Category Archives: Book Review

Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn – 2024

Posted on November 15, 2024 by alysonebaker

Pretty Ugly, an oxymoron or a qualified adjective? Fourteen short stories exploring the origins and boundaries of ‘a person’. Each story is surprising, some are entertaining, some disturbing, one devastating. They all ask whether the continuity of personality depends on … Continue reading →

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Prey by Vanda Symon – 2024

Posted on November 9, 2024 by alysonebaker

Detective Sam Shephard is back at work after six months maternity leave, now mum to baby Amelia. She is immediately given a cold case from 25 years ago: an “attack against a man of God on the steps of a … Continue reading →

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Kataraina by Becky Manawatu – 2024

Posted on November 6, 2024 by alysonebaker

Kataraina is breathtaking, swirling around a repeating incident, given form by the collective memories of members of the Te Au family. Stretching from the distant past, through colonisation, to their uneasy present: “How did the world become so devoid of … Continue reading →

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The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam – 2024

Posted on October 30, 2024 by alysonebaker

Kartik, a millennial hailing from Zimbabwe, migrated to Aotearoa as a child with his Gujarati father and Bengalurean  mother. His parents, wary of events in Uganda and later Fiji, steer Kartik towards a low-profile mid-level life by way of a … Continue reading →

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A Better Place by Stephen Daisley – 2023

Posted on September 4, 2024 by alysonebaker

A Better Place, is a relentless, ghastly depiction of warfare: “Have you ever seen what a grenade can do to someone? What they reveal?” Young boys constantly witnessing the gruesome deaths of their colleagues, affecting an immunity to the nightmare … Continue reading →

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Home Truths by Charity Norman – 2024

Posted on August 24, 2024 by alysonebaker

“… attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?” Home Truths takes the reader back in time to follow the falling dominoes that have led to Livia Denby standing in a dock waiting to hear her fate. … Continue reading →

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The Mires by Tina Makereti – 2024

Posted on July 8, 2024 by alysonebaker

How small people are and how “they only mean something in relation to each other” – when they connect like streams of a river it is a glorious flow, when they separate and become more and more isolated from each … Continue reading →

Posted in #yeahnoir, Book Review | 4 Comments

Performance by David Coventry – 2024

Posted on June 22, 2024 by alysonebaker

David Coventry is from a family of mountain climbers, like Edmund Hillary: “someone whose body seemed permanently full of oxygen.” Coventry used to be fast, “I had speed, just a natural event amongst my genes”- then he was struck with … Continue reading →

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Going Zero by Anthony McCarten – 2023

Posted on June 5, 2024 by alysonebaker

An utterly compelling read that drags the reader through the dangers of invasive information-gathering, the “erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man”, and the determination of a wronged woman. The ride starts with the beta testing of a state-of-the-art surveillance system, … Continue reading →

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End Times by Rebecca Priestley – 2023

Posted on May 30, 2024 by alysonebaker

Two fifty-something women going on a road trip to engage with their ancestry, their past, home-baked pies – and to visit the “coal face” of today’s biggest existential threat: global warming. Rebecca Preistley is “a writer and academic who writes … Continue reading →

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