Entanglement by Bryan WalpertWellington: Mākaro Press (2021)RRP: $35. Pb. 268ISBN: 978-0-9951110-8-0Reviewed by Rebecca Styles In some regards, Entanglement is a simple story about twin brothers. One twin, Daniel, gets into a fight with some local kids and is severely injured. As an adult, he lives in an assisted living home in Baltimore. The narrator, Daniel’s…
Both feet in paradise by Andy Southall.Wellington: The Cuba Press (2021).RRP: $32.99. Pb, 350pp.ISBN: 978 1 98 859538 2.Reviewed by Rebecca Styles. Adam’s taxi is late. He’s harried while trying to reassure himself that he has enough time to catch his flight to New Zealand. Adam has spent months in Samoa researching butterflies and is…
Ghosts by Siobhan Harvey.Dunedin: OUP (2021).RRP: $27.50. Pb, 112pp.ISBN: 9781988592985.Reviewed by Mary Cresswell. However you define ghosts, they are here in abundance. Siobhan Harvey puts all her poetic skills to bear on the ghosts we carry with us, in our minds and our dwellings, in our bodies and our souls. The book is divided into…
All Tito’s Children by Tim Grgec.Wellington: VUP (2021).RRP: $25. Pb, 96pp.ISBN: 9781776564286.Reviewed by Jessie Neilson. Tim Grgec’s Yugoslavian heritage is the focus of his debut poetry collection. He has masters’ degrees in English literature and creative writing from Victoria University and won the Biggs Family Prize for Poetry (2018). In All Tito’s Children, Grgec selects…
Tōku Pāpā by Ruby Solly. Wellington: VUP (2021). RRP: $25.00. Pb, 80pp. ISBN: 9781776564125. Reviewed by Jessie Neilson. Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) is a Wellington-based cellist, composer, and poet. This is her first published poetry collection, and it draws on her preoccupations with heritage, family, myths and legends, and landscape. Tōku Pāpā…
THE ANTIPODEAN DANTE More Favourable Waters: Aotearoa poets respond to Dante’s Purgatory edited by Marco Sonzogni and Timothy Smith. Wellington: The Cuba Press (2021). RRP: $25.00. Pb, 98pp. ISBN: 978-1-98-859535-1. Reviewed by Andrew Wood. In the 1980s’ reboot of The Twilight Zone, there was a segment called “I of Newton” in which a mathematician accidently summoned…
I Am in Bed with You by Emma Barnes. Auckland: Auckland University Press, Auckland (2021). RRP $24.99. Pb, 88pp. ISBN: 8978169409203. Reviewed by Patricia Prime. Emma Barnes is not greatly given to the surreal but exhibits from the first proclivities which, if not disconcerting, are at least intriguing. Living in Aro Valley, Wellington, their poetry…
Hailman by Leanne Radojkovich. United Kingdom: The Emma Press (2021). RRP: $30.00. Pb, 97pp. ISBN: 9781912915705a. Reviewed by Nod Ghosh. Leanne Radojkovich carries her readers across a range of emotions in Hailman. This is the author’s second book in the short-form. There is nothing ‘showy’ about Radojkovich’s writing. These are the well-honed words of an…
Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz. New South Wales: Allen & Unwin (2021). RRP: $32.99. Pb, 326pp. ISBN: 978 1 76087 885 6. Reviewed by Rebecca Styles. Alice Lee is dead. But this novel isn’t a classic whodunnit. Instead, it’s a story of two women under the male gaze. Unknown to each other,…
Crossing the Lines: The story of three homosexual New Zealand soldiers in WWII by Brett Coutts. Dunedin: Otago University Press 2020. RRP: $49.95. Pb, 336pp. ISBN 9781988592381. Reviewed by Andrew Wood. It wasn’t all that long ago that a history of LGBT life in New Zealand would have been difficult to publish. Indeed, New Zealand’s…