BooksJune 23, 2023

The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 23

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The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

AUCKLAND

1 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber & Faber, $28)

“At the time, I thought my life couldn’t get any worse. Here’s some advice: Don’t ever think that.” ― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

If you were thinking of re-telling a Dickens novel, which one would you pick? Barbara Kingsolver’s version of David Copperfield has so far won her this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Fiction winner this 2023.

2 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)

Claire Keegan has published four books and every single one of them has been a ripper. If you’re among the few who hasn’t yet experienced her work then what are you waiting for?

3 The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Canongate, $50)

With the catastrophic cuts to humanities departments across universities, which limits the capacity to teach critical thinking and culture, maybe DIY via Rubin is the way to go.

4 Shards by Bret Easton Ellis (Allen & Unwin, $37)

According to a scan of Good Reads review, fans and Easton Ellis noobs alike are loving Shards. We particularly like this snippet from Kirkus Reviews: “The usual issues with Ellis apply to this bulky novel: The flatness of the characters, the gratuitousness of the violence, the Didion-esque cool that sometimes reads as Olympian smugness. But as the story proceeds, it also becomes easier to admire Ellis’ ability to sustain the mood—his characters might, as Bret says, “look at everything through this prism of numbness,” but he does ably capture how Bret’s paranoia intensifies out of that emotional distance and how the urge for feeling and connection infects and warps his personality. Bret Ellis the character is trying to play it cool, but Bret Easton Ellis the author knows just how much he’s covering up.

A surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror.”

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

The rural gothic classic by one of our finest and most prolific writers. You’ll never look at magpies the same way again.

6 Atomic Habits by James Clear (Random House, $40)

A real mainstay of this very list, Clear clearly offers sound advice on how to kick your tiresome habits and, like, live better.

7 The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (Grove Press, $38)

One of three novels in this list that use a double narrative set in different time periods (the others being Pet and Shards). Enjoy this tantalising segment from The Guardian review: “Verghese’s debut novel, Cutting for Stone, was widely praised and stayed on the New York Times bestseller charts for more than two years. The Covenant of Water, published 14 years later, has the aspirations of an epic; a saga of births, deaths and everything in between happening in cycles. The plot turns on climate catastrophes, diseases and accidents, punctuating the novel’s 10 sections, each calamity tragic, riveting and pivotal to the story.”

8 Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $33)

“An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms within the clinic become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek refuge there, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present. Soon, entire countries want to emulate the idea, with referendums taking place to decide which particular version of the past will shape each nation’s future.” This absolutely stonking novel from Bulgarian Georgi Gospodinov, and translated by Angeal Rodel is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2023.

9 The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams (Affirm Press, $38)

Excellent to see this lovely novel back in the bestsellers. Take a trip back to the precarious years of World War I and join twin sisters Peggy and Maude as they navigate life and work in a whole new world.

10 Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)

She’s done it again! Two novels in the bestseller lists! Catherine Chidgey is receiving rave reviews all around town for this novel about the lasting impacts of a psychologically abusive teacher. Our review is coming this weekend.

WELLINGTON

1 Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, hardback $50, paperback $38)

2 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber & Faber, $28)

3 Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)

4 Turncoat by Tihema Baker (Lawrence & Gibson, $35)

Lawrence & Gibson’s latest release is a ripping sci-fi that explores colonisation via an intergalactic allegory. If you need further convincing, please see Shanti Mathias’ excellent review, right here. And a sample: “Baker has not written a subtle book; he wanted to write about alienation, so he used literal aliens. But his characterisation of Daniel allows the parody to operate on one level while also speaking to the emotional shape that colonisation creates for individuals. This novel offers a way for people who don’t have to think about these things daily to wonder: what is it like to have your land taken from you? How does it feel to only have access to pieces of your ancestor’s lives, meat pies and fizzy drinks, rather than the wholeness of how they lived, who they were?”

5 Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sissons (Penguin NZ, $45)

Glorious from start to finish, this is the in-depth book about all the mushrooms around us that you clearly did know you needed, judging by the bestsellers lists at all. Go, little mushroom, go!

6 Pageboy by Elliot Page (Doubleday, $40)

The highly anticipated, “brutally honest” memoir from actor Elliot Page (star of hit film, Juno). An insight thanks to this excellent review in the Washington Post: “In crucial ways, ‘Pageboy’ is in conversation with that sentiment: Some of us don’t get to have the life we want. In the book, the Canadian actor, who publicly came out as transgender in 2020, charts the tremendous emotional and psychological effort it took for him to confront suffocating social messaging about gender and sexuality. Viewed in this light, Page’s book, which arrives at a moment of heightened anti-queer hostility, as Republican legislators across the United States push a record number of bills chiseling away at LGBTQ+ people’s rights, is many things at once: memoir, yes, but also cultural analysis and civil rights cri de coeur.”

7 Yellowface by Rebecca Kuang (Borough Press, $35)

Big news in the publishing sector, this novel by the superb mind behind the novel Babel, takes on racism in the industry. Here’s the rather thrilling publisher’s blurb:

Athena Liu is a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody.

White lies

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Dark humour

But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Deadly consequences…

What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

8 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Transworld, $26)

Charming from start to finish. Read before you watch!

9 Winter’s Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch (Orion, $45)

A slim, entertaining, crimey, si-fi blend that you’ll be able to read in one sitting.

10 We’re All Made of Lightning by Khadro Mohamed (Tender Press, $25)

Hurrah! Local poet and winner of the Best First Book Award for poetry in this year’s Ockham’s is back on the list. Have a read of this poem, and this to get a taste for Mohamed’s exquisite, powerful voice.

Keep going!

Cook Islands/Sāmoan poet Audrey Brown-Pereira with her latest book A-wake-(e)nd. (Image: Archi Banal)

BooksJune 23, 2023

Audrey Brown-Pereira wants to celebrate Pacific women

Sela Jane Hopgood

Pacific communities editor

Cook Islands/Sāmoan poet Audrey Brown-Pereira with her latest book A-wake-(e)nd. (Image: Archi Banal)

A collection of poems that challenge the convention of being a ‘good Pacific Island woman’ takes centre stage in A-wake-(e)nd.

Audrey Brown-Pereira describes herself as a “word player”. Her latest collection of poems, A-wake-(e)nd, certainly plays into that description. “The word awakened is such a beautiful word and so I wanted to spread it out, so that there is no end to the word,” she says on a video call from her home in Sāmoa.

A lot of Brown-Pereira’s poetry in the collection talks about putting women first, as many Pacific women tend to do the opposite and serve their loved ones first before themselves. The poems highlight different perspectives from being a Pacific woman to a Pacific mother or a Pacific wife or being a Cook Islands and Sāmoan woman living in a conservative nation such as Sāmoa; the many hats Brown-Pereira wears every day and all at once. “I would hope that when someone reads these poems, they can say, oh, yes, I get it. Often Pacific women are in the background and so I want these words to inspire them to put themselves first,” she says.

Empowering women is important for Brown-Pereira, who has two daughters aged 14 and 20. She uses her own life experiences as examples for other Pacific women to learn from. Lessons she says she and many others didn’t get themselves. “We didn’t get this advice from our mothers or aunties, so these poems are a gift to the next generation. I want them to be free to do what they want and not be held back by others. I want them to feel a sense of belonging.”

A particular focus for Brown-Pereira is sensuality, particularly in cultures where women often learn to downplay their bodies. She celebrates the female body and who we are as women. “I wanted to bring an element of mystery and intrigue to the poems that talk about women’s sensuality, celebrating our different body shapes. For example, women after having children sometimes lose a connection with their body.”

Audrey Brown Pereira holding her book A-wake-(e)nd in Sāmoa. (Photo: Supplied)

Brown-Pereira wants to connect mothers of the Pacific with themselves. “Pacific women are always serving others whether it’s their husband, their children, their extended families, their workplace and so I want to wake our women up to come out of the shadows and see themselves again, to not be scared of themselves, but to embrace their physical bodies and their souls within.”

When Brown-Pereira is not writing poetry, she is dealing with connected but very different work. As the secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), she spends her days discussing plastic pollution, ocean acidification and global warming. Their mandate for the Pacific region is focused on the environment, sustainable development including priority areas of the climate crisis, resilience, waste management, pollution control, island and ocean ecosystems and environmental monitoring and governance. “By virtue of the place I work at, I was always going to bring those themes into my poetry work, especially as I am based in the islands and these topics relate to Pacific people,” she says.

Brown-Pereira was born in the Cook Islands before migrating to Tāmaki Makaurau as a baby. She says the first poem of the book, which starts off with the questions, “who are you? Where do you come from? Where have you been your whole life?” is a piece of work that stands out for her as a way to reconnect with Aotearoa, where she grew up. “The poem is a response to the beautiful artwork on the cover of A-wake-(e)nd by Serene Hodgman as it reminded me of my upbringing in South Auckland.” Brown-Pereira attended Papatoetoe West Primary School, Kedgley Intermediate and Aorere College before moving to Epsom Girls Grammar School. She says her family still resides in Papatoetoe to this day. “This poem takes me back to my childhood, about my parents and my sisters growing up together, but it also connects me to my future,” she says.

who are you, where you come from, where you been your ( )hole life?

we grow different under artificial light

heaters in the winter we’re not allowed to use
only hot water bottles
and velvet blanket with lions and tigers
and duvets and continentals with gardens of flowers

covering us to keep us warm in this cold

not in our blood only eyes and skin

descendants of shift workers

7 am to 4 pm

4 pm to 12 am

clock-in

clock-out

check-in

check-out and again and again and again

lines of production for

biscuits to drive and cars to eat at takeaways with beer in crates and fish and chips
in newspapers no one reads except for the horses on the radio for the am and
the fm eating meat pies and sausage rolls with tomato sauce and pig heads and
fish heads with blue tin labelled from sāmoa of fresh coconut cream to cover the
banana and pumpkin poke and sides of mainese and chop suey and fried flounder
and crayfish with raro doughnuts buttered with marmite drinking sachets of
powdered juice

villages of suburbs with buses and factories
and farmland eaten

for cemeteries and highways

and airports and all her expansions
against a changing sky and sea where the land
shift work
stop work
no work redundancies

and unemployment
and benefits your worldview

not tall
but huge with clear eyes

everywhere brown
south auckland land of māori and pacific people

few pākehā
here and there

mainly teachers
and people on the tv
in that other world
another new zealand
foreign and out of

reach

intangible

muldoon, lange, palmer, moore, bolger, shipley, and clark
kiwi names in your living room with access to your remote control
look nothing like mum and dad

2022 in transit to depart for europe

looking from inside
the sitting room of your childhood
knowing your own children
don’t get you
don’t get it
don’t want to as no need too
being daughters of the i(s)lands fully sovereign
in their
self
assurance

2022 in transit to return from europe

bare feet on the chinese mat
neatly covering the carpet
below the sofa

of embroidered cushions and family portraits
wall papered with shell ulas
and church hats
quilted together
with scent of tiare maori and fejoa

return to sender

you gently fold the tivaevae
you will take home with you

You can listen to the audio version of this poem on Poetry Shelf, here.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.