NEW RELEASES
New books for a new month.
"A father is a necessary evil." - Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. William Butler Yeats's father was an impoverished artist, an inveterate letter writer, and a man crippled by his inability to ever finish a painting. Oscar Wilde's father was a doctor, a statistician and amateur archaeologist who was taken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange foreshadowing of events that would later befall his son. The father of James Joyce was a garrulous, hard-drinking man with a violent temper, unable or unwilling to provide for his large family, who eventually drove his son from Ireland. What do these men tell us about Ireland, about literary creation, even about fatherhood?
Lucia Berlin burst, posthumously, out of obscurity in 2015 with the publication of a selection of her stories entitled A Manual for Cleaning Women. Here was an authentic voice, a cleanness of style, a depiction of disadvantage, vulnerability and strength without sentimentality of condescension, a mordant but sympathetic humour, and an ability to pivot the largest observations on the smallest of details. Evening in Paradise is a further selection from Berlin's work.
>> Click through to find out more about our Books of the Week.
When Berlin died in 2004 she was working on a set of autobiographical sketches. These are now published for the first time.
>> Click through to find out more about our Books of the Week.
The worlds in Marcus's stories are bizarre but at the same time instantly recognisable. Every new ill or illness, however, is met with an equally new virtue or cure. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.
>>"Writer's block happens when I'm boring."
>>A connoisseur of anxiety.
>>'Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life As We Know It: A correction.'
>> Visit the Ben Marcus website.
A novel exploring the complicated ways in which a translator can complicate the already complicated relationship between an author and a reader. What happens when a translator starts to take control of the text they are supposedly translating? The novel concerns a translator translating a novel from French into English, but, in translating this actual novel from French into English, the actual translator Emma Ramadan begins to insert herself into the text and make commentary, very much as does the translator in the novel (albeit in an opposite way).
>>Uncommon translations.
New New Zealand writing. This issue features work by: John Adams, Nick Ascroft, Iain Britton, Nicholas Butler, Brent Cantwell, Jill Chan, Stephanie Christie, Makyla Curtis, John Downie, Doc Drumheller, Norman Franke, Jasmine Gallagher, Michael Giacon, Joy Holley, Mark Houlahan, Erik Kennedy, Rhiannon Leddra, Bronwyn Lloyd, Caoimhe McKeogh, Piet Nieuwland, Keith Nunes, Sarah Penwarden, Chris Pigott, Sugu Pillay, essa may ranapiri, Vaughan Rapatahana, Sahanika Ratnayake, Jack Ross, Lisa Samuels, Erena Shingade, Carin Smeaton, Fiona Stevens, Chris Stewart, David Taylor, Richard Taylor, Loren Thomas, Richard von Sturmer, and Mark Young.
The exciting new book from the Nelson author of the 'Spark' trilogy.
When the Rift opens, death follows. For generations, the Rangers of Black Water Island have guarded the Old Herd against horrors released by the Rift. Cal West, an apprentice Ranger with a rare scar and even rarer gifts, fights daily to prove he belongs within their ranks. After nine years away, Meg Archer returns to her childhood home only to find the Island is facing a new threat that not even the Rangers are prepared for. Meg and Cal can't ignore their attraction, but can they face their darkest fears to save the Island from disaster?
>> Five reasons to read The Rift.
>> Come and meet Rachael at the launch of The Rift on Tuesday 6 November at 6:30 at the Elma Turner Library!
"I am not a man, I am dynamite," said Nietzsche. Over a century after his death, his assaults upon philosophy and society are still unassimilated and subject to often contradictory interpretations, though we live subject to concepts and anticoncepts heralded by him: the death of God, the Übermensch, slave morality, the will to power. Prideaux's book gets closer to the man behind both the words and the silence.
>>"What does not kill me makes me stronger."
Why do we have such a fascination for imitations of things that are much much smaller than the originals? What does this tell us about ourselves, and about our relationship with the full-sized world?
For thousands of years, humans have built walls and assaulted them, admired walls and reviled them. Great Walls have appeared on nearly every continent, the handiwork of people from Persia, Rome, China, Central America, and beyond. They have accompanied the rise of cities, nations, and empires. How does history look like when represented by its walls?
The Maloufs' books are always beautiful and a pleasure to cook from. Fruit; Dairy; Frozen; Cakes; Cookies; Pastries; Doughnuts, Fritters & Pancakes; Halvas & Confectionery; Preserves; and Drinks.
What we call sanity is easily upended by emotions and experiences experienced by all of us.
An exhaustive and superbly documented catalogue of and guide to all of the architectural works.
An American academic specialising in prison architecture visits Buenos Aries at the request of a colleague and sometime lover. When he fails to locate her he becomes increasingly disoriented and his conception of reality is increasingly dominated by dogs. With absurdist tendencies, this novel is also a critique of authoritarian nationalism.
How the World Thinks: A global history of philosophy by Julian Baggini $37
"An engaging, urbane and humane global survey." - Guardian
A history of contrary positioning through history told in 180 objects, from papyrus to pussy hats.
When an open-water distance swimmer returns to New Zealand after a call from his sick, estranged mother, he finds the provincial town claustrophobic and becomes compelled to swim towards an island off the coast.
Winner of the 2018 Viva la Novella Prize.
"The true writer has nothing to say." - Robbe-Grillet. A 'special agent' begins to investigate a crime, finds he cannot disentangle himself from the 'evidence' and ends up committing the crime (the murder of his father). Robbe-Grillet's first published book (Les Gommes) was first published in 1953.
Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar that is the site of an eerie possession, children who lock their perverse mothers in a room and burn it, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman.
"I don't know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us." - Italo Calvino
Say what you really think with this feminist card game featuring 20 'nasty' women.
Not so much a story of kings and conquests as the story of freedom fighters, suffragettes, the workers of Red Clydesdale who fought for their rights, and the contemporary struggle for independence.
An unflinching account of life in Suffolk between the wars, this novel blends fine nature writing with an examination of the dangers of nostalgia in a changing world.
"A masterpiece." - Jon McGregor (author of Reservoir 13)
“A deeply unusual, psychologically astute novel about technology and survival, sex and love. If the late Philip K. Dick and Ann Patchett had managed to team up and write a collaborative novel, it might look something like this. Beguiling, irreverent, and full of heart.” - Kirkus
A sumptuous survey of a career dating back to 1964.
Are Morrigan's dreams of escaping her curses existence over as soon as they have begun? Why does the Wundrous Society seem so intent on suppressing her mysterious ability? How has Nevermoor turned from a place of safety into a place of danger? Can the ominous Ezra Squall be resisted? Find out in this riveting sequel to Nevermoor.
He is __ appreciated. From the band's formation in 1976 (with Martin Bramah on "the world's cheapest guitar") until Smith's death this year, The Fall carved a jagged swathe through the pampered flesh of musical taste. Smith's verbal inventiveness and acidic irony earned him a special place in a generation of independent minds.
>> 'Hip Priest' (live, 1981).
"The problem is not police training, police diversity of police methods. The problem is the unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift of the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself."
A fascinating anecdotal history of a way of life now almost forgotten.
"I paint with my back to the world." Martin's increasing withdrawal from the world, her obsessively geometric approaches, her overwhelming serenity made her an exemplar of Minimalism for five decades.
Between 1967 and 1972 Colin and Phyllis Wheeler visited 60 isolated sheep stations throughout the country, drawing, painting and writing. This beautifully produced book is the ultimate record of high country life.
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