Shana Chandra 

Both Feet in Paradise by Andy Southall (The Cuba Press, 2021), 350pp, $37

Andy Southall’s Both Feet in Paradise is a disorientating read, in turn travelogue, mystery and suspense thriller. But by the time we close the book’s covers, we realise that this disorientation is precisely the point. Divided into three sections, each named after a character within the novel and told from their perspective, it begins with Naomi, a young woman listlessly waiting for her parents to arrive at the airport. We never get to see them walk through the gates as Naomi’s narrative is truncated by Adam’s. We’re with Naomi drinking beers under the heaving fluorescent lights of a sterile airport bar, then we are plunged into the bright light of the tropical idyl of Sāmoa with Adam. [Read more…]

Chris Else

Entanglement by Bryan Walpert (Mākaro Press, 2021), 268pp, $35

When I was fifteen I discovered the joys of mathematics. The experience was a Damascene moment that confirmed me on a path to study science despite my love of language and story. I found, however, that when I got to university all my friends were arts students. Many of them felt that science was an arcane business somehow inimical to the things they cared about. How could I want to write poetry and short stories while at the same time attending lectures in maths and physics? For my part, I was mystified by their mystification. The pleasure I found in an elegant piece of logic was aesthetic and the ideas of science seemed a fertile field of metaphor. For example, the paradoxical square root of minus one, represented by the symbol i and the basis for the system of imaginary numbers, called to my mind the I of personal consciousness and identity, which seemed equally strange and inexplicable.  [Read more…]