Patricia Grace: my friend, my favourite writer, my mother-in-law
Having a mother-in-law who is one of your best friends and also your favourite writer — especially when you are a writer — is what one might call a win-win situation. Over the years our phone calls...
View ArticleMurakami, Duffy, Walliams and More: 2015 Auckland Writers Festival Programme...
The lineup for the 2015 Auckland Writers Festival has just been announced – and it’s a belter. The idiosyncratic and elusive literary superstar Haruki Murakami will feature in one session only at the...
View ArticleColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami – review
Readers who survived Murakami’s last outing, the 900-page IQ84, with its extra moon, little people and paedophile cults, can be excused for stepping tentatively into his latest novel. But Colorless...
View ArticleIn the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman – review
A man answers his door early one morning to discover an old friend standing there. The friend has a story to tell. A young student befriends a brilliant outsider at university and through him is...
View ArticleLiving in Paradox: A history of urban design in New Zealand by Garth Falconer...
“Distance and newness”, maintains Garth Falconer, have freed New Zealanders from the burdens of “tradition and class hierarchy”. A fresh view: that should be good for urban design. In his ambitious,...
View ArticleBleeding edges
The hard graft of memoir, and the rewards. First published in the April 2015 issue of Metro. Girl in a Band Kim Gordon (HarperCollins, $37) Not My Father’s Son Alan Cumming (Dey Street Books, $40) H Is...
View ArticleHelen Garner: This House of Grief – review
This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial Helen Garner (Penguin, $38) I remember the night I heard that an Australian man’s Commodore had gone off the road and into a dam. He’d been taking his...
View ArticleNick Davies: The journo who took on journalism
Nick Davies has campaigned for years for journalists to do their jobs better. Interview by Alison McCulloch. Nick Davies held journalists to account with Flat Earth News, which exposed the use of...
View ArticlePeter Williams QC: The Dwarf Who Moved – review
As you might expect, New Zealand’s most prominent criminal barrister, Sir Peter Williams, QC, has a treasure trove of stories from his long career and a raconteur’s fluency in the telling....
View ArticleBridget van der Zijpp: In the Neighbourhood of Fame – review
IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF FAME Bridget van der Zijpp (VUP $30) Depending on your pop-culture reflexes, the word “fame” might send a ringtone to your brain of David Bowie’s “Fame” or the leg-warmers and...
View ArticleA guide to the Auckland Writers Festival: Part one
With 150 authors, 60,000 attendees, snapping synapses and coffee-cart queues, the Auckland Writers Festival returns in May. Our coverage begins with profiles of three of the authors. Gloria Steinem....
View ArticleA guide to the Auckland Writers Festival: Part two
Counting down the days to the Auckland Writers Festival? Here’s part two of our book columnists’ guide. Read part one. Gloria Steinem When she graduated from Smith College as an outstanding Phi Beta...
View ArticleAuckland Writers Festival day one: Drunk on information
They were dismantling Shakespeare’s Globe when I arrived at the Auckland Writers Festival on Friday morning. You could hear clanging and clanking from the other side of Aotea Square, and that’s what it...
View ArticleAuckland Writers Festival day two: Loneliness and the dispeller of sorrows
This time when I arrived at the Auckland Writers Festival there was an ambulance outside. It was a poetry ambulance. If you went and poked your head under the awning next to it, there was a table of...
View ArticleAuckland Writers Festival day three: Beating God’s drums in outer-space
Read more: Auckland Writers Festival day one Auckland Writers Festival day two Someone had put a black hole inside the Aotea Center. There was another black hole next to it. They were making booming...
View Article
