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.
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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.
Party Boy is a Dunedin-based fever dream delving into the life of Marco, whose nerves are on the slow boil. A story of masculinity, trauma, memory, interruptions, and food.
Read Talia Marshall’s piece on Newsroom’s Reading Room here.
See Breton Dukes in these Auckland Writers Festival events.
Jenna called into the bFM studio to chat to Rosetta and Milly about Party Boy, listen below.
On RNZ’s Nine to Noon with Kathryn Ryan, Jenna spoke about Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This is Where the Serpent Lives.
Set in Pakistan over 50 years, post-Partitian, Serpent hosts a wide range of characters demonstrating a deeply ingrained feudal class structure that appears not to be able to be shaken.
Vividly told - in descriptions of place, expertly weaved characters and symbols of betrayal and culturally rich, this is an epically told fable, full of corruption, that leads to a truly electrifying final 50 pages. Great for readers who have recently enjoyed Kiran Desai’s Sonia & Sunny or Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road.
Set over 50 years, This is Where the Serpent Lives is a collection of four linked stories exploring class in Pakistan. This book feels epic, yet is intimately told with each story leading to an explosive and powerful ending.
Nate also delves into the Ockhams shortlist and continues our excitement for the release of the Auckland Writers Festival programme - out this Wednesday 11th.
Listen to his chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
Jenna popped into the 95bFM studio today to chat about Elisabeth AKA Nurse Carla Easther’s debut novel, Seed. A character driven novel full of clever quips, holding humour alongside the heartache whilst capturing the lottery of fertility and the tension this can cause between friends.
Jenna also had a bunch of book news:
The International Booker longlist, specifically mentioning Women Without Men by Shahrnush Pasipur.
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist being released this Wednesday, 4th March.
The Auckland Writers Festival Programme is being announced next week.
She also should have mentioned that the Women’s Prize longlist is also out this week. Phew!
Listen to the kōrero with Jenna, Milly & Sam below:
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TOP 5 BOOKS
KID'S BOOKS
Nate is up in studio chatting with Rosetta and Milly with a local pick from Te Herenga Waka University Press. Kate Camp revisits her 1986 diary in Leather & Chains: My 1986 Diary, responding to the daily entries written when she was a Wellington teenager.
Listen below for Nate’s thoughts.
Leila Mottley was 19 when her debut novel, Nightcrawling, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. She returns with The Girls Who Grew Big, a story set in Florida following three teen mothers. Visceral and rich language makes for an excellent story.
Jenna phoned into the studio with Rosetta and Milly. Listen below!
Nate is back up for Loose Reads, and today we're getting deep into questions of morality and mortality, with George Saunders' Vigil.
Listen to Nate chat with Rosetta and Milly below.
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TOP 5 BOOKS
KID'S BOOKS
Sean is a 48 year old poet, writer and reluctant bookseller, “A flaneur in utopia, with nowhere to flan”, in John Tottenham’s Service.
This is a book that dives into the perils and repetition of customer service, the writing process and the dreary reality of gentrification.
Think of this as Black Books set in LA.
Listen to Jenna, Rosetta and Milly below!
