Abby Irwin-Jones’ books confessional. (Image: Archi Banal)

BooksSeptember 18, 2024

‘I am a proud reader of some objectively terrible books’: Time Out’s Abby Irwin-Jones

⚖️

Abby Irwin-Jones’ books confessional. (Image: Archi Banal)

Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Abby Irwin-Jones, book buyer at Time Out in Mt Eden, Auckland.

Weirdest question you’ve ever been asked on the shop floor

I had a very well-dressed, charismatic young man come in right before closing one night asking if I would “hear his story” which turned into a soapboxing session — he roped a bunch of customers in to listen to him so it became a full-blown town hall on the shop floor. The story ended up being that the government is forcing people to donate blood so that they can implant trackers in them and then sell the blood offshore. – which was titled Beware The Lactose-Tolerant Left. To be honest, it had been a slow day so I let it go on way longer than I should have purely for entertainment. There’s more than one way an independent bookstore can enlighten you, sheeple!

Another banger: “I’m looking for a … gift for my friend … he’s really into erotica. Anything you’d recommend?” It was abundantly clear there was no friend involved, but I do love the idea of gifting my closest friends like, a Fabio book each for Christmas. Not the book they wanted, but the book they needed.

Funniest thing you’ve overheard on the shop floor

Because Time Out is open late, quite often on a night shift we’ll have a lot of first dates come through. And we’re a small shop, so it’s easy to get a good sense of whether or not there’s going to be a second date. Sometimes it works out (we’ve had a proposal in the shop before) but the most memorable are definitely the disasters. I’m not sure what manosphere podcast is telling boys they should explain the plot of Diary of an Oxygen Thief/IQ84/Crime and Punishment to a woman they’ve just met, but they should know that her and I are making significant eye contact while he’s not looking.

‘Help keep The Spinoff funny, smart, tall and handsome – become a member today.’

Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer

Best thing about being a bookseller

When it feels like so much more than retail.

Worst thing about being a bookseller

When it feels like retail.

Most requested books

I’ve been a bookseller for seven years, and the most consistently requested books across that time have been The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Which makes me happy! Two fantastic books, some of those “everyone-has-to-read-at-some-point-in-their-lives” titles, so I imagine we’ll still be getting asked for them years from now.

The last time I can remember that we had people literally hovering over the boxes waiting for us to open them was Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. I love watching a book release gather momentum, people will ask us to text them as soon as it’s in, or start lining up outside the shop before we open on pub day — the buzz is so much fun! It’s especially great when it’s a local book getting that celebrity treatment.

Lastly there’s “It Was On Kathryn Ryan I Missed The Title And The Author”. Has anyone read that? Is it any good? Should we do it for book club?

Most underrated books

Despite having just won a Pulitzer, and being one of the most devastating things I’ve read in a long time, not enough people are reading A Day In The Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall. A relatively short book telling the story of a single day in which a school bus overturns in the West Bank manages to extrapolate outwards into such an intricate history of violent Israeli occupation. If I could make everyone that comes into the bookstore leave with one book, this would be it.

Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, the remarkable new book from Lee Murray

I think Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud by Lee Murray deserves a bit more of a presence in the NZ literary hivemind. What a darkly strange and interesting book. Genre-blending, reality-bending, filled with staying power and the muddling richness of history and folklore and violence and poetry. A preternatural reading experience. Ugh — I want it on all the longlists, all the festival programmes!

Favourite bookshop that isn’t your own bookshop

I started out in bookselling at The Women’s Bookshop as a teenager, and practically lived there. I wouldn’t be half the reader or woman I am today without those ladies. And how many people can say that their first job ever was their dream job? It was epic. Younger me was very smug about it too. It has to be a favourite because of how much it is a second home.

Earlier this year I was working in Kenny’s Bookshop in Galway on a booksellers exchange program. It’s a two-storey warehouse with a million+ (!!) titles, art gallery, and book bindery. It made me realise how much of a novelty it was to have an indie bookshop that big – you could figuratively and literally get lost in there. The shop is really committed to their community and acts as a home base for local authors, and has a huge section dedicated to Irish language and history. It became more of a cultural exchange than a work one. I hope to go back one day!

Favourite encounter with an author

Sarah J Maas came to town right at the height of her popularity. I was a baby bookseller, firmly in my fantasy era, and running the BookTok shelf at the shop like a Navy Seal. So, I was sad when the team told me at the event there was no chance of slipping into the meet and greet line. But then, halfway during the event, her husband appeared at the bookstall holding their baby! We had a good chat and he made sure she came and said hi.

My most recent author meeting was with K Patrick at Auckland Writers Festival, at a very busy signing table. Conversation went as follows:

Me: “I just loved how horny this book was!”

And then I can’t remember the rest, likely suppressed as a trauma response. The context was that they had just been on a panel about writing stories about sex, but still probably not the thing to say loudly, with loads of other people around. Sorry, K. I really did love your horny book though.

The book I wish I’d written

Everyone is Everyone Except You by Jordan Hamel. Fucking sick book. I want to be half the poet he is one day. To me, it’s the peak of contemporary Aotearoa poetry: funny, sharply observant, technically wonderful but still accessible. Praying to the indie publishing higher powers that there is a second collection in the stars.

From left to right: The book Abby wishes she’d written; the book she’d be buried with; and one of her favourite Aotearoa novels.

Everyone should read

New Zealand. Everyone should read locally as much as they can. I’m definitely a past victim of literary cultural cringe, and you’d be surprised how many customers come in and will refuse to pick up anything on the NZ table. But you deny yourself so much by not reading what we have to offer, I find it’s a really joyful reading experience to have that familiarity and relevance. I remember reading Bulibasha by Witi Ihimaera for the first time and thinking “there’s not a single good reason why I haven’t read this until now.” Other authors like Dominic Hoey, Keri Hulme, and Rebecca K Reilly helped me get over myself and showed me how great our reading landscape truly is.

The book I want to be buried with

Bone Black by bell hooks. It’s been out of print for a long time and somehow I managed to source one years ago. It’s a very dream-like memoir told in vignettes of her early life, and you can see how most of her philosophies are formed out of her childhood experiences. It’s so illuminating on privilege, sexuality, language — it’s one of those books I feel shaped me and the ways I read and write. There’s a new edition coming out next month, so I’m stoked that more people will be able to read it!

The book I never admit I’ve read

None – I am a proud reader of some objectively terrible books. I’m a firm believer that reading is a practice and is all about balance, but consistency is key. So if sprinkling your guilty pleasure porn-with-a-plot or stoicism-in-the-workplace books between something of substance will help keep you excited about reading, then I’ll point you to the right shelf. Read what you want. Unless it’s Robert Greene.

The book character I identify with most

I aspirationally identify with Thin Amren from Treacle Walker by Alan Garner – meaning my final form would be a nonsensical bog-man that makes vague, Booker-shortlist-worthy statements about language and the nature of life. That or Piranesi, because really all he does is wander around and journal – it’s very thought-daughter of him.

The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV

The entire time I was reading Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee I was thinking how great it would be as a video game. I could easily see the plot translating into level design, like a cross between Everything Everywhere All At Once and The Stanley Parable. Get Quantic Dream to develop it!

I dare one of our experimental theatremakers to adapt Audition by Pip Adam for the stage. I think trying to capture that claustrophobia in a live space would be so challenging but interesting to watch. I can also see Chinese Fish by Grace Yee being a great play, or film.

This wish has already come true, but I am unimaginably excited for the Laika animated adaptation of Piranesi. How perfect!! I want Björk and Jeremy Soule on the soundtrack.

The New Zealand cover of audition; photo of Pip Adam by Rebecca McMillan; and the Australian cover of Audition.

What are you reading right now?

One of a bookseller’s greatest joys in life is having enough time to get around to reading some backlist. For me, ever since I read Audition last year, I’ve been dying to read everything Pip Adam has ever written – which I’ve almost achieved! I just finished The New Animals and it’s keeping me up at night. I’m so happy they’re bringing I’m Working On A Building back into print later this year – the good people at THWUP just sent us an advanced copy so that’s next on my list!

Keep going!

Charity Norman’s latest thriller is a response to the Covid pandemic

BooksSeptember 14, 2024

Review: Home Truths by Charity Norman is an all-too-believable Covid thriller

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

Charity Norman’s latest thriller is a response to the Covid pandemic

Sam Brooks reviews the latest novel from one of NZ’s modern crime queens.

It’s 2024, and we’re officially in the era of Covid art. After the deaths, after the lockdowns, after the vaccines, it was sort of inevitable. The entire world went through something, and now the artists have the space, or at least the drive, to respond to it. It’s also obviously not just art that responds to the pandemic, but the fallout from the pandemic. We’re in the era of novels about isolation, novels about inexplicable death, and yes, novels about misinformation.

Look, I’ll be honest: I have found the terms “conspiracy theory”, “misinformation” and even “gaslighting” to be deeply frustrating ones. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s not a theory, it’s not a piece of misinformation, it’s not gaslighting, it’s… a lie. They’re lies, you guys. Dressing them up with more letters and syllables doesn’t make them not lies. It might be easier to accept a lie when it is dressed up otherwise – easier to say a partner was gaslighting, a so-called media organisation is feeding us misinformation, or an unlikely interpretation of reality is a conspiracy theory – but it doesn’t change the fact that all of these are fundamentally just lying.

All of this is to say that Home Truths by Charity Norman (author of the Ngaio Marsh Award-winning novel Remember Me) is a book about lies. It’s about the damage that lies do to person’s brain, and how that damage spirals outwards to cause even more damage.

2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel winner Charity Norman (right) with New Zealand’s ‘queen of crime’, Vanda Symon.

Norman throws to a family in Yorkshire for this new novel. Livia and Scott are a happily married couple with two equally happy kids, Heidi and Noah. Scott’s brother, Nicky, requires almost full-time care due to his specific neurodivergence and diabetes. One day, he tragically dies, and his death throws Scott into despair – and a search for answers. Given this is set in 2019, and Scott has access to the internet, that search ends up with him finding, yes, lies.

For the most part, Home Truths plays out less like a thriller and more like an existential horror. What happens when the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with goes down a rabbit hole? What happens when an otherwise right-thinking person starts to engage with the darkest fantasy to exist outside of reality? Norman captures how horrible this must feel, showing us the tragic way that Scott’s most likeable and beautiful qualities – his inquisitive nature, his level of love and care for his family – make him even more susceptible to other people’s ill intentions.

Norman threads a very difficult line here, as she switches perspectives between three members of the family. There’s Livia, the no-nonsense probation officer who has to deal with the worst kind of nonsense thanks to her husband. There’s Heidi, the troubled teen with a secret that she holds more heavily than any teenager should be expected to hold. And finally, there’s Scott, whose heart is broken so open by grief that any conspiracy, any theory, any lie can take root.

Although there are two clear sympathetic perspectives among the three – the new-suffering wife, the burdened teenager – what is impressive is how non-judgemental Norman is of Scott. Even as Scott does some things that might be completely out-the-gate, even illegal, she never condescends. She presents us an all-too-real and all-too-relatable narrative; a good person whose nature is twisted for evil, and I mean genuinely evil, purposes.

Equally impressive is how Norman pitches Livia. It would have be easy for her to present Livia as the naysayer, the eye-rolling skeptic who is so clearly in the right. Instead, Livia has moments of doubts, moments where even she feels tempted by the information Scott is spouting. Why wouldn’t she be? He’s her love, and her partner, and the father of her children. Surely it can’t all be wrong if he believes it. While we’re never afraid she’ll follow him down those pathways, these moments are full of tension, and brilliantly handled by Norman.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’

Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

There are moments, especially towards the end, where the narrative seems drawn to being dramatically compelling rather than authentic to the real world, or even the logic that Norman has set up. One twist in particular strains belief, if only because the rest of the novel has been relatively down-to-earth and within the realm of real-life logic. Losing a loved one to misinformation is horrifying – and gripping – enough, that we don’t need the stakes artificially heightened.

Norman also walks a very difficult line in depicting the lies that Scott ends up deeply investing in. Some of them read like parodies of these videos – “Why would we be pushing a dangerous substance into the arms of our children, if it isn’t even necessary? Who stands to gain? Give you one guess.” – but that could be my own biases talking. Sometimes the most authentic thing is the most ridiculous thing.

I closed Home Truths thinking of Louise Wallace’s Ash, one of the best novels of the year, and an equally harrowing response to Covid, at least in part. Whereas Ash is more esoteric, more rooted in the world of metaphor and allegory, Home Truths is up front. Covid-19 is a looming spectre in the novel – the reader does not necessarily need to be eagle-eyed to clock what might happen in the interim when we flash back from 2022 to 2019 and trudge slowly forward. It’s not a comfortable read, although Norman never goes full-on nihilistic, but it is an important one that I can imagine, sadly, being too close to too many people’s real life home truths.

Home Truths by Charity Norman ($37, Allen & Unwin NZ) is available to purchase from Unity Books. This review was first published on Sam Brooks’ newsletter, Dramatic Pause.