Sally Blundell
Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Craig Gamble (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2021), 478pp, $35
‘Maybe I could sew my legs together,’ Loretta muses, wishing for a tail. Penned-on lines or her own rashy, eczematic skin could pass for scales. Sniffing, dripping, allergy-ridden Jeremy is a likely candidate for the required slimy hagfish; a sickening Mrs Wilberforce (a nod to Maurice Gee’s Under the Mountain) is Loretta’s longed-for mermaid kindred spirit. This is the alarming, yet vividly drawn cast of ‘Scales, Tails and Hagfish’, Octavia Cade’s story of an insistent, angry, self-proclaimed mermaid that sets the pace for this collection of fourteen long short stories with unflagging brio. [Read more…]
Harry Ricketts
Emer Lyons
In recent years, New Zealand writing has developed a strong relationship with Germany, and Berlin in particular. The Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer’s Residency is partly responsible for this. A biennial programme established in 2000, it has taken half a dozen writers, including Lloyd Jones, Hinemoana Baker and Philip Temple, for sojourns of up to eleven months in the German capital. Some, such as Sarah Quigley, seem never to have returned. Others, like Catherine Chidgey and the late Nigel Cox, have written about Berlin outside of the residency. The latest of these is Bridget van der Zijpp, whose novel Laugh Me Broken is mostly set in the city. 
Genevieve Scanlan