Books

As the title suggests, Joseph Trinidad’s debut essay collection Lucky Creatures has proven to be an incredibly fortuitous read, nestling itself tenderly within my bookshelf and heart. Unfeigned and authentic, Trinidad’s writing provides a real rarity: familial intimacy. Adopting the reader as an honorary member of his pamilya, he dishes up a sensory medley. Prose-like in style, minutiae breathe life into the seemingly mundane. The age spots on Mami’s hands, Eleng’s salt-and-pepper hair, Papa’s foil pouch of prunes intertwine into a visceral image of family.

Immigrating from the Philippines at a young age whilst coming to terms with his gay identity, the author materialises his hardship with heartbreaking sincerity. “A graveyard almost convincingly dressed as a postcard”, his family bade goodbye to all the places they knew, “leaving everyone, the living and the dead”.

As a queer individual with an immigrant family, the nuances within Trinidad’s experience mirrored those of my own, verbalising struggles I have yet to put into words. To me, the most poignant aspect of this text is the portrayal of parental foreignness.

Moving during childhood is difficult, but a child’s identity is still unfinished. Their language is still forming, sense of belonging still taking shape. They can learn new words, new customs, new ways of calling somewhere “home”.

For the migrant parent, there is no such luxury. They are the ones who leave everything behind – their language, their culture, their community, the familiar contours of a life they once knew – so that their child can inherit a world larger than the one they were born into.

Growing up, I never considered what my parents had lost. That, much like the Trinidad family, identity had shifted from a physical location to the abstract. This type of isolation carries an inescapable weight, bearing “the same skin, the same voice, the same vices”, yet somehow feeling perpetually displaced.

There is a peculiar sadness in realising that your whānau is foreign. Not foreign to you, necessarily, but to the place they have been asked to call home. Perhaps that is the greatest fortune of Trinidad’s collection. It does not simply tell a story about immigration, queerness, or family; it gives language to the spaces between them.

Fleur McDonald’s latest rural crime story The Missing invites the reader to tread the dusty streets of Kalgoorlie and its desert surroundings in Western Australia.

During Missing Persons Week, teenager Max disappears after a late-night party. Local detectives Angie Sullivan and Jack Higgins (from McDonald’s previous Kalgoorlie book The Prospect) are assigned the case, but come under pressure from Max’s parents and Lily, a tenacious radio show host who has been digging into the town’s growing list of unsolved missing persons cases.

The book tackles two timelines: the investigation into Max’s whereabouts and Max’s story leading up to his disappearance. The latter plot offers insight into Max and his desire to escape Kalgoorlie and his domineering father. It is interesting as it allows us to see Kalgoorlie from the perspective of the town’s youth, some of whom, like Max, yearn for something beyond the town’s borders.

Unfortunately, the main storyline, which takes up most of the book, is hindered by stock characters who are difficult to distinguish from one another. Angie and Lily have such similar backstories (both came to Kalgoorlie after broken relationships) that they seem identical, with only their job descriptions separating them. Jack also has a similar backstory, and while this points to the town’s transitory nature as a place where people come to escape their problems or forget the past, the sameness doesn’t do the lead characters any favours. McDonald, who pivoted from rural romance to rural crime in recent years, writes with a strong sense of place, particularly of outback Australia and the people who inhabit it, but this applies largely to the peripheral characters rather than the core cast.

McDonald's writing brings to mind Stephen King’s maxim that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs”, which I agree with. Coupled with a denouement that strains plausibility, The Missing missed the mark for me. But McDonald has sold over a million books and has another due out next month, so I am clearly in the minority here.

Growing up is not easy, no matter when or where you were raised. Each generation has its own unique challenges, and the lessons we learn and that stick with us help us become the parents we want to be. 

TikTok star and one of New Zealand’s biggest online celebrities, Louis Davis explains what being a parent means to him in his new memoir The Modern Dad. Throughout the book, he explores his childhood in Te Tai Tokerau in New Zealand's Far North, the lessons he learned from his parents, and how he implements those lessons in his day-to-day life as a dad now.

I really liked this book and found it quite interesting. Despite his internet fame, Davis comes off as extremely down-to-earth, and his writing is easy and enjoyable to read.

There is one section in particular that I loved. Davis’ Māori heritage is extremely important to him, and he dedicates an entire chapter to breaking down the depiction of Māori fathers as violent and angry characters like Jake the Muss in Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors. Davis explains that, traditionally, Māori men were playful, gentle, and friendly toward their children. In fact, many early missionaries to New Zealand noted what good fathers Māori men were – they were certainly not just warriors. Tackling the past and the present, this chapter dismantles the incorrect perception of Māori as bad fathers then and now. Davis sets the record straight, trying to dismiss a stereotype that circulated even before the movie came out in the 90s. 

Modern Dad would suit a reader either thinking about having kids or who has just had one and is looking for a little advice. Either way, it is a great read. Don’t go into it expecting a how-to manual though – I suspect they do not exist!

If you see this book, do not hesitate to pick it up. Modern Dad might be one of the best memoirs I’ve read all year.

For the Love of Matthew is one mother’s story about her son Matthew. Maria Di Leva says she wants it to give hope to other parents out there who may be raising a child with special needs. In her memoir, Di Leva recounts Matthew’s story, from his early childhood right through to the 30-year-old man he is today.

What strikes me most is Di Leva’s heartfelt and deeply personal reflections of her journey as Matthew’s mother, as his friend, advocate, and lifelong champion. She gives an honest and unwavering account of Matthew’s life, from the life-changing diagnosis he received as a young child of severe autism with ADHD, to the independent, flourishing son she and his wider family know him as today.

In For the Love of Matthew, a strong and insightful Di Leva explores Matthew’s potential every step of the way, whether navigating the school years, a time on medication, or different plans and strategies – like supporting him to catch the bus on his own, which consistently and importantly grew Matthew’s independence and widened his opportunities.

It is very apparent throughout the book that Matthew is part of a tight-knit family and peer group. It is especially rewarding to read about how he has experienced the world his own way. He was selected for the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Berlin, where he proudly brought home a silver and bronze medal. He’s found a passion for hip-hop and a stable routine of keeping busy with work at New World and flatting independently.

Often, it is the people who stand behind you – who believe in you, fight for you, and push open doors that would otherwise remain shut – that make the intangible tangible. Matthew has achieved his own goals and independence, with the support of a loving family and a mother’s unwavering love.

By all accounts, the journey has not been easy. But Matthew’s mother hopes that this book “demonstrates that with faith and love, the impossible is possible.”

From New Zealand author Tim Corballis comes this new novel NOVA, which explores issues we do not normally see in science fiction.

Set on a self-contained spaceship named Nova that is hurtling away from Earth and on its way to a new home on the star Telos, the novel explores the lives of the ship's inhabitants and the AI running everything, System. Nova is a generational ship, and the entire trip to their new home will take 60,000 years. This means that several generations will be born and die before they ever reach Telos. In NOVA, it’s been 300 years since the ship left Earth, and its inhabitants have completely lost touch with their original home’s roots.

Unlike other science fiction novels that see AI systems running amok or taking over the world, NOVA’s AI wants to understand the humans around it and struggles to do so at times.

A lot of novels treat supercomputers or AI as just machines, but System feels genuinely alive and, if I did not know any better, just as flesh-and-blood as the other characters. In fact, System became my favourite character. Its conversations with Kalla, a human with her own problems, make up the bulk of the story as they talk about topics and themes ranging from consciousness to the human condition.

While the other human characters are interesting and well written, it was Corballis’ rendering of System that made me think as no other science fiction novel has before.

Be warned: this is not Star Trek or Star Wars. NOVA will make you think about things you do not normally associate with science fiction, and that may put younger readers off. I believe it’s a novel for the more mature reader out there. I may have been in the Star Wars camp when I picked it up, but I stuck with NOVA and found it a fantastic read. 

The title of this first collection by Haro Lee is provocative – redolent as it is of short stays, hurriedness, and possibly secrecy. When these are backgrounded by the activity of watching television, we get poems that sing, shout, celebrate, and rebel: all the elements of troubled tempestuous youth. Haro Lee may be troubled, but her experiences also cause her to confront herself with astonishing honesty. And it’s this that makes her work so compelling.

The section Daytime Television starts us off. How to Refill a Disposable BIC Lighter has the writer and a friend holed up with cocaine and companionship. “For five short days / we’re adrift on something so / magical. It’s a girls’ world / in this filthy apartment.” Laughter, grief, and confession abound, and the writer is left with the eponymous lighter as a precious souvenir.

We progress to Primetime Television. If I wasn’t primed already, From These Gutters, My Mother would shock me with its graphic images. We read of a “Botticelli belly” and “This mistake she makes / with the father, the one / who enters growing girls / without clumsy” and what the baby after arriving is subjected to.

I really enjoyed Needing Religion at Nineteen. Our writer admits to her dissatisfaction at being born in the Year of the Rat – that is until she sees an exhibition of Banksy’s rat series and what he has to say about it. “OK, I’ll take that for why I’m here then”, she declares. Self-doubt and longing for assurances – not least of an afterlife – predominate. Once again, frankness is paramount and appealing. “So when it’s my time to go / I can say that I tried.”

Graveyard Slot is a lengthy narrative recounting Lee’s life in a small neighbourhood in Seoul, capital of South Korea and home to her beloved grandmother. Detailed, graphic, and touchingly nostalgic – if ever there was material for a TV documentary, this is it!

Breton Dukes’ breakthrough novel, Party Boy, delves into the harrowing effects of toxic masculinity and its inclination for self-destruction. Rather than offering a sympathetic antihero or a straightforward villain, Dukes presents a man trapped between a bleak present and an even bleaker past.

On the verge of turning 50, Marco faces his midlife crisis with the emotional maturity of a volatile teenager. Bitter, sexually frustrated, and clinging to the faded glory of his youth and masculinity, he turns to alcohol and pharmaceuticals to numb his mounting inadequacies. As his high-school years resurface to haunt him, Marco must decide whether to take responsibility for his prior actions as a school bully, or to drown them in substances.

Amid the turmoil of his youth, his adult life has been put on the back burner. Unable to uphold the responsibilities of a part-time job and fumbling as the stay-at-home dad, Marco’s desperation to be seen as the stoic male stands in constant conflict with the realities of his shortcomings. In the place of reason, addiction becomes his “burning ray of confidence” – one that slowly sets fire to his world.

This downward spiral becomes the perfect vehicle for exploring the pressures of traditional masculinity and the damage it inflicts. Throughout the novel, Dukes examines the extent to which men internalise rigid gender expectations and the consequences of treating vulnerabilities as weaknesses.

We see this further emphasised through the pulsing, intrusive nature of Marco’s insecurities and thoughts. Combining short, staccato lines with a polished, stream-of-consciousness style, Dukes jerks the reader deep into the psyche of a man who is balancing everything and nothing.

Its frantic rhythm mirrors the raw desire to fix the irreparable; to watch, hopelessly, as your ego goes cold in your hands. As unsettling as it is compelling, Party Boy is the type of book that lingers. Not because it comforts, but because it refuses to look away.

Prospective readers will no doubt find Salt Quilt an intriguing title for a poetry collection. The book’s cover illustrates that such a bedspread actually exists! For writer Airini Beautrais, ‘salt’ and ‘quilt’ provide a useful analogy for life: past and present, harshness and softness are juxtaposed throughout these provocative poems, demonstrating the necessity for considering and accepting both.

Nostalgia works well in poetry as is illustrated in several of Beautrais’ verses. In Swingball, she celebrates typical activities and delights of the 70s: holiday homes for the kids, clean jokes, Monopoly, and the game of swingball, concluding with the philosophical observation about cooperation: “No one can play a thing like this single-handed”.

By far the most powerful poem is, if you’ll excuse the pun, An analysis of power. Our writer references some of the appalling hallmarks of today’s world: climate change, the care taken to manufacture and preserve expensive cars, “all the messages sent / from satellite and cellphone tower” – and exposes them with cliches such as “but there’s no seeing forests for trees / without an analysis of power”. The repetition of the eponymous “analysis of power” is salutary in impact.

Beautrais is still young enough to be able to voice a plea about old age in How I want to get old. The horrors of old age – its physical and mental decline, its backward looks, its seemingly careless lack of awareness – are all graphically outpoured. The poem nevertheless concludes with a plea for toughness, even tempestuousness.    

Cancer Moon: Poet Life consists of a 20-page musing on things astrological, mythical, poetical, and political. And more besides. We learn of our poet’s beginnings as a writer, and that she attributes them in part to her star sign. Sceptical as I am about such matters, I note that I am studying Beautrais’ work during the month of Cancer. Was that meant?

“‘Did you really write that poem?’ a boy asks me”, she writes. “Wow, cool”. Beautrais’ work is better than cool: it’s self-searching, reflective, salutary, and brave.

Money, Money, Money joins a long list of books that help you reset your money mindset. I found it stands out though, mainly because authors Rachel Davies and Angela Meyer are relatable. In Money, Money, Money, they share their relationships with money and experiences that show they understand what it is like to arrive at a particular destination in life without the whole money thing figured out. They explore what it was like reaching a milestone looking towards a future that would most certainly see them in the poverty trap that befalls many women in their later years.

Davies had reached the age of 48 with no KiwiSaver and hardly any savings.

For Meyer, her money was always wrapped up in much more than numbers – “it was also my worth, validity, hopes, dreams, and so much more,” she says.

In Money, Money, Money, the authors also share the stories of other women: their experiences with money, their relationships with it, and their beliefs – the good and the bad. As the creators of Hi Money, a business dedicated to educating and empowering women in financial matters, they’ve managed to really dig into all aspects of money and its complex nature while keeping things simple and straightforward.

There are checklists at the end of each chapter that help you literally ‘check’ yourself, giving you a helpful list to mentally tick off. The checklists aren’t just practical; they help you gain insight into your own unique money psychology, behaviour, journey, and experiences.

I particularly enjoyed the upper and lower limits chapter where Davies and Meyer talk about what your top and bottom limits are. What’s too little money for you? What numbers do you need to get down to before you start panicking? What’s the ideal number when it feels like enough? These questions really got me thinking deeply about my own numbers and what does and doesn’t feel comfortable.

Money, Money, Money doesn’t help you crunch numbers so much as it helps you understand your own motivations and money possibilities in a real and intentional way.

As husband and wife John and Elisa Mendzela discovered, sometimes truth can be far stranger and more dangerous than fiction. In the 1980s, the Western couple flew into Papua New Guinea to begin teaching at the Keravat College. Not long afterwards, they uncovered systematic corruption involving the sexual exploitation of Keravat’s students.

In The Best Interests: Intrigue and Payback in Papua New Guinea is a book I found hard to put down once I picked it up. The narrative non-fiction memoir had me shaking my head at the hurdles that both John and Elisa had to jump over to get someone to listen to them and act on their accusations.

John and Elisa take turns narrating the story. The shift in perspectives gives readers a full view of what is going on and fleshes out the dangers that both faced in order to tell their side of the story and to get Papua New Guinea authorities to act.

Both authors write extremely descriptively, painting a very realistic picture of what they were facing and how many roadblocks were put in their way. Neither of them shy away from describing the problems they encountered, the emotional toll that was taken, and the people who stood by them.

This was a novel that will stay with me for a long while. As someone living in a developed country, I cannot begin to fathom the problems developing nations faced roughly 30 years ago. In The Best Interests is one of those stories that you keep turning over and over in your head, simply because it is so difficult and terrible to comprehend how something like that could have been allowed to happen and why so many people would enable it.

Dedicated in part to ‘the Papua New Guineans of today who refuse to let the bad overwhelm the good’, I wholeheartedly recommend In the Best Interests to anyone who likes non-fiction mixed with a bit of intrigue. Easily my book of the year.

Julia Millen is a tramper, a climber, and a mountaineer. On top of all that, she’s a writer! Her first novel, following 17 earlier works, is a true summit of all three, offering thrills, spills, triumphs, and shocks enough to satisfy the most demanding literary mounter.

To say nothing of mystery and suspense. These are signalled at the outset by the central character Deirdre in her words: “She’d put the past behind her, moved on, and had no intention of going back. Never look back.” Fate was about to fly in the face of such a determination, and the gradual unfolding of what’s deeply bothering Deirdre forms the following narrative.

Deirdre, or Dee as she prefers to be called, has had quite a life. Having to recall it 30 years on, when hearing the disturbing news that human remains of a climber have been found in a South Island glacier, brings a mixture of tension, excitement, and guilt. All that time ago, on a mountain expedition in the company of fellow climbers – all men but one – she’d enjoyed sexual encounters with a few while the others were absent. Away climbing.

And one of them has had an accident. But which one? And what was Dee’s connection with him? And with what consequences? The narrative moves back and forth in an increasingly gripping ascension involving all characters – Dee’s ailing mother and daughter included.

Descriptions of climbers’ actions in the face of obstacles and hazards are graphic. Readers may easily imagine Millen has faced them personally. Slippery snow-spattered rock and overhanging fractured ice must be navigated, bad weather endured, and hunger and thirst unabated until safety is reached in the form of a hut or shelter, or at least a handful of scroggin. Relief is palpable.    

References to the 60s will arouse wry grins in readers who recall landline telephones, messy student flats, and hard-to-get prescriptions for the pill.

Put your boots on, rope up, and go searching for the lost climber’s legacy.

A blood-stained wooden mallet, a body found in the bedroom of Sibson Hall, a large country house with a locked door and window… it all reads like a game of Cluedo. Dutifully on the case is Pat Hound the Detective Inspector, who is prone to eating doughnuts for breakfast, is in the throes of menopause, and feels as if a “universe-sized bottle of cola and God had just shaken her and dropped in a celestial mento”.

Remodelling Murder by Nic Scanlan-Dyas is an intriguing crime novel that unfolds painstakingly, revealing everything that doesn’t meet the eye. A carefully curated mystery surrounds the implausible death of the mallet-wielding victim, where all five employees of the renovation company Yukiko Curiosity Design, tasked with remodelling Sibson Hall, espouse the death as ‘suicide’.

Pat’s internal dialogue gives the murder-mystery much of its dry humour and is a welcome balance against the unfolding character-laden narrative. There’s much here to enjoy, with layers of suspense and tension building as we learn about Sibson Hall’s Japanese owners and their ties to the Yakuza. It feels culturally atmospheric, an unfolding of who did what and why, played out with subtle nuances and underlying whispers of ghosts and superstition. It makes for a refreshing departure from your usual murder-mystery fare.

In Remodelling Murder, Scanlan-Dyas keenly offers each character’s narrative: those in opposition with each other, those whose voices are littered with clues, and those with unspoken collusions that largely tease the final surprising reveal – which is not so surprising when you go back and re-read sections to see what you missed.

What’s interesting too, is the journey of Pat as she navigates the minefield of menopause while remaining committed to the clues around her and keeping an ear to the ground for red flags.

Remodelling Murder is a twisted mystery where secrets disintegrate and reveal themselves as fast as Sibson Hall sheds its plaster and paint.