Days are like Grass Sue Younger Eunoia Publishing, $30.00, ISBN 9780994104762 Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley Danyl McLauchlan Victoria University Press, $30.00, ISBN 9781776560479 Claire is a paediatric surgeon, newly returned to Auckland, city of her birth, from London,…
Red Dust Over Shanghai: A Shanghai–New Zealand Memoir 1937–1954 Tyl von Randow Eunoia Publishing, $38.00, ISBN 9780994104779 Shanghai has always held an allure for me. Stories about what Westerners got up to in the “Paris of the East” in the…
Death and Forgiveness
Jindra Tichá
Mary Egan Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9780473306717
Rich Man Road
Ann Glamuzina
Eunoia Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9780994104748
In a recent review in New Zealand Books, Jane Westaway commented on the rise, both in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, of the small press, a phenomenon directly attributable to the devouring appetite of the multinational conglomerates. Having charted the rise and rise of such monster publishing companies as Penguin Random House, and the corresponding disappearance, at least from the fiction market, of hitherto commercially successful local presses, Westaway went on to observe that, whereas in the past book editors (she herself is a past co-editor of New Zealand Books) were inclined to turn their noses up at the so-called “vanity press”, in today’s changed world of publishing, that response is no longer valid. Small presses are here to stay!
Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen
Dylan Horrocks
Victoria University Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780864739759
The Bitter Sweet Philosophies
K K Jart (text) and Nick Fedaeff (paintings)
Eunoia Publishing, $40.00,
ISBN 9780692215630
As the superheroes wage their endless battle in the sky above, Alice reassures Sam, “But what does it matter if it’s not real? It’s a Fantasy. The idea is to enjoy it!” But Sam is unconvinced: “I know it’s a fantasy, but it’s not mine.”
In the Neighbourhood of Fame
Bridget van der Zijpp
Victoria University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9780864739247
Sleep Sister
Karen Breen
Eunoia Publishing, $30.00,
ISBN 9780994104755
These two new novels appear from what – not long ago – would have been opposite ends of the local fiction-publishing spectrum. One is published by a university press whose literary fiction is widely seen as its crowning glory, and whose novelists and short-story writers – think Knox, Catton, Perkins – often go on to garner glittering prizes both here and overseas. Just as often, these writers and their first works have been nurtured in an International Institute of Modern Letters workshop – a title made grander by rarely being seen unaccompanied by the adjective “prestigious”. Bridget van der Zijpp is one such writer. A couple of years after she emerged from the institute, Victoria University Press published her first novel, Misconduct. This was shortlisted for the regional section of the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize and for the 2009 Montana New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction. Her latest is In the Neighbourhood of Fame.