95bFM's Loose Reads: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

Stag Dance is the latest outrageous literary offering by Women’s Prize shortlisted author Torrey Peters. Comprised of three short stories and a novella, Stag Dance writhes through genders and genres, refracting facets of gender through the light of romance, dystopia and classical Westerns.

Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones is set in a dystopian future, following dealers in a black market for hormones who hawk their wares to the trans and cis communities alike. The Chaser follows a young teenager at boarding school in his early stages of a crush that warps into a dysmorphic desire. The titular central novella, Stag Dance is a gripping Western centred around an annual courtship ritual amongst timber pirates.

This irreverent, pulsing collection of short stories explores the messy underbelly of gender identity and queer desire with shocking nuance and no easy answers.

The best short story collection I’ve read in ages!

95bFM's Loose Reads: Clay Eaters by Gregory Kan

Gregory Kan is an Ockham shortlisted author living in Poneke who has released two acclaimed poetry collections; This Paper Boat in 2016 and Under Glass in 2019. He's also a coder who's created an incredible text manipulator called leaves.glass.

Clay Eaters is an eagerly-awaited release by Kan. This is a book of fragments- strands that tenuously link the past, present and future.

Clay Eaters explores the ephemeral nature of our corporeal bodies; spectres springing forty from decaying ends. As all turns to ash and returns to soil, new life awaits birth in the subterranean.

This is an incredible collection of poetry spanning Singapore, Poneke and the US- a perfect morsel when a novel’s too long.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Told with caustic wit, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's long-awaited fourth novel, Dream Count, follows the lives and complex relationships between four Nigerian women. 

Fans of Americanah will love Adichie's most recent return to fiction- a witty, funny and clever excision of womanhood and migration. 

Adichie explores the moulding of desire, love and friendship and the cracks of tension that emerge via the stratas of race, class and geography.

Clever, poignant and deliciously readable Dream Count cements Adichie as a generational talent akin to Anne Tyler and Sally Rooney. 

95bFM's Loose Reads: Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

Fundamentally is a debut novel by peace-keeping specialist Nussaibah Younis. 

Younis writes about a UN peace-keeping contingent based in Iraq and tells the story through the perspective of a criminologist specializing in deradicalization programmes. 

A hilarious piece of auto-fictional satire, Fundamentally skewers the saviour industrial complex and contends with the tangled politics of international relations.

Told with caustic wit, Fundamentally is a funny, highly readable story sure to help any reader out of their summer rut!

Listen to Suri’s call with Jonny in the studio below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: A Spring of Love by Celia Dale

First released in the 1960’s, a new Daunt Books edition of Celia Dale’s A Spring of Love has been newly republished.

Esther, a 30 year old ‘spinster’, lives with her Gran and has little reprieve from her mundane routine. She soon meets & starts a courtship with Raymond, a man of artificial charm who weasels his way into her life.

Reminiscent of Mary Gatskill and Shirley Jackson, A Spring of Love is a gripping and hilarious psychological thriller which explores the loneliness and desire of women and the men who prey on them.

You can also listen to Suri’s review of Celia Dale’s previous book, Sheep’s Clothing here.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Holding the Line by Barbara Kingsolver

Reprinted 29 years after its original publication, Holding the Line delves into one of the largest worker strikes in American history. 

Through extensive interviews with the women working gruelling manual jobs and fighting for collective rights at a huge personal cost, Kingsolver paints a portrait of some of America's historically most vulnerables workers.

Bold, extensively researched and written with as much flair as her later novels, Holding the Line illuminates a rarely explored part of history, told through the voices of some of America's most marginalised voices.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Suri's Christmas picks & Agony Aunt answers

Suri & Jonny are in the studio with a HEAP of Christmas recommendations.

Listen in for some agony aunt answers - including advice on science fiction, graphic novels and self help.

Then, Suri picks out some of her top gift picks, including:

Time of the Child by Niall Williams
The Garden of Time by Olivia Laing
James by Percival Everett
The Gavin Bishop Treasury
What I Ate by Stanley Tucci
Ātūa Wāhine by Hana Tapiata

Click the link below for audio.

95bFM's Loose Reads: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Author of the National Book award-winning title Between the World and Me, Ta Nehisi-Coates returns to non-fiction with The Message. In this concise but powerful title, Nehisi-Coates explores the human impulse to mythologise the world around us. 

Part travelogue, part history, Ta Nehisi-Coates moves between Senegal, South Carolina and Palestine to reveal the connective tissues that allowed for the exploitation of certain ethnicities in all three countries. Coates explores how racism and colonialism are constructed in the pursuit of capital and in the process of national-building.

A great intro to the history of segregation and colonialism, The Message is the perfect gift for a new reader of critical theory and a great companion to Baldwin, Arendt and Fanon.

Listen to Suri’s review in the 95bFM studio with Jonny below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru

The third title in Hari Kunzru’s Colours trilogy, Blue Ruin is a COVID-era novel taking aim at the art world. The novel follows Jay, a former artist whose descent from rising young art star to middle-aged manual labourer leaves his body and heart in disrepair. Crossing paths with his former lover Alice and her husband Rob (Jay’s art-school rival and a benefactor of wealthy corporate philanthropists), Jay’s life begins to take new shape.

Blue Ruin shifts between the 1990's and current day, covering the Young British Artists movement and the COVID-era landscape. Exploring the relationship between philanthropists and artists, between art and assets and between artistic integrity and survival, Blue Ruin unveils the winners and losers in art and in life and the financial precarity of those who lose. 

Listen to Suri’s review in the 95bFM studio with Jonny below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

The queen of South American horror fiction is back with a new collection of short stories for the spooky season! From hauntings, cults, surgical disasters and beyond, Mariana Enriquez’s new book ‘A Sunny Place for Shady People’ explores the human-made violence and terror inflicted in unique ways onto each of her characters. From body horror, ghosts and psychological torture, this short story collection has something to sate the appetite of all fans of horror. 

Pre-order now to nab your copy just in time for Halloween!

95bFM's Loose Reads: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

Winner of the 2018 International Booker Prize and 2018 Nobel Prize for literature, Olga Tokarczuk returns to fiction with a heady, atmospheric 'health resort horror story'. 

Written 100 years after the publication of The Magic Mountain, The Empusium is written both as a response and a feminist retelling of Thomas Mann's canonical work.

We follow Miczyslaw Wojnik's arrival at a sanatorium set in the lush and dense mountainous forests of Germany, where the alpine air is touted as an antidote to all its inhabitants' ills. 

Following strict regimens of diet and exercise and using their downtime to muse on the state of a nation on the brink of war, the patients are aware of beady eyes following every move- are they being watched by the staff? Or is there a more sinister presence lurking in the shadows of the mountain fauna?

A novel filled with socratic dialogue and a rich, divinical atmosphere, The Empusium is a stunning and sinister exploration into the roots of facism and misogyny, as relevant today as it's predecessor was almost a century ago.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Help Wanted by Adele Waldman

Biting, sharp and funny, ‘Help Wanted’ by Adelle Waldman follows the daily rhythms and tribulations of workers in the big box megastore, Town Square. Desperate to escape the grips of their line manager Meredith, the employees band together to plot her removal. 

Shifting perspectives between the workers, this novel explores the unimportant but omnipresent rules and structures governing the daily lives of workers chained to their jobs and class.

Irreverent, funny and whip-smart, ‘Help Wanted’ is a millennial workplace novel that unearths the bureaucracy of management and the physical and mental aches of working class life in America.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Blackouts by Justin Torres

Winner of The National Book Award in America, Blackouts is a clever and moving read. A love story between two men - young and old - as they reckon with queer histories and their place within them.

Listen to Suri and Jonny talk about it below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Told through the eyes of sharp-eyed secret agent Sadie Smith, Creation Lake is a genre-bending espionage tale, with an unexpectedly philosophical core. Set in the ancient caves and dried lakes of France, this atmospheric novel follows Sadie as she infiltrates an extremist group intent on unraveling civilization and replacing it with a primordial society. Headed by the charismatic and evasive Bruno, the group plots violent acts intended to pull Europe back into the Bronze Age. 

A surprising and fascinating cat-and-mouse chase, Creation Lake asks existential questions about human and civilizational origins whilst remaining thrilling up to its last words.

This is Rachel Kushner's second Booker longlisted title and perhaps her most rigorous one yet. Creation Lake is released early September.

95bFM's Loose Reads: My Friends by Hisham Matar

Suri declares My Friends by Hisham Matar one of her favourite reads of 2024 and one to look out for on the Booker Longlist (which is announced next week).

My Friends is a political novel that follows three Libyan men, exiled in London, and their friendship’s journey, weaving together fictional characters along side real events. With themes of loss, grief and friendship, My Friends reveals uncomfortable truths about finding your identity whilst away from home.

Suri phoned into the studio, listen to her review with Jonny below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: The Mark by Frida Isberg

Teetering on the edge of dystopia, debut novel The Mark, takes place in a future Iceland where the device Zoe plays videos to soothe minds ill-at-rest and an Empathy Test determines your societal status.

Starting weeks before an explosive referendum to make the Empathy Test mandatory, The Mark follows the story of four characters: lonely, isolated Tristan fearful of what the Test will mean for his future job prospects, Vetur, a teacher worried about the prospects of her failing students and Eyjal, a corporate office worker facing dismissal and Oli, a psychiatrist who heads the organization responsible for creating and administering the test. 

A compulsive, addictive read for fans of Black Mirror

95bFM's Loose Reads: Performance by David Coventry

After five years of reviews, Suri AND Jenna came into the studio to farewell the amazing Rachel Ashby from her role at breakfast.

Suri then talks about David Coventry’s new autofiction-ish novel, Performance. From Te Waipounamu to Europe, David takes us on a clever and fascinating observation of identity, loss and longing.

Listen below!

95bFM's Loose Reads: Bird Child and Other Stories by Patricia Grace

This morning, Suri visited the bFM studio to review the well researched, electric and genius new book of short stories by Patricia Grace.

Divided into three sections, this collection immediately connects you to the human experience across a wide variety of character and place.

Listen to Suri’s chat with Rachel below.

95bFM's Loose Reads: James by Percival Everett

Today on 95bFM’s Loose Reads, Suri reviewed Percival Everett’s James.

An amazing endeavour of a novel, where Everett gives Jim, the peripheral sidekick in Huckleberry Finn, a full voice.

With notes of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, James is a clever exploration of language, plunging the reader into the American South, pre-civil war.

95bFM's Loose Reads: Ockhams Poetry Shortlist

Suri previews two of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards poetry finalists.

Roof Leaf Flower Fruit: A Verse Novel by Bill Nelson - narrative poetry which traces family history with a shocking truth revealed.
Talia by Isla Huia explores whakapapa and peers with electric ease.

Listen below for Suri giving her lowdown and poetry reading from each book below.

The two other books on the poetry shortlist are:
Chinese Fish by Grace Yee
At the Point of Seeing by Megan Kitching

Keep updated here to find out the winners, announced May 15th, at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.