This is Jenna’s most anticipated book of the year and it hasn’t disappointed.
A coming of age story that has all of the classic Ferrante ingredients - Naples, the class divide and passionate women. Highly recommended and on the shelf now.
Listen to Jenna’s review with Kathryn below and buy the book here.
Exploring familial relationships, native myths and gendered violence, Betty is a tender elegy to a mother and a cutting examination of race and class. Living with her family of ten in a white, working class town, Betty and her siblings escape inside swirling oral histories and the gentle comforts of familial myths. As Betty gets older and the smooth veneer of her childhood begins to crack, she uncovers the racist and sexist violence of her family and town's past.
Based on her own mother's life, Tiffany McDaniels latest novel is a stunning look at generational trauma and the unreckoned, uncomfortable truths of a nation.
For fans of Aue and Sing, Unburied, Sing.
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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.
TW: Sexual assault.
On Monday’s 95bFM’s Loose Reads, Jenna reviewed Brannavan Gnanalingam’s Sprigs. Set in Wellington, we open with an end of season rugby game between two rival schools, St Luke’s and Grammar which leads to a horrific sexual assault at the after party.
A cast of 100 characters are managed with ease as we move through four distinct scenes - The Game, The Party, The Meeting & The Trial.
This is a novel that Jenna lost herself in for an entire weekend, barely coming up for breath. Filmic, powerful, emotional and intense, Sprigs an incredibly immersive and compelling novel that explores masculinity, power and reputation.
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.
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Today on 95bFM’s Loose Reads, Jenna reviewed Lil O’Brien’s Not That I’d Kiss a Girl. This astonishingly compelling memoir captures Lil’s experience of coming out in at the turn of the 21st century in Aotearoa. Funny, brutally honest and capturing the complexities of family relationships - this is an important story that’s well worth a read.
Suri reviewed Megha Majumdar’s A Burning on this week’s Loose Reads. This book is a searing portrait of social mobility, class and racism in modern India. Told through the eyes of three central characters looking for fame and greatness, A Burning explores the Indian Dream with biting satire and political urgency.
A Burning was also our Lit Reads title for July! Listen to the review below:
Today, Jenna highlights some kick ass novels that are set in her old home of South Korea. With the rise of K-Pop, K-Beauty, films and of course, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian becoming popularised in the West, there’s no time like the present to delve into this spectacular pile of writing by Korean women.
If I had your Face by Frances Cha - a compelling, fast paced novel that follows a group of four women navigating urban society in Seoul.
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin - Translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins. A moody novel set in a tourist seaside town in the freezing winter. Atmospheric, sparse and
Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah - Translated from Korean by Deborah Smith. Jenna’s favourite of the pile. Filmic, sensory and surprising.
Listen to Jenna chat with Rachel and Mary Margaret below:
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!
In a small village in France, sits a library of unpublished manuscripts, which must be delivered in person.
A Parisian editor find a manuscript of genius while browsing the shelves. The book is published, taking the book world by storm - but is this a hoax? How can Henri Pick, a grouchy pizzeria owner, have written this when no one in his lifetime saw him pick up a pen?
A charming literary mystery with a kooky cast of characters, reminiscent of the film Amélie. Listen to Jenna’s review below and buy the book here.
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.
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In what’s been an incredibly strange and unsettling 2020, it can be good to read some non fiction with an optimistic outlook. Looking into well known psychological, economical and historical research within a new context, Bregman proves to us that humans are…really not that bad.
For fans of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. You can buy Humankind here.
Listen to Jenna. Rachel and Tess chat about this book on 95bFM’s Loose Reads below:
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!
We’re reunited in Level 1!
Jenna’s in the studio to chat to Rachel and Tess about the new New Zealand novel, Fake Baby by Amy McDaid. Set over nine days in Auckland city, this novel is full of wry, dry humour as we follow a three down and out, yet charming characters as they navigate society, family and their mental health.
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KID'S BOOKS
