>> This is how the book works.
>> Enter the pyramid of Cheops.
>> Meet some gods.
>> The real life of Ancient Egypt.
>> Listen to some Ancient Egyptian music.
Saturday, 21 October 2017
>> This is how the book works.
>> Enter the pyramid of Cheops.
>> Meet some gods.
>> The real life of Ancient Egypt.
>> Listen to some Ancient Egyptian music.
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History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund {Reviewed by STELLA}
Emily Fridlund’s History of Wolves was the surprise listing on the Man Booker shortlist. A debut novel, it pushed out several contenders (Sebastian Barry’s Costa-winning Days Without End, the popular Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor, and the much-hyped second novel from Arundhati Roy,The Ministry of Utmost Happiness), and highlighted the surprising omission of Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones. This is the sixth and final of the Man Booker shortlist I’ve read and has the disadvantage of comparison with those that went before. Saying that, it is an assured debut with some fine writing and sharp observations about family, belonging and the ability to hold the truth at bay. Set in Minnesota, it’s a coming of age story with a hint of menace. We know from the beginning that things are not going to turn out well. Linda, a fourteen-year-old misfit (she’s an outsider at school referred to as ‘freak’ or ‘commie’), lives a semi-wild existence in a ramshackle cabin with her parents on the edge of a lake hemmed in by forest. The small family is all that remains of an idealistic commune long broken down. Linda is unashamedly robust, practical and unconventional, and you sense that little could phase her. Yet, under the surface, she is vulnerable, achingly sad and sometimes naive. Fridlund pushes our emotions around here - is Linda really as unaware as she makes out? She is observant, smart enough to recognise the predatory behaviour of a teacher. The change in Linda’s isolated lifestyle comes about with the arrival of a city family to their holiday home across the lake. Leo, Patra and their young child, Paul, arrive for time out from the city. Leo quickly leaves to get back to his work and Linda soon becomes the babysitter, taking Paul on walks into the forest and indulging his fantasy worlds. Patra, adoring and obviously fraught (you sense that not all is right in this little world) is fascinating to Linda. There’s a tense awareness and sexual tension between the two young women, one that mostly exists in Linda's head. She is obsessed by being wanted and noticed. A desire to belong to someone, to a family. Devoid of emotional care from her own parents and lacking close friendships, Linda’s ability to close her eyes to what is happening in front of her is stunningly brutal to herself and for those close by. This psychological emptiness continues to play out in Linda’s later life, accentuated by the incident that results in the death of a young boy. Fridlund allows us many glimpses into ‘what happens’, so there are no surprises, yet we are left with plenty to ponder on - religion, obsession and denial. |
 | Elmet by Fiona Mozley {Reviewed by THOMAS} Elmet was the name given to a separatist Brittonic kingdom that flourished in what is now Yorkshire from the 5th century CE until the early 7th, when it was destroyed by the neighbouring Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. As well as studying for her doctorate in early medieval history, Fiona Mozley grew up in Yorkshire and has written a remarkable (Man-Booker-shortlisted) first novel set on the outskirts of a small rural community there. 14-year-old Daniel (the narrator), his 15-year-old sister Cathy and their father squat in a copse on land that had belonged to the children’s mother, in a house built by Daddy, beyond the notice of the community (other than Vivien, a woman from whom Daniel learns a love of literature, and Mr Price, the landowner). Daddy’s immense physical strength and mental tension have earned him a legendary reputation as a winner of illegal prize fights, and as a heavy (an employment he has turned his back upon to protect his children in their woodland existence after growing tired of being treated as outsiders in town). Daddy and Cathy are brute phenomena, inexpressive, physically focussed to the point of fanaticism, amoral forces akin to earthquakes or lightning, survival engines, whereas Daniel is altogether softer, more evidently sensitive and impressionable. The past-tense portions (the majority) of the book are full of Daniel’s luminescent descriptions, with indelible details and observations that reveal information to the reader beyond the knowledge into which Daniel is emerging (knowledge of himself and of ‘what life has to offer’ (largely injustice, class prejudice and exploitation at the hands of the landowners, resulting in a form of modern feudalism unmitigated by reciprocal obligation)). Beneath the immediacy of the narrative, the reader can sense deep threat like a bowstring being drawn, the tension increasing as the narrative develops, fed by the sadistic Mr Price, towards the terrible moment at which, when the tension can no longer be borne by the reader or by the narrative or by the characters, all that tension is discharged in an episode of near-mythic violence for which Mozley can be justly compared with Cormac McCarthy. This moment explains the present-tense frame narrative, dispersed throughout the novel, in which Daniel is travelling and searching for his sister. Elmet is at once both delicately beautiful and compellingly brutal, and is entirely memorable because of this. |
 | Ginesthoi by Evangeline Riddiford Graham {Reviewed by THOMAS} The only words generally accepted to be actually written by Cleopatra VII of Egypt herself are “ginesthoi” or “make it so”, signing off a series of tax exemptions for Publius Canidius, one of Mark Antony’s generals. Although the exemptions and privileges are unromantic, and ordinary enough for a Ptolmaic court, the legendary and literary loading of the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony freight these words with subtexts and implications that exceed their denotation. The correlation or disjunction of inclination and obligation, of power and desire, of declaration and implication are themes that run also through Ginesthoi, a collection of poems by Evangeline Riddiford Graham published by the tiny and interesting Hard Press in Auckland. Presented as a series of fragments, much in the manner of the scraps of text discovered by archeologists, these poems are partial unearthings of an emotional life as intent upon concealing itself as it is upon revealing. What are we make of these twists of words, half earnest, half mocking, leaping back and forth across millennia, overlapping past and present while simultaneously reinforcing and dissolving the distinction between the two? There are two moments of awareness, one sealed in the past, encased in a museum cabinet or a memory, isolated from its context but preserved beyond a healthy span, resonating compulsively in its isolation until it has become little more than this resonation, and the other pausing in the present, gazing at the artefact in its current out-of-context context, attempting to make contact with the past moment, the past awareness or experience, to catch its eye, to pretend that the past reciprocates the gaze, or glimpse, or at least entertains the possibility of such a gaze or glimpse, to make believe, even to believe, if one can make oneself believe, that one can be not only aware of oneself in the past but that that past self can be somehow aware of the present self being aware of it, a game of memory working in both directions. In fact this is what we always do with memory: we are caught in a trap of tense, completed actions in the past are restrained there, playing in our memories or in our imaginations, if memories and imaginations can be distinguished from one another, but sealed in the perfect tense, whereas, though our present awareness may enter this case, cast itself backwards, project itself into the past, it can do so only at the expense of losing the capacity to act, to make things different to any effective degree. Expression is always ambivalent: to share a thought is to isolate oneself, to shut oneself within that thought; or, rather, perhaps, expression is quadrivalent: to share a thought is to shut oneself within that thought but, as the sharing of a thought is dependent upon a medium which necessarily replaces whatever is it applied to, both for the one to whose thought the medium is applied and the one, either specified or more generally implicated, to whom the sharing is directed, the act of sharing creates always a counterfeit artefact, at best a gloss, or label, upon the authenticity it causes to be lost. If poetry is the archeology of subjective experience, the poems of Ginesthoi are artefacts with all the clarity, obscurity and productive ambiguity of the papyrus fragment of Cleopatra VII to which they so playfully refer. >> Click through for some photographs of Evangeline Riddiford Graham's reading at VOLUME last week. |
Friday, 20 October 2017
NEW RELEASES
This silly, inventive picture book by the outstanding graphic designer of the protopsychedelic era will make your brain turn somersaults. Facsimile of the original 1960 edition.
An excellent and enticing survey of a period of great fertility and change in dustwrapper design, which started off as a way to protect bindings but soon became the arena in which the book's design first and most effectively attracts the eye of readers and buyers.
Urban teenager Cameron arrives in an uninhabited Arctic island. He's prepared for ice and storms and, stripped of his smart technology, possibly boredom. But he's not prepared for 24-hour daylight and erupting graves. At first Cameron believes the explanations of his scientist mother. But, as the island reveals itself to him, he begins to see, and hear, things that push him right to the edge of the possible. One of them is an Inuit girl. The other is a large white bear.
"Writing is how I attempt to repair myself, stitching back former selves, sentences. When I am brave enough - I am never brave enough - I unravel the tapestry of my life, my childhood."
Death, loss, memory, grief. Writing into and against silence, Zambreno's great project is to excoriate her own life and correlate its residue with works of art and literature that manifest similar equations of value and loss.
A collection of devastating short prose pieces from on of America's sharpest poets.
"The property that Ruefle deems private is the impalpable nature of the inner life we all share; it is at once ours and everyone's. Ruefle has shown a talent for elevating her acute observations and narrative inclination well above mere anecdote to create quietly disquieting moments. A literature of barbed ambiguity and unresolved disruption." - Bookforum
"Ruefle can seem like a supernally well-read person who has grown bored with what smartness looks like, and has grown attracted to the other side." - New York Times
The much anticipated first novel of a wonderful new series from the world of 'His Dark Materials', set ten years before Northern Lights and telling of the strange events surrounding Lyra Belacqua.
A gripping, eerie, and hilarious novel-in-verse from poet Matthew Rohrer. In a Russian-doll of fictional episodes, we follow a midlevel publishing assistant over the course of a day as he encounters ghost stories, science fiction adventures, Victorian hashish eating, and robot bigfoots. Rohrer mesmerizes with wildly imaginative tales and resonant verse in this compelling love letter to storytelling.
Can you be lost and not know it? Can other people stop you from being lost? 17-year-old Caleb’s world is disintegrating, his walls are closing in, his sky is threatening to fall. He’s barely holding on.
"A tremendous debut novel, both delicate and muscular, artful and honest. It’s changed the way I attend to those I teach. I cannot give it higher praise than that." – Bernard Beckett
"This novel is a striking chronicle of a young person watching the wall between himself and the world grow ever taller, and the small moments of brightness that reach him through the gaps." – Ashleigh Young
Cezanne wanted to emphasise the flatness of the picture plane and free our visual practices from the Renaissance conventions of perspective. Meyerowitz has photographed a series of Cezanne's still extant objects against the 'Cezanne grey' walls of his studio, undermining the traditional relationship between the subject of a painting and its background. One of the most quiet and beautiful books of the year.
A photographer and independent woman in the London bohemian circles in the 1930s, Joan Eyres Monsell met Patrick Leigh Fermor when she was on assignment in Egypt during the Second World War. At last we have a biography of this interesting free-thinking woman, whose photographic work supported Patrick in his writing.
"Engrossing." - Guardian
A very clear guide to the production of perfect patisserie, up to Michelin level (absolutely breathtaking).
"Bored of her life working in a Tucson, Arizona, mall, 23-year-old Colleen takes the life-changing plunge that so many millennials often consider - becoming an internet celebrity. Colleen posts updates about her life online, gaining followers and forming a double life teetering between young adult normalcy and the uncanny phenomenon of being sort of, kind of famous on the internet. The coming-of-age story offers a psychological dissection of the logic behind sharing your every thought with a mass of anonymous strangers, exploring the strange terrain where the personal and performative overlap and bleed into one another. Without altogether celebrating or condemning the contemporary obsession with online sharing, Stagg explores the roles we play and the selves we inhabit, online and IRL." - Huffington Post
This book is one long list of works of literature and art that do not exist, either because they have been lost or destroyed (either by the writer or artist or by external intention or by misadventure or natural disaster) or because they were never completed, or, in some cases, never started.
When Maori were defeated at Orakau in 1864 and the Waikato War ended, Tawhiao, the second Maori King, and his supporters were forced into an armed exile in the Rohe Potae, the King Country. For the next twenty years, the King Country operated as an independent state - a land governed by the Maori King where settlers and the Crown entered at risk of their lives. For twenty years, representatives of the King and of the British Queen engaged in a dance of diplomacy involving gamesmanship, conspiracy, pageantry and hard headed politics, with the occasional act of violence or threat of it.
Sally Jones is not only a loyal friend, she's an extraordinary individual. In overalls or in a maharaja's turban, this unique gorilla moves among humans without speaking but understanding everything. She and the Chief are devoted comrades who operate a cargo boat. A job they are offered pays big bucks, but the deal ends badly, and the Chief is falsely convicted of murder. For Sally Jones this is the start of a harrowing quest for survival and to clear the Chief's name.
"I don't know when I last read a book with such pure and unalloyed pleasure. It's ingenious, it's moving, it's charming, it's beautiful, it's exciting, and most importantly the characters are people I feel I know like old friends." - Philip Pullman
Aza Holmes is caught in the ever-tightening spirals of her own thoughts. The book also features lifelong friendship, an unexpected reunion, Star Wars fan fiction, and a tuatara. The long-awaited new novel from the author of The Fault in Our Stars (&c).
Following a Third World War triggered by the urgencies of climate change, nation states are a thing of the past and the world's population has been reduced by a third. When Mercy, a former soldier, and his brother travel into the wilderness to look for Ruby's children, he encounters situations in which his ethical compass is shaken and the traumas of the past threaten to destabilise his judgement.
Gessen follows the lives of four Russians born in the last days of the Soviet Union and considers how their prospects have dwindled as the country has descended into what is effectively a Mafia state.
The recent assumption by megacorporations of control of the interchange of information has reformed (or deformed) the way humans think and interact. With the intoxicating level of daily convenience and instant gratification offered us through the internet, can we any longer think, let alone act, in ways that do not merely further the interests of our digital Big Brothers?
A Haitian family is burdened by a curse lasting generations. This novel gives insight into the lives of disenfranchised women in the Caribbean.
"Lahens describes her country with a forceful beauty - the destruction that befell it, political opportunism, families torn apart, and the spellbinding words of Haitian farmers who solely rely on subterranean powers." - Donyapress
Winner (in French) of the Prix Femina, 2014.
A graphic novel about a refugee boy's journey of hope and desperation.
On Thursday 17 August, 1860, wealthy widow Mary Emsley was found dead in her own home, killed by a blow to the back of her head. What followed was a murder case that gripped the nation. A veritable locked room mystery, there were an abundance of suspects, from disgruntled step children concerned about their inheritance and a spurned admirer repeatedly rejected by the widow, to a trusted employee, former police officer and spy, until he was sent to prison for robbery. During the police investigation there were several twists and dramatic discoveries, as suspects sought to incriminate each other and fresh evidence was discovered at the last minute. Eventually, it led to a public trial dominated by surprise revelations and shock witnesses, before culminating with one of the final public executions at Newgate. Years later the case caught the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle, who was convinced that an innocent man had been convicted and executed for the crime. But Conan Doyle was never able to find the real murder. Now the case has been solved.
The Ghost: A cultural history by Susan Owens $45
"Five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has even been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it." - Samuel Johnson
A fascinating look at the literature and art that have been engendered or shaped by the belief or otherwise in the phenomenon, or should that be pseudophenomenon, of ghosts.
"A work of profound scholarship and imaginative engagement, beautifully written and elegantly constructed. It's the finest study of its kind I've read." - The Literary Review
"Angela Saini has written a powerful, compelling and much needed account that challenges deeply rooted preconceptions about sex differences - some blatant misogyny, others buried in thousands of years patriarchy. Inferior shows that both are fundamentally flawed, and beautifully illustrates how science is just beginning to tackle this staggering imbalance." Adam Rutherford
How have artists envisaged human and prehuman life in prehistoric times? Perhaps you have been moved or amused by the often poignant depictions of dinosaurs, mastodons or hominids in the books of your childhood. This vast volume collects the best of such art, in all its poignancy and ludicrosity, from 1830 to 1990. Beneath the dustwrapper, the book is bound in real dinosaur skin (or something very like it).
>> A tour through the book (then resist it if you can).
Pierre Niox is rushing through life, but life seems to be passing him by. Can he slow down enough to win the heart of languid Hedwige?
"Without doubt the best French writer of the twentieth century." - Philippe Sollers
"Admired both by Ezra Pound and by Marcel Proust as a pioneer craftsman of Modernist French prose. The sheer shapeliness of his prose recalls Hemingway; the urbanity of his self-destructiveness compares with Fitzgerald's; and his camera eye is as lucidly stroboscopic as that of Dos Passos." - The New York Times
First published in Spanish in 1975 and previously untranslated, Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires is Julio Cortazar's genre-jumping mash-up of his participation in the Second Russell Tribunal on human rights abuses in Latin America and his cameo appearance in issue number 201 of the Mexican comic book series 'Fantomas: The Elegant Menace'. With his characteristic narrative inventiveness, Cortazar offers a quixotic meta-comic novella that challenges not only the form of the novel but its political weight in contemporary cultural life.
Death is common to all people but there is huge cultural variation in our relationship to the inevitable. This splendidly illustrated volume surveys the attitudes and practices and art relating to dying and the dead, both in memory and concerning the remains, through the world and throughout history. Compelling. Forward by Will Self.
A charming picture book from the author of The Lion and the Bird and the 'Mr Postmouse' books.
For Londoners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whatever their walk of life, the Marchelsea Debtors' Prison was only one step of misfortune away. White introduces us to the actual inmates and tells stories that give insight into a sphere of social history that is too-often suppressed by the families to which they pertain.
What if the universe was just a little bit different (or quite a lot different)? How would this affect the rest of the universe? New Scientist introduce us to alternative universes that are just as scientifically plausible as our own.
What can people's attitudes to food tell us about them and about the times in which they lived? Six women famous in their time (Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym and Helen Gurley Brown) show a surprising correlation between eating habits and social change.
A chorus of voices, from mudlarkers and fishermen to radio pirates and champion racers, capturing the diverse community of people who live and work in this ancient, wild and mesmerising place.
A wonderfully contrarian and satirical ABC. It is hard to share the planet with fools, pedants and nincompoops. Facsimile of the 1953 edition.
>> Visit the Themerson archive.
>> A microdocumentary about Franciszka and Stefan Themerson.
Saturday, 14 October 2017
BOOKS@VOLUME #45
Our weekly NEWSLETTER of our reviews and recommendations, events, competitions and new releases.
14.10.17.
N.Z. Bookshop Day will be celebrated throughout the country on Saturday 28 October. Activities at VOLUME will include a discussion of the Booker short list, and an open game of Bookshop Bingo. Click through to find out more, and to start filling in your Bookshop Bingo card (you could win a 6-month VOLUME Reading Subscription).
We are very pleased to be hosting a four-week hand lettering course taught by designer Holly Dunn, who has recently returned to Nelson from the UK. Holly specialises in book cover design and hand lettering. The course will be held on Friday afternoons, beginning on 27 October. Numbers are limited. >> Click here to find out more. 
What could be better than a new cookbook entirely devoted to baking and desserts from the author of several of the best cookbooks on your shelves? Ottolenghi and his long-time collaborator Goh present recipes that combine flavours and ingredients in interesting ways and yet are achievable, either easily or with a small amount of pleasurable effort. Delicious, beautifully presented and absolutely recommended for everyone from children to accomplished bakers.
>> Would you eat this?
>> Ottolenghi introduces the book.
>> Don't burn your fingers.
>> What motivates Yotam and his team to push the frontiers of flavour?
>> All Ottolenghi's cookbooks are superb.
>> Some free recipes!
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Exit West by Mohsin Hamid {Reviewed by STELLA}
I have been a fan of Moshin Hamid’s writing since I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a clever look at a hostage situation through the conversation between the captive and the captor. His latest book, Exit West, has also made the Man Booker shortlist and I’m not surprised to see his work there. An observant writer of human nature, especially in situations of chaos or crisis, he cleverly weaves in ambiguities and humour, drawing you into the world of his characters without fuss. This was tellingly so in How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - set in India it’s a remarkable cradle-to-grave story, rags-to-riches tale that wraps an impossible love obsession into the mix with candour and black humour. Hamid has the knack of taking you into the hearts and minds of his characters in a candid manner and lightly, yet precisely, making you aware of politics and contemporary societal issues. So I was anticipating more of this social realism. And Exit West is this, but also more. Set somewhere in the middle east, possibly Syria, we meet the young lovers Saeed and Nadia. Saeed works for an advertising firm, is moderately religious and lives with his parents. Nadia works at a bank, unusually lives alone in a small rooftop apartment, is not in the least religious but wears a full black robe (mostly so she is left alone and doesn’t draw attention to herself) and rides a motorcycle. As their relationship flourishes so too do the militants, gaining more control in the neighbourhoods where they live. People leave, others don’t return from holidays or work trips. After a short time, Saeed and Nadia find themselves out of work, watching their backs and keeping their heads down, obeying the new rules. After Saeed’s mother is killed by a stray bomb, they decide to leave their home country. So this a refugee story, yet it is not a story of the journey, but much more a story about being elsewhere. Curiously, Hamid uses an interesting magical realism element - the idea of doors: doors that start appearing and are portals to other places. They are black, very black doors, that one pays a ‘door agent’ a fee to be taken to and then walks through. During this transfer to the other side there is an element of being stunned, struggling through, but this is instantaneous. I found this aspect unusual, but intriguing, and I would be curious to know why Hamid chose this metaphor for the struggle of the journey, which we see and hear so much about in our media - but maybe this is precisely the reason. Nadia and Saeed find themselves in Mykonos and while the island is beautiful it is crowded and dangerous and they feel a need for something more. Next is London, squatting in an empty and grand house in a wealthy suburb along with other refugees from far and wide. Saeed feel himself more and more disconnected from his home country, and becomes more devout in his grief of leaving his father, family and friends. He finds it increasingly difficult to relate the other cultures, whereas Nadia is more open and curious and is accepted by the elders of the house as they try to organise themselves within the chaos, find enough food and keep the authorities and ‘native’ Britons at bay. The political relevance of Exit West is obvious, and Hamid is writing in the midst of growing intolerance, increasing numbers of refugees and the social fallout and uncertainty of Brexit. As Saeed is drawn increasingly to his own people and in particular a house where they are devoutly Muslim, it feels like this may be the end of the relationship under increasing strain in the struggle to survive and the couple’s different ways of coping with change. Yet Hamid doesn’t take the option of making Saeed an extremist or Nadia throwing off her own culture, which could have been a predictable conclusion. He takes them again through another black door, this time to America. The novel is primarily a story about the breakdown of borders, about the disintegration of nation-states as we know them. It’s also about the struggle to belong, to survive in chaos, and it is surprisingly hopeful. |
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