Australian writer Chloe Hooper will join the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week in March, following a year of plaudits and prizes. Her latest book, The Tall Man, is a non-fiction work as haunting as her debut novel, A Child’s Book of True Crime. James Robertson speaks with her about telling dark tales in two genres.

Chloe Hooper is a writer whose talent seems unbound by genre. The 36-year-old Australian has written two books, a novel and a work of non-fiction, and both have met with international critical acclaim. So which form does she prefer? ‘I like books where people are trapped in spooky houses and trying to escape,’ she laughs over the phone from Melbourne. ‘I think, psychologically speaking, we’re all trying to do that.’ You might guess as much from her work, which, in both genres, provides compelling insight into the darker side of human psychology.

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Victoria University’s remarkable New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has recently made a copy of a Novels and Novelists a 1930 collection of Katherine Mansfield’s collected reviews available on-line.

Here’s a taste of what’s on offer:

The Rescue — By Joseph Conrad

Reviewed by KATHERINE MANSFIELD

The writer who has achieved more than a common popularity, who has been recognized as one of the very few whose place is not in the crowded and jostled front rank but a delightful airy perch among the mountains, is to be envied—and not to be envied. The distinguished position has its special drawbacks. Whether it is the effect upon him of the rarefied air, or of the dignified solitude, or of the cloud interposing and obscuring the smaller eminences, the valleys and the plains from his, at one time, eager gaze, we do not know, but the books which come down to us from the mountains are no longer the books they were. They are variations upon the theme that made him famous; they are ‘safe’ books, guaranteed to leave unchallenged the masterpiece that put him there. Who would tempt Providence twice? And so from timidity or pride, from poverty of imagination, or a high sense of his ‘unique’ duty, he continues to repeat himself, and it is only his memory which is in our flowing cups richly remembered.

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by Greg Palast
In the sixth grade, the Boys’ Vice-Principal threatened to suspend me from school unless I stopped carrying around The Catcher in the Rye I think because it had the word “fuck” in it. Since the Boys’ Vice-Principal hadn’t read the book – and I don’t think he’d ever read any book – he couldn’t tell me why.

But Mrs. Gordon was cool. She let me keep the book at my desk and read it at recess as long as I kept a brown wrapper over the cover.

I think J.D. Salinger would have liked Mrs. Gordon. She wanted to save me from the world’s vice-principals, the guys who wanted to train you in obedience to idiots and introduce you the adult world of fear and punishment. Mrs. Gordon wanted to protect the need of a child to run free.

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Steve Braunias encounters the madding crowd of a literary gig

I suppose it might’ve been hard on family and friends, but the thought occurred at the Buddle Findlay gala night launch of New Zealand Book Month in October that the nation’s cultural life would benefit greatly if a fire broke out in the handsome, high-ceilinged room of Auckland’s Hopetoun Alpha building, and incinerated everyone. The event was excruciating and strictly humourless, a damp little bonfire of the vanities – pretty much what I expected, except worse. Where’s an arsonist when you need one?

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The great historian Howard Zinn has died.

The author of A People’s History of the United States inspired historians around the world to look at history through the eyes of the down-trodden and not to be afraid to take a stand. In his book You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train he wrote: “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”

Over the next days, weeks and months screeds of obituaries and tributes will be written for Zinn – so here’s a taste of things to come.

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Laura Kroetsch picks out the best books to read in preparation for the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week in March

One of the odd preoccupations of my life has been an overwhelming desire to have those around me read what I’m reading. So, it is no surprise that I’ve found my way to managing New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week, a splendid exercise in allowing one group of readers to select a bunch of books and their writers for another group of readers. For 2010 I think we’ve done a bang-up job, and as I read and re-read my way through the list, I smile, and then worry that our readers will miss something. So by way of preventing any near misses, here are some of my thoughts on what you might like to read to get ready.

Writers and Readers, like any good bookshelf, is a place to find familiar voices as well as some that are new and unexpected. A perhaps familiar voice is that of American novelist Susanna Moore. For those who don’t know her, I suggest you start with her first novel, the hauntingly beautiful My Old Sweetheart, a story about a little girl who loves her mother – a woman slowly succumbing to madness among the night jasmine on the island of Hawaii. Moore’s is a voice so filled with wisdom you ache for her characters and lament the landscape of her forgotten world. Once smitten, go on to Sleeping Beauties.

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Release

Just before New Year’s, the Kapiti Coast lost one of the most respected and loved members of the Paekakariki community: Jacquie Baxter, also known as recognised poet and short story writer JC Sturm.

This coming Friday 22 January at 2pm all are invited to a community memorial service and celebration of Jacquie Baxter’s life and writing at the Memorial Hall on The Parade, Paekakariki.

The service will include performances and readings from celebrated local poets and musicians including Glen Colquhoun, Hinemoana Baker, Apirana Taylor and Michael O’Leary. Attendees are asked to bring a flower towards the farewell, and a plate of food towards afternoon tea.

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The Scoop Review of Books is taking a break until mid January. Happy summer reading and please feel free to send in reviews of any good books you read over the summer break.

Reviews can be sent to: jeremy@scoop.co.nz

Happy New Year.

Amy Brown talks with Damien Wilkins about his latest novel, Somebody Loves Us All, and his year writing it in Menton, France.

Paddy Thompson, a successful speech therapist with a newspaper column, ‘Speech Marks’, is troubled by two silences. One is the absence of a phone call; Tony Gorzo, whose son Paddy cured several years earlier, usually leaves a message in response to ‘Speech Marks’. The other is Sam Covenay, a 14-year-old who refuses to speak and resists Paddy’s methods. On top of these minor discouragements, Paddy’s wife, manager of a language school, is constantly working in preparation for an inspection, so provides little consolation. Paddy’s new recreation, cycling, is not the stress-reliever he’d imagined it to be either, as each competitive ride with his colleague Lant becomes a metaphor for their sometimes exhausting friendship. Most distressing, though, is Paddy’s mother, Teresa, who wakes up one morning with a French accent. Teresa’s (now Thérèse’s) illness, Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), compels Paddy to communicate with his family more honestly and precisely than ever before.

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By Jeremy Rose
What’s an atheist to make of Christmas? I’ve been thinking that it could be re-named International Day Against the Death Penalty. After all if there was no crucifiction there would’ve been no Crusades, no Inquisition and no annual orgy of consumerism. As good an argument against making martyrs of political activists as I’ve ever heard. (Ironically, the Chinese Government chose Christmas Day 2009 to lock up one of the country’s leading human rights activists in the hope the world’s media wouldn’t notice.)

On the other hand there would be no Caganers (the wonderful Catalan Christmas Crappers pictured above) or Caga Tios (the equally weird and wonderful Catalan shit logs.)

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