On this morning’s 95bFM Loose Reads, Jenna declared that this newly mintly Pulitzer winner may be a modern masterpiece.
Set in the Great War and written as one (easy to read) sentence. Kraus’ prose is rich and rhythmic, viserally describing the horrors of the treaches, but it’s also funny, magical and a warning for the future to come.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
Nate reviewed The Shadow of the Object on bFM this week, the latest by Mexican American author Chloe Aridjis. It's an eerie, moody novel that confronts various fragmentations of reality, very much in the spirit of Kafka.
Listen to his chat with Rosetta below:
Jenna chatted to Jesse Mulligan to chat exciting upcoming titles that are due later this year.
Kluge by Pip Adam (mid August)
American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (end of September)
The Starving Bride by Catherine Chidgey (8th October)
On the Calculation of Volume V by Solvej Balle (mid November)
Listen below:
95bFM alumni Noelle McCarthy has published her second memoir. After the success of Grand, we now have Stakes: Dracula and the secret to happiness.: a book of vampires, family and booze, and a search for desire within the gothic. Set between Ireland and Aotearoa, this is a sensory, nostalgic read.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly below.
Nate visited the bFM studio to talk about author, actress and director Pirkko Saisio’s Lowest Common Denomonator and Backlight, with The Red Book of Farewells due in August.
Translated by Mia Spangenberg, this auto-fiction trilogy was orgiinally published in Finnish between 1998-2003.
For fans of Elena Ferrante, these books are Finnish classics.
Listen below!
Jenna called from boarding the Waiheke Island ferry for a fill-in review of Douglas Stuart’s John of John. Listen below for boat toots & a chat with Nine to Noon’s Kathryn Ryan.
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TOP 5 BOOKS
KID'S BOOKS
Jenna phoned into the RNZ studio today to speak with Susie Ferguson about Josh Silver’s Fruit Fly.
Anyone can write a bestseller. Go gay. Go Dark. Go Sad.
Josh’s first novel for adults follows Mallory, an author with severe writer’s block, begins to use the life of a young, drug addicted man as inspiration for her next novel. Silver says this book is about the appropriation of pain, but also questions authenticity and who can tell the story of a life that’s not their own. For fans of Yellowface, this this both fun and dark and completely compelling.
A recent visitor to the Auckland Writers Festival (and to Time Out) we have very limited signed stock on the shelf now. Listen below!
22 year old Cal has returned to the Isle of Harris, after studying on the mainland to live with his father and grandmother. A Scottish tale of returning home, painful secrets and living a truthful life from the author of 2020 Booker winning, Shuggie Bain.
Filled with artfully drawn characters and pure heart, Douglas Stuart’s John of John is sure to be a 2026 favourite.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta & Milly below.
Nate debriefs the week that was - including the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards & Auckland Writers Festival events such as Patrick Radden Keefe, Elizabeth Knox, Maria Reva & more.
Listen below!
The Valley is a groundbreaking work of reporting that follows a Hutt Valley defence lawyer and a pair of his defendents over a two year period.
A world where everyone is doing the best with what resources they have - capturing two men’s lifes filled with repetive petty crime and what social and societal factors led them there.
Emanuel’s writing holds humour, care and heartbreak and it won’t be often that a book like this will be published.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta below.
Levy's latest novel takes the reader on a ridiculously entertaining journey through past and present Paris. Our narrator is attempting to write a biography of the great 20th century modernist writer Gertrude Stein and the book turns and swivels between these two perspectives; looking at the ideas and art that formed the modernist revolution and the uncertainties of our contemporary period. If this all sounds a bit heavy don't let that put you off- Levy expertly combines her ideas with sharply drawn characters and a search through the streets of Paris for a cat named 'It'. Ultimately, this is a book that examines how we construct our worlds, both interior and exterior, written with all of Levy's considerable intelligence and skill.
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TOP 5 BOOKS
KID'S BOOKS
In preparation for the Auckland Writers Festival, Jenna talked about Lily King’s Heart the Lover & Writers and Lovers. These connected books are for writers, readers and romantics. Capturing the magic of early love in a pre-technoloical dating era - they are nostalgic, uplifting (whilst being sad) and deceptively simple.
You can book tickets to Lily’s session at AWF here.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta and Milly below.
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Paradiso 17 is Nate’s picks of the bunch.
The book follows the entirety of Sufien’s deeply melancholic life as he looks for home after being displaced from his home in Palestine in 1948.
A lyrical read, where every line is beautiful and a strong sense of place is evoked. The book is based on the life of the author’s father.
Listen to his chat with Milly & Rosetta below. The Women’s Prize for Fiction’s shortlist is out this week!
Jenna reviewed Shana Chandra’s new novel Banjara on this week’s Loose Reads.
Published by Moa Press, the team behind Saraid De Silva’s Amma, this novel captures the tale of an indentured Indian, Avani, who leaves Rajasthan for Fiji in 1988 and her great-granddaughter, Meera, living in Auckland, NZ.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta and Milly below.
Ali Smith is Nate’s favourite author and this latest novel, a spiritual companion to her previous Gliff, is another triumph. Her writing is as lyrical, cutting and darkly comedic as ever- with Glyph perhaps her most overtly political yet. Through the relationship between two sisters Smith examines what it means to live in a world of rising violence and growing right-wing extremism.
Listen to his chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
Click on the covers to shop!
TOP 5 BOOKS
KID'S BOOKS
Jenna is in the midst of a stocktake storm, so phoned into the studio to chat John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do.
When upper middle class couple Kate & Jack's private behaviour is displayed on a hit TV show, there seems to only be one answer - Jack must have had an affair.
This is a rip-roaring page-turner about class, privacy and generational differences. Ultimately, this is a great tale of revenge.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta and Milly below.
Nate delves into Vaim by the 2023 Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse. A strange and intriguing journey!
Listen to his chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
