Chris Else

The Cage by Lloyd Jones (Penguin-Random House, 2018), 262 pp., $38

This year’s shortlist for the Acorn Prize includes an anomaly. Three of the titles show an attention to the values of ‘fine writing’ that have tended to dominate our recent new fiction. The New Animals by rising star Pip Adams plays fast and loose with narrative conventions in its exploration of Auckland’s fashion industry; Patrick Evans’s Salt Picnic offers a plot-light portrait of a young female novelist in 1950s Spain, in a style that seems to be a pastiche of Janet Frame; Baby, by Annaleese Jochems, is a beautifully written but simple tale of homoerotic obsession from the point of view of a twenty-something narcissist. The odd book out is Sodden Downstream, Brannavan Gnanalingam’s account of a middle-aged Sri Lankan refugee trying to get to her cleaning job in central Wellington during a violent rainstorm. This piece, which is moving and funny although a little rough around the edges, differs from the others in that it is driven by concern for matters beyond itself. It is unselfconsciously about something. We might call it a journalist novel. [Read more…]

Kiran Dass

Sodden Downstream by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, 2018), 180 pp., $28.99

Brannavan Gnanalingam’s fifth novel Sodden Downstream is an immensely affecting and at times quietly upsetting read. Set over a roughly twenty-hours period in Lower Hutt, it takes place as former tropical cyclone Evelyn hits Wellington and the Kapiti Coast, causing the region to shut down as public transport comes to a grinding halt. [Read more…]

Craig Cliff 

Beneath Pale Water by Thalia Henry (Cloud Ink Press, 2017), 244 pp., $29.95

On the back cover of Thalia Henry’s debut novel Beneath Pale Water, Owen Marshall offers the following endorsement: ‘Powerfully evokes the landscapes and seasons of inland Otago.’ To the cynic, those nine words might read like a nice person struggling for something – anything – nice to say:

Strong plot? Um …

Memorable characters? Hmm …

But the landscape!

To the cynic I say: Hold your tongue!  [Read more…]

Kate Duignan 

The Necessary Angel by C.K. Stead (Allen and Unwin, 2017), 204 pp., $36

The Necessary Angel tells, on the face of it, a story about woman problems. Max Jackson, New Zealand-born professor of literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, ricochets between three women: his semi-estranged wife Louse; Helen, a student with a crush on him; and Sylvie, his colleague. Max sleeps with two of the three over the course of the book (spoiler: not the wife). We’re also privy to Sylvie’s relationship with a painfully humourless German.  [Read more…]