Fallout
Paul Thomas
Upstart Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781927262016
Where the Dead Men Go
Liam McIlvanney
Faber & Faber, $25.00, ISBN 9780571239863
New Zealand crime fiction is going from strength to strength, with great work being published by old favourites as well as the up-and-coming. This pair of novels by writers Paul Thomas and Liam McIlvanney explore the minefield of the political realm to underpin their stories.
Landscape with Solitary Figure
Shonagh Koea
Vintage, $30.00, ISBN 9781775535881
Shonagh Koea’s novel Landscape with Solitary Figure is concerned with themes of domestic trauma, emotional unhappiness, withdrawal and solitude, written with a careful attention to detail which mires the reader in the mindfully self-aware moment, producing an intense reading experience which is also deeply unsettling. It is a stately novel, its movements measured but never ponderous, pausing often to think and reflect, offering up a series of tableaux – not always in chronological order – as if they were a series of paintings in a gallery before which one pauses to admire and contemplate, the fuller narrative being formed somewhere in the spaces and connections between them.
The Naturalist
Thom Conroy
Vintage, $38.00,
ISBN 9781775536482
Lives We Leave Behind
Maxine Alterio
Penguin, $38.00,
ISBN 9780143565710
The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt
Tracy Farr
Fremantle Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781922089465
Here we have a trio of historical novels that, with varying degrees of success, bring characters and environments from our past (real and imagined) to life: The Naturalist by Thom Conroy, Lives We Leave Behind by Maxine Alterio, and The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr.
The Children’s Pond
Tina Shaw
Pointer Press, $30.00, ISBN 9780473274023
The Faceless
Vanda Symon
Penguin Books, $30.00, ISBN 9780143567202
I am Rebecca
Fleur Beale
Random House, $20.00, ISBN 9781775535492
These books form a disparate collection apparently linked only by the words “compelling” and “thriller” appearing on the dustjackets of each, words which mislead and possibly confuse rather than inform. All three do have an element of suspense, and so become thrillers in the broadest sense, but the real link is that they are totally compelling in very different ways. Jennifer Lawn has identified New Zealand’s burgeoning crime scene, noting that our crime writers use fully realised local settings with confidence and it is, in part, the development of the settings which unites these three books.
Page vs screen, Jock Phillips
Jock Phillips reflects on editing www.teara.govt.nz.
I grew up in a house full of books, where conversations inspired by books flowed free. Visits to the library were precious. I yearned to write books and will never forget that extraordinary moment when I held in my hand a copy of my first book. Books, along with magazines, were the pathway to intellectual excitement. They were the literary world.
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