Wellington Writers Walk 21st anniversary: Event video

Recently at Karori Library, we had the rare opportunity to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Wellington Writers Walk the iconic waterfront walk. This very special event featured two of New Zealand’s most celebrated authors, Elizabeth Knox and Dame Fiona Kidman, who were interviewed by author, broadcaster and Writers Walk committee member Tanya Ashcroft. During this wide-ranging conversation, Elizabeth Knox and Dame Fiona Kidman talked about the creation and future of this wonderful Wellington institution, as well as the part they’ve played in making the walk the much-loved success it is.

The event has now passed into history, but with the participants and Writer’s Walk committee permission we were able to film the proceedings and are now proud to present a video of the evening.

For anyone unfamiliar, this walk along Wellington’s beautiful waterfront pedestrian precinct is considered by many as “one of the world’s loveliest urban land-and-seascapes”. It consists of sculptural quotations situated in picturesque locations from the writings of a selection of iconic New Zealand authors – both past and contemporary. The walk celebrates and commemorates the place of Wellington in these writers’ lives, and their place in the life of Wellington.

Writers on the walk include: Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Pat Lawlor, Denis Glover, James K. Baxter, Bruce Mason, Lauris Edmond, Maurice Gee, Patricia Grace, Vincent O’Sullivan, Barbara Anderson, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Eileen Duggan, Bill Manhire and our very special guests Dame Fiona Kidman and Elizabeth Knox.

We wish to extend our most heartfelt thanks to Elizabeth Knox, Dame Fiona Kidman and Tanya Ashcroft. We’d also like to thank Karori Library and its staff and The Wellington Writers walk committee for making this very special event happen.

You can now view the video below or visit our You Tube channel.

The Wellington Writers Walk is a project of the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa (PEN NZ) Inc.

Below is a very small selection of Elizabeth Knox and Fiona Kidman titles available to borrow.

So far, for now : on journeys, widowhood and stories that are never over / Kidman, Fiona
“Evocative, wry and thought-provoking, this is a rewarding journey with one of our finest writers. It is a little over a decade since Fiona Kidman wrote her last volume of memoir. But her story did not end on its last page; instead her life since has been busier than ever, filled with significant changes, new writing and fascinating journeys. From being a grandmother to becoming a widow, from the suitcase-existence of book festivals to researching the lives and deaths of Jean Batten and Albert Black, she has found herself in new territory and viewed the familiar with fresh eyes. ” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

The absolute book / Knox, Elizabeth
“Taryn Cornick believes that the past is behind her – her sister’s death by violence, and her own ill-conceived revenge. She has chosen to live a life more professional than personal. She has written a book about the things that threaten libraries – insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring. The book is a success, but not all of the attention it brings her is good. There are questions about a fire in the library at Princes Gate, her grandparents’ house, and about an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter. A policeman, Jacob Berger, has questions about a cold case. There are threatening phone calls. And a shadowy young man named Shift appears, bringing his shadows with him. Taryn, Jacob, Shift – three people are driven towards a reckoning felt in more than one world.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
This mortal boy / Kidman, Fiona
“Albert Black, known as the ‘jukebox killer’, was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society’s reaction to outsiders.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook 
Dreamhunter / Knox, Elizabeth
“Fast-paced and dazzlingly imaginative, Dreamhunter will draw the reader into an extraordinary fictional world in which dreams are as vividly described as the cream cakes in the tea shop, the sand on the beach or teenage first love.Set in 1906, Dreamhunter describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, known simply as The Place, where only a select group of people can go. These people are called Dreamhunters and they harvest dreams which are then transmitted to the general public for the purposes of entertainment, therapy – or terror and political coercion.Fifteen-year-old cousins Laura Hame and Rose Tiebold both come from famous dreamhunting families, but only Laura proves to be blessed with the gift and once inside The Place she finds out what happened to her missing dreamhunter father and reveals how the government has used dreams to control an ever-growing population of convicts and political dissenters.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
All the way to summer : stories of love and longing / Kidman, Fiona
“Fiona Kidman’s early stories about New Zealand women’s experiences scandalised readers with their vivid depictions of the heartbreaks and joys of desire, illicit liaisons and unconventional love. Her writing made her a feminist icon in the early 1980s, and she has since continued to tell the realities of women’s lives, her books resonating with many readers over the years and across the world. To mark her 80th birthday, this volume brings together a variety of her previously published stories as well as several that are new or previously uncollected; all moving, insightful and written with love. The final stories trace her own history of love, a memoir of significant people from childhood and beyond.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
The angel’s cut / Knox, Elizabeth
” Boomtown Los Angeles, 1929: Into a world of movie lots and speakeasies comes Xas, stunt flier and wingless angel, still nursing his broken heart, and determined only to go on living in the air. But there are forces that will keep him on the ground. Forces like Conrad Cole, movie director and aircraft designer, a glory-seeking king of the grand splash who is also a man sinking into his own sovereign darkness. And Flora McLeod, film editor and maimed former actress, who sees something in Xas that no one has ever seen before, not even God, who made him, or Lucifer, the general he once followed – Lucifer, who has lost Xas once, but won’t let that be the end of it. ” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook. 
The infinite air / Kidman, Fiona
“Jean Batten became an international icon in the 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn’t get enough of her; and yet she suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and dying in obscurity in Majorca, buried in a pauper’s grave.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

 

The vintner’s luck / Knox, Elizabeth
“One summer night in 1808, Sobran Jodeau sets out to drown his love sorrows in his family’s vineyard when he stumbles on an angel. Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be a far more mysterious character. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner’s Luck explores a decidedly unorthodox love story as Sobran eventually comes to love and be loved by both Xas and the young Countess de Valday, his friend and employer at the neighboring chateau.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an Audiobook.

Meet the panel: Witi Ihimaera

Witi Ihimaera photo by Colin McDiarmid

Coming soon to Newtown Library we have a very special launch event for the new anthology A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha. The panel for this event features some of Aotearoa’s most acclaimed authors, poets and artists. Leading up to the launch, we thought we would place a spotlight on just a few of the stellar writers who will be in attendance.

Our first spotlight is on one of the editors; the iconic and nationally celebrated writer Witi Ihimaera. In 2017, Witi Ihimaera was awarded a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. What the selectors said when awarding him this accolade speaks volumes about his work and practice. They described Witi “as one of New Zealand’s most important post-colonial writers, who has consistently proved to be an outstanding storyteller, celebrated as a voice for Māoritanga and a literary leader’. We are thrilled that Witi Ihimaera will be one of the hosts at the Launch of for  A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha.

Our other honoured guests include Michelle Elvy, Tina Makereti, Pip Adam, Harry Ricketts, Gregory O’Brien, Ya-Wen Ho and Noa Noa von Bassewitz.

Event listing of Facebook

Friday 26th of May, , 6-7pm

Newtown Library

A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha is a major anthology of new writing featuring some of Aotearoa’s most eminent writers, artists and thinkers as they consider what our shared future might hold. The book is a series of rich conversations that discuss our world in the second decade of this century. Just a few of the hot button topics the authors look at include decolonisation, indigeneity and climate change. A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha, itself, is arranged according to the principles of whaikōrero.

The anthology, co-edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy, embraces a wide spectrum of voices. It  creates a multiplicity of views for readers to consider. The writers included also hail from a wide variety  of artistic and professional practices, including: poets, anthropologists, fiction writers, architects and  academics. The resultant final book is a luminous hui, a book to return to time and again.

As co editor Witi Ihimaera says of the book – “It incorporates all types of writing, positions Aotearoa New Zealand as a marae for the future and it empowers so many voices from so many places to speak out to the world with strong and vigorous kōrero. It has built for itself a truly unique and innovative marae from which to hui from.”

Please note we anticipate that this event will be very popular and seating will be on a first come, first served basis.

 

Authors who travelled between China and New Zealand

The world is a book and the those who do not travel read only one page” – Saint Augustine.

These authors definitely went travelling and did so during some very difficult times, making their experiences and subsequent books truly remarkable. Read our blog about Robin Hyde, Boyong Ma, Lian Yang, and how their China-NZ travel experiences inspired them and their work.

Credit to read Robin Hyde by S P Andrew, Alexander Turnbull Library. Ref: 1/2-043599-F. https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22770176

Robin Hyde
Robin Hyde (real name Iris Wilkinson, b. 1906) grew up in Wellington. Like her book The Godwits Fly (1938) which was inspired by her childhood, Dragon Rampant covers her extraordinary experience of travelling to China during the Japanese occupation. In 1938 she began a journey to travel to London to meet her publishers. Stopping in Hong Kong where she worked briefly as a freelance journalist, she soon became aware of the situation that had developed over the border in mainland China. She took a boat to Japanese-controlled Shanghai which was still suffering the impact of having been bombed. There she met Rewi Alley, Edgar & Peggy Snow and the Guardian’s Far East correspondent, Harold Timperley. Impressed with the quality of her work, Timperley offered to fund her travel to Canton so that she could report on the situation there. After first returning to Hong Kong where she met the NZ writer James Bertram, she travelled deep into Guangzhou and the neighbouring provinces to the front-line of battles raging between Japanese troops and Chinese nationalists. After the city of Xuzhou was bombed and captured Japanese soldiers injured her eyes, but she managed to escape to limp 80 kilometres along railway tracks to safety. She was escorted to Tsing Tao before managing to get back to Hong Kong where she interviewed the Nationalist leader, Rosamond Soong Ch’ing-ling, before continuing on to London. Her dramatic and graphic account of her experience in China was published in Dragon Rampant; ‘dragon’ in the title alluding to the Imperial Japanese army and their invasion of China.

Text sourced from https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/hyde/china.asp

Dragon rampant / Hyde, Robin
“Based on her own experience, Robin Hyde depicted a picture of the 1930s Japanese occupied China, just before the World War Two. Robin Hyde was the only lone female journalist visited China during the war time and hence written the best history book delivered. Similar to other people trapped in a war zone, she suffered from sickness, fear, poverty and turbulence. She also received help along the way and met the important people she intended to interview. It’s one of the only books on this topic and delivered with lyrical prose only Robin Hyde could deliver. ” (Librarian’s review)

Ma Boyong 马伯庸
Ma Boyong (b. 1980) is a well-known author, columnist and blogger in China. Several of his novels have been adapted to popular TV drama series’, including The longest day in Chang’An . In 2010 his achievements in writing were recognised after he was awarded the ‘People’s Literature Prize’, one of China’s most prestigious honours. In 2012, he was awarded ‘Prose Award’; in 2023, he became the screenwriter of the TV series The case of Daming’s silk under the Microscope

His journey to becoming one of China’s best known contemporary writers followed an unusual path. In 2001 he was an international student at Waikato University studying marketing and communications, but his exposure to the literature collection in the university library inspired him to begin writing fiction. It was also while he was at Waikato University that he met his wife, they returned to China together where his literary career soon took off. In 2019 he was invited to make a return visit New Zealand along with several other well-known Chinese figures with significant NZ connections. Ma Boyong’s short story The Great Migration has been translated into English and many of his books can be found on the library catalogue in both Chinese and English.

Text sourced from https://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-opinion/media/2019/famous-chinese-literary-genius-got-his-inspiration-from-waikato

Sinopticon : a celebration of Chinese science fiction
“First time translated into English, this book presents a collection of China’s best science fiction stories from thirteen award winning and best-selling writers. This book won the 2022 British Fantasy Awards of Best Anthology. The editor has curated the science-fiction and fantasy short stories and thread them through so the stories link to one another.  ‘The Great Migration’ by Ma Boyong is a selected short story in this collection. (Librarian’s review) 

Yang Lian, 杨炼
The poet Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955 but was raised in Beijing. He visited Hong Kong in 1986, Australia in 1988 and the following year was invited to NZ as a visiting scholar by John Minford of Auckland University and to participate in the 1989 New Zealand-China Writers and Translators Workshop. He became a teacher in Auckland where he lectured on non-mainstream Chinese literature (‘Meng Long Pai’) for the Department of Asian Language and Literature. He later wrote about his experience of living in Auckland in his book Unreal City and went on to win the ‘Flaiano International Poetry Prize’ (Italy, 1999). He had won numerous prizes such as ‘International Capri Prize’ (Italy, 2014); ‘Li Bai Nomination Poetry Prize’ (China, 2015), The First Long Poem Prize (China, 2015), ‘PEN Award’, (UK, 2017); ‘L’Aquila International Literature Prize’ (Italy, 2018).  He holds both NZ and British citizenship and today divides his time between living in London and Berlin.

Unreal city : a Chinese poet in Auckland / Yang, Lian
“Yang Lian is a Chinese non-mainstream Chinese literature (Meng Long Pai) poet. During the four years he lived in Auckland, he has written the story from a startling, fresh perspective. Published in English for the first time in the scholarly collection, this book Unreal City had later won the ‘Flaiano International Poetry Prize’ (Italy, 1999). (Librarian’s review)

 

 

 

Wellington Writers Walk: 21st anniversary event, 13 May

 

Saturday 13th May, 11am

Karori Library   

Facebook event listing here

The Wellington Writers Walk is 21 years old this year, and to celebrate this auspicious occasion we are holding a very special event with two of New Zealand’s most celebrated authors: Elizabeth Knox and Dame Fiona Kidman. Along with author, broadcaster and Writers Walk committee member Tanya Ashcroft, they will talk about the creation, history and future of this wonderful Wellington institution and the part they’ve played in making the walk the much-loved success it is.

Tanya Ashcroft

For anyone unfamiliar, this walk along Wellington’s beautiful, famed waterfront pedestrian precinct is considered by many as “one of the world’s loveliest urban land-and-seascapes”. It consists of sculptural quotations situated in picturesque locations from the writings of a selection of iconic New Zealand authors – both past and contemporary. The walk celebrates and commemorates the place of Wellington in these writers’ lives, and their place in the life of Wellington.

Writers featured include: Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Pat Lawlor, Denis Glover, James K. Baxter, Bruce Mason, Lauris Edmond, Maurice Gee, Patricia Grace, Vincent O’Sullivan, Barbara Anderson, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Eileen Duggan, Bill Manhire and our very special guests Dame Fiona Kidman and Elizabeth Knox.

Please note we expect this event to be very popular and seating will be on a first come first served basis.

An NZ Sign Language Interpreter will be present at this event.

The Wellington Writers Walk is a project of the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa (PEN NZ) Inc.

Below is a very small selection of Elizabeth Knox and Fiona Kidman titles available to borrow.

So far, for now : on journeys, widowhood and stories that are never over / Kidman, Fiona
“Evocative, wry and thought-provoking, this is a rewarding journey with one of our finest writers. It is a little over a decade since Fiona Kidman wrote her last volume of memoir. But her story did not end on its last page; instead her life since has been busier than ever, filled with significant changes, new writing and fascinating journeys. From being a grandmother to becoming a widow, from the suitcase-existence of book festivals to researching the lives and deaths of Jean Batten and Albert Black, she has found herself in new territory and viewed the familiar with fresh eyes. ” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

The absolute book / Knox, Elizabeth
“Taryn Cornick believes that the past is behind her – her sister’s death by violence, and her own ill-conceived revenge. She has chosen to live a life more professional than personal. She has written a book about the things that threaten libraries – insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring. The book is a success, but not all of the attention it brings her is good. There are questions about a fire in the library at Princes Gate, her grandparents’ house, and about an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter. A policeman, Jacob Berger, has questions about a cold case. There are threatening phone calls. And a shadowy young man named Shift appears, bringing his shadows with him. Taryn, Jacob, Shift – three people are driven towards a reckoning felt in more than one world.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
This mortal boy / Kidman, Fiona
“Albert Black, known as the ‘jukebox killer’, was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society’s reaction to outsiders.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook 
Dreamhunter / Knox, Elizabeth
“Fast-paced and dazzlingly imaginative, Dreamhunter will draw the reader into an extraordinary fictional world in which dreams are as vividly described as the cream cakes in the tea shop, the sand on the beach or teenage first love.Set in 1906, Dreamhunter describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, known simply as The Place, where only a select group of people can go. These people are called Dreamhunters and they harvest dreams which are then transmitted to the general public for the purposes of entertainment, therapy – or terror and political coercion.Fifteen-year-old cousins Laura Hame and Rose Tiebold both come from famous dreamhunting families, but only Laura proves to be blessed with the gift and once inside The Place she finds out what happened to her missing dreamhunter father and reveals how the government has used dreams to control an ever-growing population of convicts and political dissenters.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
All the way to summer : stories of love and longing / Kidman, Fiona
“Fiona Kidman’s early stories about New Zealand women’s experiences scandalised readers with their vivid depictions of the heartbreaks and joys of desire, illicit liaisons and unconventional love. Her writing made her a feminist icon in the early 1980s, and she has since continued to tell the realities of women’s lives, her books resonating with many readers over the years and across the world. To mark her 80th birthday, this volume brings together a variety of her previously published stories as well as several that are new or previously uncollected; all moving, insightful and written with love. The final stories trace her own history of love, a memoir of significant people from childhood and beyond.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
The angel’s cut / Knox, Elizabeth
” Boomtown Los Angeles, 1929: Into a world of movie lots and speakeasies comes Xas, stunt flier and wingless angel, still nursing his broken heart, and determined only to go on living in the air. But there are forces that will keep him on the ground. Forces like Conrad Cole, movie director and aircraft designer, a glory-seeking king of the grand splash who is also a man sinking into his own sovereign darkness. And Flora McLeod, film editor and maimed former actress, who sees something in Xas that no one has ever seen before, not even God, who made him, or Lucifer, the general he once followed – Lucifer, who has lost Xas once, but won’t let that be the end of it. ” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook. 
The infinite air / Kidman, Fiona
“Jean Batten became an international icon in the 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn’t get enough of her; and yet she suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and dying in obscurity in Majorca, buried in a pauper’s grave.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

 

The vintner’s luck / Knox, Elizabeth
“One summer night in 1808, Sobran Jodeau sets out to drown his love sorrows in his family’s vineyard when he stumbles on an angel. Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be a far more mysterious character. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner’s Luck explores a decidedly unorthodox love story as Sobran eventually comes to love and be loved by both Xas and the young Countess de Valday, his friend and employer at the neighboring chateau.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an Audiobook.

K-pop, prize winners, and someone else’s shoes: New fiction picks

via GIPHY

The only time you should ever look back, is to see how far you’ve come.

Bangtan Boys, Butterfly

Y/N, a novel by Esther Yi, on our catalogueWelcome to another of our monthly selections of the recently acquired fiction. Regular readers will know that each month we like to have special look at one of the inspirations behind one of the new titles, and this month, one novel that drew our particular attention was Y/N by  Esther Yi in which the main protagonist obsesses over Moon, a major K-pop star.

In recent years the popularity of  K-pop has exploded — it is now number six in the top ten music markets worldwide, and experienced a massive 44.8% growth in sales in 2020 alone. K-pop has of course been around a lot longer. Whilst the term K-pop (short for Korean popular music) became popular in an international sense in the 2000s, it has been around in its modern incarnation since the 1990s, when it was described as “rap dance”. One of the first K-pop acts to really hit public attention in a big way was the hip hop boy band Seo Taiji and Boys. The scene  quickly grew into a major youth subculture in South Korea — a subculture that eventually broke into the  neighbouring Japanese market and from there, out across the globe. These days it embraces a huge range of genres and styles into its musical arms, such as hip hop, R&B, jazz, gospel, electronic music, reggae, pop, folk, disco, classical and also traditional Korean music often mashed up into one eutrophic mix.

Other titles in our picks this month include Margaret Atwood’s new collection of stories called Old babes in the woods, and Jojo Moyes’ Someone else’s shoes. Have a browse!

Y/N : a novel / Yi, Esther
“The narrator, a Korean American woman living in Berlin, is obsessed with Moon: anything not-Moon in her life fell away when she beheld the K-pop idol in concert. Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field. Seized by ineffable desire, she begins writing Y/N fanfic — in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star. When Moon suddenly retires from the wildly popular K-pop group, the woman journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. She locates the headquarters of the company that manages the boyband; at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

River spirit : a novel / Aboulela, Leila
“This enchanting and eye-opening new novel from Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela follows an embattled young woman coming of age during the Mahdist War in nineteenth-century Sudan, and illuminates the tensions that shape her course: between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. In River Spirit, Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who — against the odds and for a brief time — gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Old babes in the woods : stories / Atwood, Margaret
“These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as Second World War parade swords. They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. At the heart of the collection is a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love – and what comes after.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The unfortunates : a novel / Chukwu, J K.
“Sahara is Not Okay. Entering her sophomore year at Elite University, she feels like a failure: her body is too curvy, her love life is nonexistent, her family is disappointed in her, her grades are terrible, and, well, the few Black classmates she has just keep dying. Sahara is close to giving up, herself: her depression is, as she says, her only “Life Partner.” And this narrative–taking the form of an irreverent, piercing “thesis” to the university committee that will judge her–is meant to be a final unfurling of her singular, unforgettable voice before her own inevitable disappearance and death. But over the course of this wild sophomore year, and supported by her eccentric community of BIPOC women, Sahara will eventually find hope, answers, and an unexpected redemption.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The woman with the cure / Cullen, Lynn
“In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor — often the only woman in the room — she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood… ” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The great reclamation / Heng, Rachel
“Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility — something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love. By the time they are teens, Ah Boon and Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history…” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Someone else’s shoes / Moyes, Jojo
“A story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances. Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes? Nisha Cantor and Sam Kemp are two very different women. Nisha, 45, lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband inexplicably cuts her off entirely. She doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That’s because Sam – 47, middle-aged, struggling to keep herself and her family afloat – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. Now Nisha’s got nothing. And Sam’s walking tall with shoes that catch eyes – and give her a career an unexpected boost…” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an Audiobook

She and her cat / Shinkai, Makoto
“With clever narration alternating between the cats and their owners, She and Her Cat offers a unique and sly commentary on human foibles and our desire for connection. A whimsical short story anthology unlike any other, it effortlessly demonstrates that even in our darkest, most lonesome moments, we are still united to this wonderous world – -often in ways we could never have expected…” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Great Birnam Wood: Recently acquired fiction

 

“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until/ Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/ Shall come against him”  William Shakespeare Macbeth

The book that caught our particular attention in this month’s recently acquired new fiction round-up was of course Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. One of the most hotly anticipated novels of 2023, both here and overseas. It’s already getting rave reviews; the Guardian have described it as “a dark and brilliant novel about the violence and tawdriness of late capitalism”. One of the key subjects in the book is the battle to save a guerrilla community garden project in Christchurch called Birnam Wood.

The book is, of course, named after the forest in that Scottish play by William Shakespeare, and whilst ‘Macbeth’ is a fictional play, many of its aspects are based in historical fact. For example, Macbeth was indeed a Scottish King who was killed in battle in 1057 and is now buried at Iona, the traditional resting place of Scottish kings. Birnam Wood is also a real forest located near Dunsinane Hill; both these places were locations of significant battles in medieval times. Birnam Wood itself goes on to play a central plot device in the Shakespeare play, as it does in a very different guise in Eleanor Catton’s novel.

Other major releases this month include comic Bob Mortimer’s debut novel called The Satsuma Complex and, not one,but two novels from by Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger and Stella Maris. Plus, new works from Kate Atkinson, Bret Easton Ellis and Ian McEwan amongst others – as they say, an embarrassment of riches to choose from!

Birnam Wood / Catton, Eleanor
“Birnam Wood is on the move …A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in the South Island of New Zealand, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. This land offers an opportunity to Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn’t figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other ?” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The satsuma complex / Mortimer, Bob
” Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub. He doesn’t catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers. And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

The passenger / McCarthy, Cormac
“Pass Christian, Mississippi, 1980: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips up the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from a Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit–by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, an inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook. 
Stella Maris / McCarthy, Cormac
” Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 1972: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she recalls a childhood where, by the age of seven, her own grandmother feared for her; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see…” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.
Shrines of gaiety / Atkinson, Kate
“1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within…” (Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

The shards / Ellis, Bret Easton
“A story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Also available as an eBook. 

 

Lessons / McEwan, Ian
“When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, 11-year-old Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life… ” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.

 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Zevin, Gabrielle
“On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available as an eBook.