Michael O’Leary Breaking Connections, by Albert Wendt (Huia Publishers, 2015), 348 pp., $35 Poet Hone Tuwhare often used to advise other writers to ‘Write about what you know.’ While this may be a good adage for poets to follow, it is not necessarily the right or desired advice for a novelist. In a curious way […]

David Eggleton Starlight Peninsula, by Charlotte Grimshaw (Random House, Vintage, 2015), 352 pp., $38; The Writers’ Festival, by Stephanie Johnson (RandomHouse, Vintage, 2015), 284 pp., $38 Is inner Auckland a state of mind? Two novelists demonstrate that, in a way, it is with recent novel sequences. Charlotte Grimshaw has completed a trilogy that began with […]

Michelle Elvy Daughters of Messene, by Maggie Rainey-Smith (Mākaro Press 2015), 272 pp., $35 I recently read Philip Brady’s To Banquet With the Ethiopians: A memoir of life before the alphabet, in which the reader is challenged to accompany the poet through a labyrinth of experiences, backward and forward in time. Brady’s memoir-in-verse is populated […]

Helen Watson White The Pale North by Hamish Clayton (Penguin, 2015), 221 pp., $30 The title of Hamish Clayton’s welcome second novel refers to the way the sun seems ‘out of position’ for New Zealander Gabriel North when he visits the northern hemisphere. North describes in his Berlin journal how the sun ‘occupied the wrong […]

Richard Taylor The Blinding Walk by K.M. Ross (Waywiser Press, 2015), 520 pp., $30 K.M. Ross’s novel begins in King’s Cross, Sydney. Yehune and his friend Mel are travelling from New Zealand to Europe. In a weird incident in a weird place, Yehune accosts a strange clown, is hassled by some transvestites, and then accompanies […]

Christine Johnston The Party Line by Sue Orr (Vintage/Random House NZ, 2015), 249 pp., $38 As Nicola Walker, 54, is driving from Auckland across the Hauraki Plains to attend a funeral, she is besieged by memories and haunted by the voice and presence of her dead mother, Joy. The journey takes her past some scenes […]

Michelle Elvy  Landfall by Tim Jones (Paper Road Press, 2015), 38 pp., ebook US$2.99 Simply by sailing in a new direction You could enlarge the world. – Allan Curnow, ‘Landfall in Unknown Seas’ Let me begin this review by admitting two things up front. Firstly, I like the very idea of Paper Road Press’ Shortcuts […]

Nicholas Reid The Predictions, by Bianca Zander (Hachette/Blackfriars, 2015), 370 pp., $29.99 Novels that satirise or provide ironical commentary on old alternative-lifestyle communes are not all that uncommon. Just a couple of years back there was, from England, Marina Lewycka’s light-hearted romp Various Pets Alive and Dead, in which aged anarcho-Marxist communards come to terms […]

Tasha Haines Infidelities, by Kirsty Gunn (Faber & Faber, 2014), 208 pp., $35 Nobody buys short stories anyway,’ he’d said earlier. ‘No one thinks there’s enough going on.’ Helen muses on what Richard told her. She tells him soon after: ‘It was always me behind the whole thing. The collection, the idea of those stories […]

Michael O’Leary Hold My Teeth While I Teach You to Dance, by Mike Johnson (99% Press, Wakefield, 2014), 261 pp., $30 The first thing I want to say about Mike Johnson’s new novel is that I enjoyed it immensely, not least because I always like reading stories set in our own Aotearoa New Zealand cities. […]

Jennifer Lawn Fallout: A Tito Ihaka Novel, by Paul Thomas (Auckland: Upstart Press, 2014), 288 pp., $34.99 Is this novel is a good read? Sure. It hums along with Paul Thomas’s typically brisk pacing, his talent for braided plot lines, his ear for fluent dialogue. Is it vintage Ihaka? No, not if your reference point […]