Thomas Gough  In the Absence of Heroes, by Anthony McCarten, (Vintage, 2012), 389 pp., $28.99. A sequel to Death of a Superhero, Anthony McCarten’s new novel In the Absence of Heroes relocates the Delpes from New Zealand to Watford, North London to tell the story of a family playing out their grief in a techno-saturated […]

Elizabeth Smither The Kindness of Your Nature, by Linda Olsson (Penguin, 2011), 216 pp., $40   ‘If we could see ourselves from above,’ thinks Marion Flint, the narrator of Linda Olsson’s third novel, The Kindness of Your Nature, ‘we would observe an intricate pattern emerging: a chain of minute incidents and developments, seemingly random, but all […]

Jenny Powell La Rochelle’s Road, by Tanya Moir (Random House, Auckland, 2011), 272 pp., $39.99.   As the end of La Rochelle’s Road began to near for me, a collision of worlds ensured that this would be a novel I would remember for the most earthbound of reasons. Largely set in Canterbury’s Banks Peninsula during […]

Henry Feltham The Desolation Angel, by Tim Wilson (Victoria University Press, 2011) 189 pp. $35   A piece of wisdom common to the music industry holds that your best song should never come first. Shoving the strongest track to the front of an album suggests the rest isn’t worth listening to. Dozens of internet threads […]

Michael O’Leary The Parihaka Woman, by Witi Ihimaera (Vintage Books, Auckland, 2011) 318 pp., $39.00   Discussing ‘Romance Fiction’ in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Professor Terry Sturm writes of the novelist Edith Lyttleton [aka G.B. Lancaster] that: ‘In the second phase of her career [she] turned more directly to one of the major […]

Raewyn Alexander Rangatira,by Paula Morris (Penguin, Auckland, 2011) 296 pp., $30.00   The title of Rangatira, or Chief, has such grand connotations that I expected a magnificent tale, and in many ways this novel satisfied that expectation. Ngati Wai Rangatira Paratene Te Manu mulls his past over while he sits for the painting of his […]

Azure Rissetto Dark Jelly, by Alice Tawhai (Huia Books, Wellington, 2011) 237 pp., $30.00 With an epigraph by the French existentialist Albert Camus, Dark Jelly by Alice Tawhai promises to challenge readers from the very first page, as she introduces us to a world of nocturnal lives and daytime dreams, paranoia and superstition, skewed enemies and chemical friends, […]

Jodie Dalgleish Travesty, by Mike Johnson with illustrations by Darren Sheehan (Titus Books, Auckland, 2010), 243 pp., $35.00   After finishing Mike Johnson’s Travesty, and re-reading his previous novels and poetry, I have come to the conclusion that, with it, he has achieved the epitome or culmination of something. He has achieved a kind of ‘worldmaking’ — […]

Kiran Dass Bird North and Other Stories, by Breton Dukes (Victoria University Press 2011) 191 pp., $35.00. A quick squizz at a good deal of the latest New Zealand poetry and fiction releases reveals a deeply dismal trend in bland, uninspiring book covers in sedate and muted shades of beige, white or grey. Utterly unappealing, […]

Andrew Paul WoodThe Catastrophe, by Ian Wedde, (Victoria University Press, 2011) 191 pp., $35.00.Ian Wedde’s new novel, The Catastrophe, written during his 2009 Michael King Writer’s Centre Residency, begins with Wedde’s protagonist, the fallen célèbre, middle-aged restaurant critic Christopher Hare  — (whose motto, ‘food is love’, is inherited from his Italian grandmother back in Tolaga Bay, […]

Azure Rissetto The Trouble with Fire by Fiona Kidman (Random House, 2011) 302 pp. $36.99. ‘That’s the trouble with fire, you never know which way it will turn.’ So says Alice Scott, a young visitor to the 1860s Canterbury farm of Annie and Frederick Broome in the title story of Fiona Kidman’s latest collection, The […]

Jodie Dalgleish Zebulon: A Cautionary Tale, by Richard Meros, (Lawrence and Gibson, 2011) 169 pp. $24.00; Getting under Sail, by Brannavan Gnanalingam, (Lawrence and Gibson, 2011) 236 pp., $24.00; The Constant Losers, by Alex Wild, (Titus Books, 2010), 189 pp., $30.00. The ridiculous is skilfully made both funny and thought-provoking in Richard Meros’ Zebulon: A […]