Reviews
Sister to Sister by Olivia Hayfield
We first met Harry Rose, head of the Rose Corporation, in Wife after Wife, a great re-telling of the ‘romantic’ career of Henry VIII.
Answering to the Caul by Ted Dawe
Andrei Reti was born with his amniotic membrane covering his head, a caul. He grows up having been told this means he will always be protected from drowning.
Addressed to Greta by Fiona Sussman
Doom Creek by Alan Carter
Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey
“My Country, Right or Wrong” – the slogan that sits on the lintel above the gate to Buchenwald concentration camp in Remote Sympathy. But is it a call to blind patriotism? - the harbour for those ‘just following orders.’ Is it a question asked by the worried, those citizens making small ripples in the tide of acceptance and blind-eye-turning? Is it a gambler’s toss, wondering which way the dice of history will fall? Each is a possibility in this extraordinary novel of the potential for evil lurking within us. Lurking within our tendency towards being accepted, being comfortable, being safe, and towards our having the slightest suspicion that those experiencing deprivation must somehow deserve it. As the sign on the Buchenwald gate reads: “To Each His Due.”
Sprigs by Brannavan Gnanalingam
Sprigs is a thoroughly effective, and thoroughly devastating, description of privileged white males in a society created by and for them.
A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini SIngh
The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon
It is the late 1970s New Zealand, a car goes off the road into the dense forest, slipping “between the trunks like a blade”, and plummeting into the river below.
Fake Baby by Amy McDaid
When you lived in the city it was strange to think that underneath you, under the immense stretch of hard tar-seal and grey concrete, there lay dirt and rocks, vast networks of roots, indestructible creatures and ancient worms, and far below them plates that collided over oceans of magma.” Three damaged people stagger around an Auckland that is dark, wet, polluted, each haunted by a past tragedy and unable to find a way forward.
The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle
For the love of money is the root of all evil, and the proviso on Ridge Carmichael’s will leads to all kinds of evil.