Reviews
Back into Level 3, Jenna reviews Una Mannion’s A Crooked Tree from the shop.
With an instantly enticing premise - a harried mother pulls her car over and demands her young child out to walk home. It’s cold, dark and far away from their home in the mountains. This act sets off a series of events that will change the lives of a family.
Told through the eyes of 15 year old Libby, this is literary fiction that’s part mystery, part coming of age. This is smart and surprising character novel.
Hello from Level 3! On today’s 95bFM Loose Read’s review, Jenna talks about Interior Chinatown, the latest winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.
Written as a script, this book is a sharp and smart satirical observation of the portrayal of Asian American stereotypes in Hollywood.
Interior Chinatown is on the shelf now!
Kia ora all! Here’s our first 95bFM review for 2021.
Jenna delved into Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy over the holidays. A weighty tome, this book follows four characters whose lives are intertwined with the concentration camp, Buchenwald.
Characters are expertly weaved together to portray different sides of the Nazi regime while reflecting the way a society can be blind to what’s happening right in front of them. This is a must-read novel, it’s bloody brilliant.
Listen to Jenna’s review with Keria and Tess below:
Another book from the 2020 Booker Prize shortlist, Kiran reviewed Real Life by Brandon Taylor on 95bFM Breakfast’s Loose Reads. In the tradition of The Secret History and Stoner, this is a brilliant “campus novel” and is perfect for fans of A Little Life and Normal People.
Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain is a novel brimming with heart and soul and the writing positively gleams. Shuggie Bain is Kiran’s novel of the year and she reviewed it on RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
On RNZ’s Nine to Noon Kiran reviewed Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan. A charismatic and spirited ode to friendship, this gorgeous novel is a positive and celebratory representation of male friendship. While it’s heartbreaking, it’s also a joyous headrush.
On 95bfm’s Loose Reads, Kiran reviewed the dazzling new Ali Smith novel Summer. In this satisfying conclusion to her much-loved radical and piercingly contemporary seasonal quartet, Smith tracks current events in real time: COVID-19, lockdown, Black Lives Matter… breathtakingly, it’s all here.
Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body…
So begins Death in Her Hands, the compelling new novel from Ottessa Moshfegh who is an expert at evoking the weird, eerie and mordantly funny. Kind of like Patricia Highsmith meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets Murder She Wrote, Death in Her Hands is a pageturner of a mystery - comic in places and pitch dark in others.
On 95bFM’s Loose Reads, Kiran reviewed the eagerly anticipated new novel by David Mitchell Utopia Avenue. Set in 1967 right on the cusp of the Summer of Love, it follows the rise of a fictitious British psych/folk/rock/blues group called Utopia Avenue. The novel charts the group coming together, playing gigs, recording albums, falling apart, and sex, drugs and rock and roll scandals as well as the mundane vicissitudes of being in a rock group. Music lovers will have fun spotting the many cameos from famous musicians and bands as well as characters from previous Mitchell novels.
On RNZ’s Nine to Noon, Kiran reviewed Notes from An Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell. This is a book about right now, to read right now! In search of preppers getting ready for the end of the world, O’Connell travelled to bunkers in South Dakota, to a conference in Los Angeles about the colonisation of Mars, to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to wilderness reserves in the Scottish Highlands, and… New Zealand. The result is this throughly engaging reportage-cum-travelouge which is equal parts terrifying and hilarious. Reading Notes From An Apocalypse is like listening to your brainiest and funniest friend!
On 95bFM’s Loose Reads Kiran reviewed the incendiary novel Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor which is on the Booker International Prize shortlist. Set in a small Mexican village, this intoxicating novel has the feel of a Southern Gothic modern classic and looks at small town folklore and mythology, inequality, violence and superstition.
Kiran was happy to be back in the 95bFM studio with Rachel and Sarah to talk about Pip Adam’s thrilling new novel Nothing to See. Kiran reckons Adam is one of the most interesting and exciting writers currently working in New Zealand fiction.
One of the hardest requests booksellers get is for funny books! On 95bFM’s Loose Reads, Kiran reviewed A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen. It’s a hilarious novel about a failing academic named Andrei. He’s just split up with his girlfriend and moves from New York to Moscow to look after his ageing grandmother Seva, who is about to turn 90 and has accelerating dementia. This book is also packed with Russian history and politics and is super entertaining.
If you loved Olga Tokarczk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead you’ll love this!
How often do we think about and how much do we even know about the immense world that lurks beneath our feet? Robert Macfarlane is the poet of the natural world, the linguist of landscape. As we re-emerge from the “underland” of lockdown, his exquisite book Underland: A Deep Time Journey is the most thoughtful and beautiful book to gently dive into at this time. This exhilarating investigation into the world beneath the surface we walk upon, moves between catacombs, a laboratory underground in Yorkshire, and underground burial chambers for nuclear waste in Finland. Macfarlance explains that the underland archives the past, and tells us so much about the future… Kiran read this book in absolute wonder, and reviewed it on 95bFM’s Loose Reads.
Kiran has worked her way through the Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction shortlist and reviewed Owen Marshall’s Pearly Gates on 95bFM’s Loose Reads. It’s a lovely, gentle novel set in a small North Otago town, and is based around Pat “Pearly” Gates. A good local son made good, Pearly is a real estate agent, two term mayor and ex rugby player. Marshall is great at evoking a sense of place and character, and Pearly Gates is charming.
The Ockham NZ Book Awards Winners’ Ceremony will be live-streamed from 6pm May 12 on the Ockhams YouTube channel where you can now also view readings from the shortlisted authors.
by Peggy Taylor (11)
Lizard’s Tale is an amazing book! This truly captivating mystery is set in Singapore when World War 2 was being fought. It tells the story of Lizard, a poor boy surviving on odd jobs and petty theft, and the people around him. Lizard’s Tale has it all - murder, mystery, codebooks, liars, friendship, traitors and even a little bit of history.
I would recommend this book for kids who love mysteries or want to try something new. After all this book has a little bit of everything, and I really enjoyed it.
Overall, this book is impossible to put down! So what are you waiting for? Go order yourself a copy!
David Vann has been shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for his novel Halibut on the Moon. Vann took time out from building a 50-foot aluminium sailing trimaran to catch up with Kiran ahead of the awards.
Kia ora, David! Congratulations on being shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction! Halibut on the Moon is a powerful but dark read. It re-visits a theme you have previously examined in your fiction - the suicide of your father Jim. How do you retain a sense of perspective when you are writing about such heavy personal history?
Interesting question, because I guess in fiction we don’t try to retain a sense of perspective. That implies a distance and not being affected, and the point here, in writing or reading Greek tragedy, is to suffer and be broken in order to see.
I was trying to get as close as possible to my father’s despair and final days and trying to forget my own perspective. I was writing without a plan or outline and was often surprised by what the characters did or said or felt.
Tragedy is refreshing because it offers us a descent within a safe space, art, and then we emerge refreshed. But we have to suffer first.
You’ve explored the men in your family from different angles - has this helped you understand them on a deeper level? And what angle are you interested in exploring next?
Writing about my father and grandfathers and uncle has helped me tremendously in understanding them better, understanding our past, and having some context for understanding who I am now. I don’t have a plan at the moment of writing more about my immediate family but instead am writing about our Cherokee heritage, a longer ancestry.
What was the last book that made you laugh, and why?
Less, the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Andrew Sean Greer, made me laugh a lot. The main character is a writer about my age who is seeing his career descend, so it was uncomfortable laughter at times, with too much recognition, but still wonderful fun. Everything he writes about what it’s like to have your career spiral downward in middle age is certainly true.
What was the last book that really moved you, and why?
So many. I’m often moved by books. I’m an easy audience. I cry even in bad movies. Like, The Rock has a nice moment with the ape and I cry.
But the book I’ll never forget for being so beautiful and wrenching is Shadow Child by P.F. Thomese, a Dutch author. It’s only 100 pages but so sad and also illuminating about writing, about making meaning again after it has left.
What has been in your lockdown bookstack?
I’m actually building a 50-foot aluminium sailing trimaran during the lockdown, a couple months in now. So I saw, grind, and weld aluminium all day. My stack has been only various aluminium extrusions and plates. I’m looking forward to finishing within the next six weeks and getting back to reading and writing.
What book is your comfort read/re-read?
I’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian six times now in full, and in sections many more times. A violent book about an America born in war with a future of endless war, but so beautiful in every sentence. It’s a comfort because it reminds me that good writing matters and endures, despite all the pressures to the contrary.
What are you working on next, David?
I’m working on a novel about my Cherokee ancestors. I come from two Cherokee chiefs from about two hundred years ago, and I’ve written the first 65 pages of Cherokee creation myths revisited and will be writing about DeSoto next. I’m hoping for a longer book, and since no one wants anything from me at the moment, so I have plenty of time!
More information about the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards can be found here.
A Mistake is shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.
One of my favourite novels from 2019, A Mistake is a clipped and refined novel from Wellington-based writer Carl Shuker who is excellent at illustrating the nuances of place, character and plot. Slim and concise, it’s neatly written and tightly wound. I loved Shuker’s 2006 novel The Lazy Boys. A white-knuckled, striking and believable depiction of toxic masculinity and scarfie culture in Dunedin, it was a thrilling, brutal and unforgettable read. I’ll pick up anything with his name on it.
Written in a diagnostic style, A Mistake is based around a woman named Elizabeth Taylor, who at 42 is the youngest and only woman consultant general surgeon at Wellington Hospital. With a pristine track record, she’s extremely talented, driven and committed to her craft and patients. A stickler for detail, Elizabeth is very process-focused. An intense scene early in A Mistake sees her leading her team in theatre for what should be fairly routine procedure. Her background music of choice is the punishingly pulverising and exhilarating ‘Angel of Death’ by thrash metal band Slayer. So it’s all very heightened and the tension is palpable. But then something goes terribly wrong. And people want answers as the implications for Elizabeth and the people around her escalate.
There are so many interesting issues at play, here. A Mistake examines process and burnout, but also the complexities and frailties around human error. Shuker intersperses chapters with pieces about the American Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 which broke apart 73 seconds into flight killing all seven crew members. The Challenger was troubled from the outset, and these interesting interjections punctuate the tension here.
Shuker plainly lays it all out: if you want to understand the implications of massive systems failure determined months in advance but happening in microseconds in front of you as you try to cope in real time, The Challenger timeline is the first thing you might read.
Elizabeth is co-writing a paper examining the public reportage of surgical outcomes for the Royal London Journal of Medicine. Meanwhile, at the hospital, there’s a new reporting system being introduced around big data. The atmosphere around this is increasingly paranoid and on edge. A Mistake is set in a strikingly vivid and recognisable Wellington, with additional scenes in Auckland and an uncomfortable conference in Queenstown.
I love the way Shuker has written this character. Elizabeth Taylor has a fixed smile, like a mask. All muscle and no feeling. She’s up for 27 hours straight and is so constipated that she hasn’t used the toilet in two days. But, she observes, that is quite useful for long stints in the operating theatre.
Elizabeth Taylor is an alluring and fascinating character. I want to know why Shuker called her Elizabeth Taylor! The obvious comparison is to the famous iconic raven-haired, violet-eyed film star. But beyond that, her name actually immediately made me think of that great one-of-a-kind dystopian writer J.G. Ballard. In Ballard’s seminal 1973 novel Crash, the character Vaughan has an intense fantasy about dying in a car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A far-fetched connection? Maybe, but both books share a similar clinical coolness, inner weirdness and steelyness.
A Mistake is a razor sharp and compelling novel from a singular, sophisticated literary voice in contemporary New Zealand fiction.
More information about the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards can be found here.
On RNZ’s Nine to Noon, Kiran reviewed Halibut on the Moon by David Vann which is shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Content warning: This is a powerful but dark read.
Beaming in via her Waterview bubble, Kiran spoke to Rachel and Tess on 95bFM’s Loose Reads about how she is reading her way through the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction shortlist. Kiran reviewed shortlisted title Auē by Becky Manawatu.
Kiran says about Auē:
”If bookshops were currently open and I was on the shop floor right now, Auē is the book I would be putting into everyone’s hands because it’s a knockout of a book and I want everyone to read it! I finished reading Auē at 2.30am with my heart thumping in my chest as I accelerated towards the end. And it’s so powerful that I spent the next day in a kind of “book hangover” state. While it deals with domestic violence, gang culture, the marginalised, and fractured families, it is ultimately beautifully pitched and evoked, full of hope, friendship and tenderness. This is the kind of uniquely gritty New Zealand social realism that I’m thrilled to see being published, and I think people will still be talking about Auē in decades to come…”
The three other shortlisted titles are A Mistake by Carl Shuker, Halibut on the Moon by David Vann, and Pearly Gates by Owen Marshall. Kiran recommends squizzing the shortlist - there’s something for almost any fiction reader!
More information about the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards can be found here. And as a special bonus, check out Kiran’s playlist to accompany Auē below!
