The theme of 2020 seems to be little and local, and with that in mind, we’ve collated 10 great reads from New Zealand authors. You may have already read some of these, but there may be a treasure or two you haven’t explored just yet. You’ll also find all links send you to local bookstore Unity Books, which has a branch in Auckland and Wellington. Be sure to let us know your thoughts. We’d love to feature a review from members of the JANZ community! Get in touch
Pounamu, Pounamu by Witi Ihimaera
Pounamu, Pounamu is classic Ihimaera. First published in 1972, it was immediately endorsed by Māori and Pakeha alike for its original stories that showed how important Māori identity is for all New Zealanders.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Lloyd Jones' novel is set mainly in a small village on Bougainville, a country torn apart by civil war. Matilda attends the school set up by Mr Watts, the only white man on the island. By his own admission he's not much of a teacher and proceeds to educate the children by reading them Great Expectations. Matilda falls in love with the novel, strongly identifying with Pip. The promise of the next chapter is what keeps her going.
The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi
Frankie Parsons is twelve going on old man: an apparently sensible, talented Year 8 with a drumbeat of worrying questions steadily gaining volume in his head: Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Does the cat, and therefore the rest of the family, have worms? Will bird flu strike and ruin life as we know it? Is the kidney-shaped spot on his chest actually a galloping cancer?
Mophead : How your difference makes a difference by Selina Tusitala Marsh
An inspirational graphic memoir of growing up Pasifika in New Zealand, written and illustrated by our fast-talking PI Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh. At school, Selina is teased for her big, frizzy hair. Kids call her 'mophead'. She ties her hair up this way and that way and tries to fit in. Until one day - Sam Hunt plays a role - Selina gives up the game. She decides to let her hair out, to embrace her difference, to be WILD!
Mutuwhenua by Patricia Grace
This is the story of Ripeka, who leaves her extended family and its traditional lifestyle to marry Graeme, a Pakeha schoolteacher. In the strange world of the city, Ripeka discovers that she cannot make the break with her whanau and that the old ways are too strong. Patricia Grace s first novel is a powerful, moving story of contrasts - between light and darkness, old and new, young and old, and Māori and Pakeha.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Māori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Her cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Māori factory worker with a nasty temper.
The Vintner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox
Burgundy, 1808. One night Sobran Jodeau, a young vintner, meets an angel in his vineyard: a physically gorgeous creature with huge wings that smell of snow, a sense of humour and an inquiring mind. They meet again every year on the midsummer anniversary of the date. Village life goes on, meanwhile, with its affairs and mysteries, marriages and murders, and the vintages keep improving - though the horror of the Napoleonic wars and into the middle of the century, as science marches on, viticulture changes, and gliders fly like angels. Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
The Wish Child by Catherine Chidgey
It’s 1939. Two children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power. Sieglinde lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin, her father a censor who cuts prohibited words such as love and mercy out of books. Erich is an only child living a rural life near Leipzig, tending beehives, aware that he is shadowed by strange, unanswered questions. Drawn together as Germany’s hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, the children find temporary refuge in an abandoned theatre amidst the rubble of Berlin. Outside, white bedsheets hang from windows; all over the city people are talking of surrender. The days Sieglinde and Erich spend together will shape the rest of their lives.
Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young
Can You Tolerate This? is a collection of twenty-one personal essays by Ashleigh Young. In this spirited and singular book, Young roams freely from preoccupation to preoccupation – Hamilton’s 90s music scene, family histories, a boy with a rare skeletal disease, a stone-collecting French postman, a desire for impossible physical transformation – trying to find some measure of clarity amid uncertainty. How to bear each moment of experience: the inconsequential as much as the shattering? Her search takes us through poignant, funny and raw territories.