Category Archives: Book Review

Moonlight sonata starts like a typical slice of New Zealand life novel, with a family meeting up for the Christmas/New Year break in a seaside home, with the usual tensions and jealousies. But this book turns into a much more … Continue reading →

Siân Rees is a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Auckland, supported by the head of her department, Archer Hall, and used to picking up the slack for her ambitious young colleague, Jerome Roy.  She lives alone, … Continue reading →

Taryn Cornick is a lover of libraries, a valuer of ‘just in case knowledge’, and an observer: “She was always studying the world, not rapt or curious, but patient and dutiful, as if the world was something she’d paid good … Continue reading →

A year in the life of a young man, Daniel Jamieson, as he recovers from a love affair, befriends an older man, and has various other romantic experiences. Daniel had a ‘love of my life’ relationship with Bridget, an Australian … Continue reading →

This is an extraordinary novel, a bildungsroman set for the most part in a boarding school reminiscent of Gormenghast, where an unnamed narrator makes his way in a community of violent, abandoned teenaged boys. The Fell is short for Feallan … Continue reading →

What a delightful book.  Jenny’s neighbour Andrew seeks her out to tell her he has found her husband in bed with his wife – the rest of the book deals with the fall out of this infidelity.  It is an … Continue reading →