Tulia Thompson Black Ice Matter by Gina Cole (Huia Press, 2016), 250 pp., $30 At the recent Auckland Pride Gala event, Cole read her stories while dressed impeccably in a pale-green suit bearing a world map, and a tangerine shirt. The effect was simultaneously prim and outrageous, Pasifika and a little geeky. ‘Giving the gay […]
In a Cold Room
Vaughan Rapatahana Stories on the Four Winds: Ngā Hau e Whā edited by Brian Bargh and Robyn Bargh (Huia Publishers, 2016), 290 pp., $35 You know the one about the curate’s egg? This book is its exemplar, for it is surely an indeterminate mix of good and not as good short story writing, given that […]
Spinning the Collective Fate
Ted Jenner Butades by T.P. Sweeney (Titus Books, Pokeno, 2016), 234 pp., $30 ‘I live in a small town with frequent murders’ – now that is an opening line which establishes tone, content and style in one terse sentence. Butades (accent on second syllable) is a murder mystery that reads like Kafka in New Mexico. […]
Civil Service Farce
Nicholas Reid A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence and Gibson, 2016), 229 pp., $29 I’m old enough to recall a sketch in a university student revue from the early 1980s. It was about a new recruit to the SIS being outfitted with the required kit. ‘Briefcase,’ says the officer dishing […]
The Steadland Protagonist
Andrew Paul Wood The Name on the Door is not Mine: Stories new and selected by C.K. Stead (Allen & Unwin, 2016), 304 pp., $39.99 New Zealand’s doyen of literary criticism, senior poet and writer of fiction, C.K. Stead, now in his eighth decade, needs very little introduction, though reviewing his books is not without […]
Decorating a Cake with One, Two, Fifty, Sixty Candles
Gillian Ranstead A Surfeit of Sunsets by Dulcie Castree (Mākaro Press, 2016), 204 pp., $35 Dulcie Castree’s pen is a diamond drill inscribing patterns on crystal glass: every page of this novel rings with exquisitely cut sentences. They catch brief moments of a place, a scene, a figure, and send them chiming and resounding through […]
Parental Heartache
Tina Shaw Strip by Sue Wootton (Mākaro Press, 2016), 326pp., $40 As co-editor of the website forum Corpus, poet Sue Wootton writes, ‘Poetry can be a harsh tonic or a sweet balm, but it’s always most medicinal for conditions of uncertainty, fear or rage, for those times when we feel paralysis, numbness, loss of control, […]
Learning About Birds
Emily Brookes Billy Bird by Emma Neale (Vintage, 2016), 330pp, $38 Grief is the emotion that throws all others into relief, stripping away ego and pretentions. Novels that revolve around grief are not rare. But what Emma Neale has managed to produce in her Ockham Awards shortlisted novel, Billy Bird, certainly is: an often witty, […]
Hitler’s Germany
Maggie Rainey-Smith The Wish Child by Catherine Chidgey (Victoria University Press, 2016), 383pp, $30 At first glance, realising this was another book about Hitler’s Germany, I railed: why not Rwanda, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Srebrenica, or Syria even? I felt there could be nothing new to write and, as a baby boomer with a father who […]
Three Very Different Women
Felicity Murray The Quiet Spectacular by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin Random House, 2016), 295 pp., $38 What constantly stands out for me in New Zealand fiction is how our land, our environment, our geography is such an inherent part of the narrative, almost like another participant in the story, forming the backdrop to everything that takes place. […]
Blurring the Line between Truth and Fiction
Michelle Elvy My Mother and the Hungarians, and other small fictions by Frankie McMillan (Canterbury University Press, 2016), 114 pp., $25 To step into the space created by Frankie McMillan’s stories in her new collection is to move back and forth in time and to and fro between worlds. She uses the short fiction form […]
Crime Stories
Nicholas Reid Overcast Sunday by Christodoulos Moisa (One Eyed Press, 2016), 306 pp., $24; The Agency by Ian Austin (published by Ian Austin, 2016), 424 pp., $29.99 I like very much what Whanganui artist and writer Christodoulos Moisa has attempted to do in Overcast Sunday. He has attempted to write a brisk and simple little […]
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