Blog Archives
Beginning with myths
The novelist Hamish Clayton rereads Lloyd Jones’s The Book of Fame I first read Lloyd Jones’s The Book of Fame soon after it had won the Deutz Medal for fiction, at the then-Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2001. It…
Life invisible, Louise Wareham Leonard
The Pale North Hamish Clayton Penguin, $30.00 ISBN 9780143569268 The Pale North, written by 1977 Hawke’s Bay-born Hamish Clayton, is an experiment, a metafiction, a deconstruction, a love letter and an investigation heir to certain writers – the late German…
Tagged with: Hamish Clayton, Issue 112, Louise Wareham Leonard, Penguin Books, Summer 2015
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Paranoia, violence and moral reckoning, Hamish Clayton
The Quiet Earth Craig Harrison Text, $16.00, ISBN 9781922147059 Over the last few years Melbourne-based Text Publishing has done a good job of bringing back to mainstream attention some of the “lost marvels of our literature”, republishing books that count…
Tagged with: Craig Harrison, Hamish Clayton, Issue 104, Summer 2013, Text
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Slow, sure meaning, Hamish Clayton
Hamish Clayton reflects on The English Patient. “The first time she dreamed of him she woke up beside her husband screaming.” When I was 21, I wrote that line out dozens of times, by hand, into a battered school exercise…
Suspended between cultures, Hamish Clayton
Kimble Bent: Malcontent Chris Grosz Random House, $24.99, ISBN 9781869795160 Recent claims of a resurgence in New Zealand historical fiction might seem forcefully underlined by the appearance of local cartoonist and designer Chris Grosz’s Kimble Bent: Malcontent. This graphic…
Tagged with: Chris Grosz, Hamish Clayton, Issue 98, Random House, Winter 2012
Posted in Children, Fiction, Graphic novel, Literature, Review
Posted in Children, Fiction, Graphic novel, Literature, Review
Behaving curiously, Hamish Clayton
Sydney Bridge Upside Down David Ballantyne Text Publishing, $32.00, ISBN 9781921520020 It’s hard to think of a more spectacular re-emergence in local literature than that, last year, of David Ballantyne’s 1968 masterpiece Sydney Bridge Upside Down. Ballantyne has been…
Tagged with: David Ballantyne, Hamish Clayton, Issue 95, Spring 2011, Text Publishing
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Something nobody counted on, Murray Bramwell
Travesty Mike Johnson (graphic art, Darren Sheehan) Titus Books, $39.00, ISBN 9781877441134 Fosterling Emma Neale Vintage, $29.99, ISBN 9781869794859 Wulf Hamish Clayton Penguin Books, $30.00, ISBN 9780143206491 Like many futuristic nightmares, the naming of the nihilistic Gaia…
Tagged with: Darren Sheehan, Emma Neale, Hamish Clayton, Issue 94, Mike Johnson, Murray Bramwell, Penguin Books, Titus Books, Vintage, Winter 2011
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Remapping New Zealand, Hamish Clayton
Hicksville: A Comic Book Dylan Horrocks Victoria University Press, $38.00, ISBN 9780864736246 The current republication of Dylan Horrocks’ brilliant graphic novel, Hicksville, is long overdue; however, the relative obscurity to which it has been consigned over the last 10 years…
Tagged with: Dylan Horrocks, Hamish Clayton, Issue 91, Spring 2010, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Graphic novel, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Graphic novel, Literature, Review
Virtually naive, Hamish Clayton
Dick Frizzell: The Painter Dick Frizzell Godwit, $75.00; ISBN 9781869621742 It’s funny how an established artist’s moment can seem to arrive suddenly second time around with an exceptionally appealing – almost unbelievable – narrative logic. After the remarkable debut and…
Tagged with: Dick Frizzell, Godwit, Hamish Clayton, Issue 90, Winter 2010
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review