to be as obscure and oblique, as pretentious and pedantic as possible regarding the involuted literary pursuits prevailing. I am not certain that the ‘author(s)’ quite know where to complete this fuliginous frolic, but eventually their ‘scriptor’, Patrick Evans, does end the volume with a satirical ‘Author’s Note’. [Read more…]

Finding Our Light

August 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Renee Liang

A Clear Dawn: New Asian voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Paula Morris and Alison Wong (Auckland University Press, 2021), 340pp., $49.99

The first thing I notice is the weight. This anthology of 75 Asian writers, the first significant assembly of our voices in Aotearoa, is a hefty tome. In my wondering hand it feels like a statement: we have arrived. The book is covered in a glorious silky matte fabric designed by Keely O’Shannessy, its depiction of sunlight falling on waves reminiscent of a Japanese woodblock print. Later I discover that the fabric wipes clean easily. Practicality and beauty in one: how very Asian.

But even the concept of ‘Asian’ and who is defined by this label is fraught. As the editors note in their introduction, it’s an imprecise term that doesn’t communicate the diversity and political complexity of the countries making up ‘Asia’ and yet, it’s a term that can be embraced by people of many backgrounds precisely because it is so waffly. Writers of East Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian descent are included, as are Pacific, European and North American writers of Asian ancestry; missing are voices from Middle Eastern countries. It is clear that editors Paula Morris and Alison Wong set themselves a difficult task. As they note, all anthologies must have limits. [Read more…]

Lives in Little Pieces

August 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Rachel O’Connor

The Disinvent Movement by Susanna Gendall (Victoria University Press, 2021), 144pp., $30; Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (Victoria University Press, 2021), 352pp., $35

In the very first, very short chapter of The Disinvent Movement, the narrator reveals a great deal: she lives in France, she is from New Zealand, and the cut on her head shaped like an Arabic letter was not caused by a fall at the swimming baths, despite the carefully rehearsed story to that effect that she recites for her doctor’s disinterested benefit. The implication is obvious: here is a victim of abuse living life in lies. But what is also immediately clear is that the narrator has an extraordinary capacity for distraction (so handy when someone is stitching your head together), which becomes a factor in both her salvation and her suffering. [Read more…]

Fish out of water

July 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Wendy Parkins

The Swimmers by Chloe Lane (Victoria University Press, 2020), 218 pp., $30; Victory Park by Rachel Kerr (Mākaro Press, 2020), 246 pp, $35

The Swimmers by Chloe Lane and Victory Park by Rachel Kerr are both debut novels longlisted in this year’s Ockham awards (Victory Park went on to win the prize for best first novel), but this is not the only thing these books have in common. They are both also about women living precariously.

Erin, the protagonist of The Swimmers, is a postgraduate student in Auckland working part time in an art gallery. Her tenuous hold on things is not due simply to limited employment prospects, nor to her tendency to self-sabotage—perhaps best represented by her dubious relationship choices. Lane’s novel deftly describes the existential uncertainties and mis-steps of early adulthood more generally, when the strong pull towards freedom and independence strains against the emotional bonds—and baggage—connecting us to our family of origin. [Read more…]

The Treachery of Words (and Images)

June 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Robyn Maree Pickens

This Is Not a Pipe by Tara Black (Victoria University Press, 2020), 160pp., $28; Timelights by Martin Edmond (Lasavia Publishing, 2020), 196pp., $37.86

Before I read This Is Not a Pipe by Pōneke-based comic-maker Tara Black and Timelights by Aotearoa-born, Sydney-based writer Martin Edmond, I was reading literary criticism/affect theory on how to ‘read’ texts. ‘Read’ in this context is best described as reading with the intent to critique, to interpret, to analyse. These texts on reading debate different methodological approaches to criticism, interpretation and analysis, such as suspicious or paranoid reading and reparative reading elaborated by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2003). In highly simplified terms, suspicious reading assumes a position of mastery, and reparative reading one of pleasure. The apparent binary between the two approaches, which Sedgwick nuanced to hold ambiguity, has nevertheless obtained in subsequent theoretical discussions as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ positions, or has been the subject of a recuperative oscillation between the two. [Read more…]