The Spaces Between Russell Haley Adastra Productions, $25.00, ISBN 9780473203856 Little Sister Julian Novitz Vintage, $29.00, ISBN 9781869798246 The Intentions Book Gigi Fenster Victoria University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9780864738233 The Spaces Between is Russell Haley’s eighth book…
Royce, Royce, the People’s Choice Peter Hawes Random House, $26.95, ISBN 1869414985 Peter Hawes’s new novel is a big, jocular and elaborate fishing yarn. The tale-telling is strenuously masculine, prodding, very physical. As you read, you feel as though you’re…
Tomorrow Tastes Better Russell Haley HarperCollins, $19.95, ISBN 1869503910 The English Harem Anthony McCarten Random House, $26.95, ISBN 1869414640 What exactly is a comic novel? The question arises because comedy is the common feature of Tomorrow Tastes Better and The…
All Done With Mirrors Russell Haley Hazard Press, $24.95, ISBN 1 877161 68 3 This is the sort of novel you could search through – in vain – for a narrative skeleton: the firm coat-hanger from which the story is…
A Spider-Web Season and The Transfer Station Russell Haley Hazard Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877161799 Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold …” This line from Yeats is the epigraph to Russell Haley’s first book, The Walled Garden (1972). It…
Besides Myself Russell Haley Penguin, Auckland, 1990, $19.95 Night at the Embassy Elizabeth Smither Auckland University Press, 1990, $24.95 Newlands Gary Langford Penguin, Auckland, 1990, $19.95 Like a lot of middle-aged men, Midge, the out-of-work hero-narrator of Russell Haley’s latest novel,…