Books

Heart-warming, jaw-dropping, and utterly breathtaking, Craig Silvey’s Honeybee is an emotional rollercoaster.

This coming-of-age, coming-of-gender story follows Sam on their journey to safety, security, and self-acceptance. The novel, without hesitation, commences with Sam clinging to the edge of an overpass preparing to end their life. When they’re saved by Vic, an elderly man in the same position on the railing, the two form an immediate connection. Throughout the novel, and with the help of drag queens, new friends, and chosen family, we learn alongside them what led Sam and Vic to the bridge that night.

From the subtle, yet chilling Harry Potter references (Sam’s aunt only spoke to them to be mean about their mum or to tell them they needed a haircut), to the extravagant, yet unrealistic drag show experience, Silvey creates a world in which readers are immediately encapsulated. Silvey’s rhetoric powerfully and uncomfortably conveys Sam’s depressive numbness while creating an incredibly cathartic reading experience. As the story moves between past and present, Sam suffers emotional loss, physical pain, and inexplicable joy, until finally the numbness subsides and they’re ready to face the things that hurt them.

I cannot help but love this book and its profound delicacy, but neither can I help feeling the doubt that follows. Honeybee tells a deeply intimate story about gender identity, which leads me to question the morality of this story being told by a cisgender author. In a society where the stories of transgender and gender-diverse individuals are still so scarce, I’m inclined to feel that those stories should be told by those who experience them first-hand. Furthermore, I can’t help but question Silvey’s motives in his decision not to explicitly establish new pronouns or use the term ‘transgender’ once. While Silvey writes beautifully and primarily handles the tender themes with care, I’m overwhelmed with the discomfort of questioning the righteousness of his perspective.

Overall, Honeybee is a compelling novel which consumes the reader from the very first page, and conveys powerful messages of self-discovery and self-acceptance.

Disclaimer: I’ve known Kevin Clark for about 40 years. I’ve served him in my record stores, been to his concerts, reviewed his albums, and I thought I knew pretty much everything about him. But, this book about his travels to Baghdad floored me.

So, in the words of the rock band Steppenwolf, “Get your motor runnin’ / Head out on the highway”, except imagine it’s 1964 and Clark is on a 1958 British motorbike with a sidecar storage box and fellow traveller Jurgen Erni. The aim, to leave South Africa where Clark was born and take an informal OE soaking up the architectural sites, as both men had just obtained their architectural degrees.

There is a sense of naive chutzpah that I loved. The thought of “Oh, let’s get up and go” will appeal to many. This is a boy’s own adventure venture and I won’t tell you what happened to the bike.

Once one gets over the tedious border crossings with the fractious passport checks, it’s gratifying that Clark recognises the generosity of the people along the way, many of whom offer free meals, accommodation, and help with the numerous problems with the bike. Clark juxtaposes the memories of 1964 with what has gone on over the years, countries that are even more out of bounds today with war, religion (more than once Clark asks the question of religion and the tyrants who enforce the rules), animosity, distrust, and the wanton destruction of architectural sites. To the intrepid traveller’s dismay, many of the sites are now just rubble. Yet even abandoned cities have their charms.

Among a wealth of data are some beautiful descriptions of places such as a gate in a Byzantine wall in Istanbul, the magnificent Hagia Sophia, the Al-Hamidiyah Souq market in Damascus, and Beehive houses in Northern Syria, a simple structure making a comeback to house displaced persons. In between, it’s camel rides, a belly dancing joint, kebabs, and sleeping in ditches.

The book is the perfect size to thumb through with great visuals, maps, and running commentary for all armchair travellers. An early Christmas present, perhaps?

Think Like a Monk is so much more than the title suggests. Author Jay Shetty’s words feel authentic and spoken by someone who is walking the talk. He’s lived the regular nine-to-five lifestyle and found it wanting. Think Like a Monk made me sit up and pause, reflect and reimagine life; so much so, I had to read this book chapter by chapter with ample breaks in between, days even, to wholeheartedly digest and ruminate on all the profound things he was saying.

Shetty regales us with tales of becoming a monk, a process where he became gracefully and mindfully aware of anything and everything in his life and the lives of others. I never once felt like this was a clichéd, fanciful, or indulgent plunge into self-help book territory.

He talks of existing in career quadrants where ideally passion and skill collide; the other quadrants are a mixture of when the two don’t collide. I am suddenly acutely aware I have one foot firmly planted in one career quadrant while holding on for dear life to another. Shetty makes you feel as if anyone can live a life less ordinary, simply by being you and tapping into infinite wisdom in a purposeful and achievable way.

“Monks understand that routine frees your mind but the biggest threat to freedom is monotony,” says Shetty. He encourages you to change your lens, to find new things in old routines.

“Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit” – live your life with intent and service.
Shetty concludes his final chapter with a hope that his book will have inspired and perhaps encouraged a fresh start. He has certainly done that.

Think Like a Monk challenged all I thought I knew about the life and purpose of a monk. I had only ever seen what I wanted to see – the robes, the shaven heads, the seemingly purposeless chants, and the celibate solitary lifestyle. Changing your lens to think more like a monk is just the start.

This Farming Life speaks the warm truth about family, connection, and heritage on a New Zealand farm. Tim Saunders begins by describing his early years where he resisted farm life, preferring instead to pursue adventures throughout NZ and abroad. His explorations fail to keep him away as he returns home, finally accepting his commitment to the land.

Whilst the work described on the farm is tough and relentless, Saunders’ words feel effortless. The stories of Saunders’ mother and father are beautiful. I felt like I could see Saunders smiling as he relives his fondest memories. More importantly (as someone obsessed with comedy), the book is bound together by humour. As I progressed through the chapters, I realised that Saunders’ manner of describing events is likely a product of his charming and quirky father. A slight shift in font and you are suddenly transported to a childhood memory; one being a hilarious account of Saunders at his first sheep auction. I cracked up loudly – lucky I was reading at home!

Interestingly, the book addresses well-known farming issues, and the chapters are lightly laced with politics. Many of these situations leave you frustrated and are necessary for an authentic understanding of agriculture. Somehow, Saunders avoids a deep dive into his feelings, which I believe could have further enhanced the emotive dimensions of the book. There are deliberate mentions of climate change throughout that are accompanied with his desire, along with his vegetarian wife’s desire, to do what is best for the planet. Despite these ‘soft’ offerings, he does not skirt the gory realities of farm life.

The chapters are divided conveniently into seasons. As someone who picked up the book knowing zero about farming, it made the read even more educational. You do not need to be a farming nut to enjoy this book. This Farming Life is an honest, loving, and easy read that will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy by the end!

This is the third book in a trilogy by Waikanae-based publishing duo Darin Dance and Virginia Innes-Jones, writing here under pseudonyms. It follows Clara James, an impulsive go-getter piecing together how past traumatic events have derailed her life and escaping corporate life in Wellington – a life she’s just exploded by having an affair with a married judge.

I was looking forward to some light relief at this point in the year but my read got off to a bad start with a missing comma in the dedication – the serious kind that messes with meaning. Unfortunately, glaring typos and grammar glitches are frequent, and this was a major barrier for me. The dialogue is at times stilted as it tells the reader key information. I only have a sketchy mental picture of Clara and none of her friends (strange in the romance genre?), but I know she carries a “hobo bag” because the authors told me multiple times. Clara’s mother and boss are simplistic villains, paper cut outs for Clara to sling off at. There were some funny moments but probably not in the way the authors hoped, as with the poems lifted straight out of Clara’s journal or when she hears the news of the possibly fatal (for her friends) earthquake, then a few pages later is shooting the breeze over bubbles with a dishy flight attendant. At one point it looks as if Clara is going to bust open a shady property deal and/or solve a murder, but these subplots trail off into oblivion.

On the positive side, the Wellington setting, complete with Astoria Café, Ministry offices, and train commutes to the coast is refreshing, and Clara’s challenges are relatable and passionately portrayed. On balance, the raw, ‘heart-on-sleeve’ style is one of the strengths. Like its main character, this book has pace and chutzpah, and the authors have storytelling talent, zipping us from Wellington to Kathmandu and Sweden, but the standards of crafting I’d hope to find in any genre, including romance, are not there.

Every artist needs their muse, that certain something that helps them ignite their passions. For Ghazaleh Golbakhsh, hers came from the hardships she faced as an Iranian-born immigrant trying to grow up as a New Zealander.

Her latest work, The Girl From Revolution Road, is a series of essays about her journey from Iran to New Zealand in 1987 and the personal odyssey she had to take to find her place in a country that didn’t always seem to know what to make of her.

Like a lot of immigrant children, she found herself torn between two very different worlds. She desperately wanted to fit into her adoptive homeland, yet I felt as if she didn’t know how to go about it.

Eventually, she realised that she had to find a way to integrate both her Iranian and Kiwi self into a duel identity rather than assimilate and risk losing them both.

Through her unique perspective, we see a darker side of New Zealand, proof that despite the incredible strides we’ve made as a nation in our race relations, we’re still not perfect, and we have a long way to go before we are.

She also takes aim at Hollywood and deconstructs some of the damaging stereotypes surrounding Middle Eastern cultures and its people.

In doing so, she breaks down perhaps the worst one of all, which is the classic ‘us against them’ argument where you’re told to either completely assimilate or you’re out.

Her writing style’s personable, honest, and there were times that I felt that I was reading through someone’s private journal rather than a book or a novel. I found it utterly engrossing and made the time to finish it in one sitting.

Despite only being 240 pages long, it packs a serious punch, and it’s worth looking into the next time you want to scratch that book itch.

There are many writers groups located in rural towns and regions throughout New Zealand, and they are often the catalyst for aspiring writers to develop their work. Support and encouragement generally flows freely and people gain the confidence to take their work to the next level. A pitfall can be that work is rushed into the world that might benefit from further crafting.

The poets here met via the Horowhenua Writers Group and have been published in that group’s anthologies. Marion Rego is an established children’s writer and has performed at poetry readings where I imagine her wry, relateable observations about life as an older person, from banalities at the supermarket to gripes about her insurance company, would resonate with audiences. Her reflections sometimes go deeper, as when she seeringly captures the emotional pain of ageing in I Love You: “Sometimes I feel / that nobody needs me now / Nobody loves me best or puts me first...” But her focus stays mainly on the surface of everyday events.

In contrast, Alex Jeune leaps readily from the mundane to the metaphysical, as in Petone, where a red pōhutukawa becomes a springboard for thoughts on eternity. Rhyme and other stylised language is harnessed as he wrestles with the uncertainty, mutability, and setbacks of life. 70 The Terrace opens with “Blue sky, mining / On an hourly wage”, capturing the quiet hell shared by office workers the world over. Credulity and Untitled speak of thwarted desire in a concise and heartfelt way.

Much of Margaret Jeune’s work is about orientating herself within the stream of previous generations and the sensory bombardment of social media and the news cycle. Writing is a way to do this and she offers several poems about language and this process (My Poem, Editing Lives, Street Speak). A number of poems capture the far from picture-perfect experience of New Zealand summers and Christmas Time 2019 now reads like a document from a distant past: “Cruise ships disgorge passengers onto Wellington streets”. HeadworX is to be commended for championing emerging NZ writers since 1998.

Take one selfish little girl aka Mallory, one meek and mild accomplice aka Arthur, and a cunning plot to kidnap the ever-elusive Tooth Fairy for ransom and you have a recipe for a tooth-defying tale.

The Revenge of the Tooth Fairy begins with a half-hatched plan to trap the Tooth Fairy in a makeshift budgie cage and turns into a delightful fantasy adventure where the best-laid plans become more and more complicated.

It’s hard to find Mallory endearing as she goes about trying to extort money from the Tooth Fairy in the most extreme and horrid ways. But a little bit of magic goes a long way in making her more dastardly villain than unlikable wretch.

The dry musings of a sly ‘shape-shifting’ mouse lead Mallory and Arthur to the realm of fantasy land Oralia; a place where teeth reign in all their glory, good and bad. Here Mallory becomes the incarcerated as she gets a taste of her own medicine and the indignities she has thrust upon the Tooth Fairy.

Author James Norcliffe’s knack for making teeth scary, humanlike, and hilarious is ripe for engaging young children and Emily Walker’s illustrations bring them to life ever so well. My seven-year-old got more than he bargained for here and despite protests of swapping this book for the umpteenth Marvel comic, he was soon inextricably engrossed in a fantasy world. One where canines, molars, and incisors govern, hex checkers keep order and balance the books, and the threat of the ‘penidentiary’, where Major Rat holds court, is never far away.

Reading The Revenge of the Tooth Fairy, I couldn’t help but hope that self-centred and scheming Mallory would turn a corner and display some remorse, but alas, one so calculated was never going to change her ways. Similarly I hoped that young Arthur would step up and out from under Mallory’s shadow and find his voice along the way. Does he come into his own? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

“You don’t love me, do you?

My mother’s refusal to answer burned, guttering like a small house-fire that spread inside me. And spread it did. For much of my adult life this question, and all that it contained, would become a contaminant that I worked around as best I could.”

Sydney-based writer and filmmaker Miro Bilbrough’s In the Time of the Manaroans is a memoir about her time as a teenager living in a commune in Manaroa in the 1970s.

Penning a memoir is an act of self-creation. Usually, autobiographical works of this nature fixate on a particular event or set of events in the author’s life, grounding the narrative in the role and feelings of the storyteller-protagonist figure. In Bilbrough’s In the Time of the Manaroans, though, the author manages to construct herself through careful portraiture of surrounding characters.

Bilbrough’s writing is both aesthetically and narratologically sharp; her story is pieced together tangentially, subtly familiarising readers with its inhabitants in a way that creates the distinct impression that our relationships with these characters somehow precede this book.

“In this stultification my facility with words is an aggravation. Margaret accuses me of being pretentious, of deliberately going after the biggest words around. It is true–I do […] Years later, my mother will write a poem in which she credits my word facility with the fact that she got stuck in a lavatory with Roget’s Thesaurus when she was pregnant. This family tale pleases us both. Lavatory is a word gleaned from my grandmother. Class affectation or just a word with more aural charisma than toilet? Both, I think.”

In the Time of the Manaroans stands not merely as a chronicle, revisiting the experience of growing up in a small hippie community living an alternative life at the edge of the Marlborough Sounds; it is an article of self-determination, evidence of a love-starved teenager carefully observing, listening, and ultimately asserting herself against the characters through which she is created.

Egg & Spoon is a beautifully illustrated cookbook that has a similar effect on children as a colourful storybook read to them at night. Both involve an investment of quality time. And quality time my seven-year-old helper and I had indulging in its splendid recipes.

Joyous illustrations from Giselle Clarkson really bring this book to life. What child could resist a delightful-looking alligator eating avocado and corn tacos, or a delectable layered cake with a random banana sprouting from the top? Mine certainly couldn’t.

Alexandra Tylee offers handy tips throughout that will make sense to young minds; simple and practical tips like when to use an electric beater. The irresistible idea of the breakfast iceblock was to be our first recipe to try, but indeed turned out to be too good to be true when our cupboards would not yield the necessary ingredients. Instead we threw tradition to the wind and made French toast for dessert.

Egg & Spoon unleashed my seven-year-old’s inner food critic. I now know Marmite would not be an acceptable accompaniment to noodles as one recipe suggests. Not surprisingly though, Nutella certainly would, and Tylee agrees.

From beginning to end there are useful lessons to be learned and I found myself asking my son the same question that my mother always asked me after we had made a discernible mess in the kitchen. What do good cooks do? Good cooks clean up after themselves!

Egg & Spoon is an uncomplicated introduction to cooking, simple yet sophisticated enough to appeal to young and old. I’m heartened to see Tylee’s comments, like the suggestion of using free range eggs and the truthful reasons why, too.

Egg & Spoon is not only a gloriously illustrated book that speaks to the hearts and tummies of young children and those first learning to cook. It is in itself a recipe for spending time together, creating shared memories, teaching the art of cooking, and cultivating a love of food that will hopefully last a lifetime.

From the colonisation of our country to the Black Lives Matter movement, Tusiata Avia’s new title, The Savage Coloniser Book, seems to take a chainsaw to some of those issues and sheds light on the brutal reality of what humanity is sometimes capable of.

Avia’s poetry is razor-sharp; it cuts deep, getting straight to the heart of whatever topic she’s chosen to tackle. Nothing’s off-limits or taboo; everything from Jacinda Ardern to the White Power movement in New Zealand gets put under her proverbial microscope and dissected.

At first, her writing struck me as a little dark, but as I kept reading, it dawned on me that it was less poetic prose and more of a running commentary on how she sees the world from her own unique perspective.

Avia’s a talented writer, and those talents are on full display here. Her poetry has several layers to it, and there were times that I found myself having to read and re-read some of the book’s passages so that I could fully comprehend everything she was trying to convey.

Rather than being based solely on emotion or any inner turmoil that a lot of poetry comes from, The Savage Coloniser takes its cues from genuine societal issues. 

Even though Avia’s work clearly comes from the heart, it also deals with real-world problems that many people can relate to. I think it’s something that will appeal to readers who aren’t normally attracted to this type of writing. As one of those people, that’s something that I can attest to, and while I admit that poetry’s not my usual go-to genre, I still loved how she’s able to write about such heavy topics while entertaining at the same time.

For anyone who’s a fan of poetry or of Tusiata Avia, this will be another gem to add to their collection, and even if you’re not, I’d still recommend giving it a whirl.

Both gruesome and thrilling, Karin Slaughter’s latest crime novel The Silent Wife takes place over two sets of investigations, eight years apart.

Setting the scene in small-town Georgia, USA, a college student is attacked. A seemingly solitary incident at first, local police soon find themselves outmanoeuvred as they struggle to get ahead of a fast-moving predator unlike anything seen before in their county. Readers watch events unfold both in real time, and through the lens of Georgia Bureau detectives, urged to reopen the case eight years later as fresh evidence comes to light.

My praise for this novel comes with a caution; this may be the first book I have read that I consider worthy of a content warning. Depictions of the violent sexual crimes committed by the killer were graphic, and at times felt gratuitous. Upon finishing the story I read the author’s note, wherein Slaughter acknowledges and addresses her deliberate approach. In her own words, Slaughter says “I decided to write frankly about violence against women. I felt it was important to openly describe what that violence actually looks like, and to explore the long-lasting effects of trauma in as realistic a way as possible.”

I realised the writing was confronting because I was used to reading and hearing about crimes through a soft veil of euphemisms and ‘decency’. With this new perspective, I came to appreciate Slaughter’s decidedly unadorned storytelling.

Slaughter writes succinctly, crafting complex, flawed, and believably human lead characters in a clear and unromantic way. There is just enough personal detail and backstory to the characters to complement the key storyline without lurid expositions. My impression is that this book would appeal to a wide audience. Slaughter has a keen sense of pacing and balance of suspense versus payoff.

The Silent Wife stands alone successfully; I did not suspect during reading that I was missing any details or context, despite this novel being the latest in a series involving repeat characters. While this is my first foray into Karin Slaughter’s writing, I can say with certainty that I am a new fan, and I look forward to discovering more of her work.