BRENDAN RITCHIE Eta Draconis. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Winner of the 2022 Dorothy Hewett Award, Brendan Ritchie’s third novel is set in a dystopian Western Australia, the landscape pummelled by meteor showers. Elora closed her eyes and waited for the flashes of light to dissolve. It took longer these days. Hours...
TOM BARAGWANATH Paper Cage. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
A finalist in the Ngaio Awards for Best First Crime Novel, Paper Cage is the story of a divided community and a string of missing children. There’s not much that happens in Masterton that Lo Henry doesn’t know about. One of two Pākehā sisters who married...
SEBASTIAN FAULKS The Seventh Son. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Sebastian Faulks’ latest novel explores the consequences of amoral genetic research in a not-too-distant future. Alaric teaches disinterested children history in an English comprehensive school. … he enjoyed giving them an idea that the world had not always been as it...
FIONA SUSSMAN The Doctor’s Wife. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Fiona Sussman’s fifth novel pieces together a suspicious death, a fatal illness and erratic behaviour within a group of lifelong friends. Carmen Andino, Tibbie Lamb and Tibbie’s husband Austin have been friends since school. Austin and Tibbie got together, and...
TJ KLUNE Wolfsong and Ravensong: Green Creek Books 1 and 2. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley
TJ Klune’s werewolves challenge gender roles and showcase love and understanding among the bloodletting. ‘… even one such as you cannot live on rage alone.’ In Wolfsong, the first of TJ Klune’s Green Creek series, Oxnard’s father walks out one day,...
CHARITY NORMAN Remember Me. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
A dementia diagnosis reveals clues to a decades-old mystery in this new novel from the author of The Secrets of Strangers – Charity Norman’s third to be shortlisted for NZ’s Ngaio Marsh Awards. In June 1994, 21-year old Emily Kirkland had been working at a petrol...
BRIOHNY DOYLE Why We Are Here. Reviewed by Sally Nimon
Briohny Doyle’s third novel explores the impact of multiple losses in a single life, exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic. ‘What should survive and how? And how do you know when survival has transpired?’ This is the central question posed in Why We Are Here, the...
ANNA KATE BLAIR The Modern. Reviewed by Jessica Stewart
Set in New York, Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel explores the art of curation, sexuality, modernism, and knowing one’s own mind. This is a novel to savour, its language crystalline, its acute observations tumbling one after the other. In the opening paragraph,...
DOMINIC HOEY Poor People with Money. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm
Fast paced, heart-wrenching, darkly comic, Dominic Hoey’s new crime novel is dark and unrelenting. Do you remember when I was a hero, Eddy? Back when everyone thought I saved you, before my face looked like a broken dinner plate. Mt Albert girl, 15, rescues brother...
CHRIS WOMERSLEY Ordinary Gods and Monsters. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Chris Womersley’s latest novel explores the intersection of the supernatural and the suburban in this coming of age story. Australian author Chris Womersley has an eclectic back catalogue; even his two connected novels – Cairo and The Diplomat – are very...
LEAH KAMINSKY Doll’s Eye. Reviewed by Kim Kelly
Part literary romance, part cultural odyssey, Doll’s Eye is a lively challenge to the tropes of contemporary Australian Holocaust fiction. Author, physician, Jew, lover of science, nature and language: these bright strands of Leah Kaminsky’s real-life identity...
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