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 Lessons by Ian McEwan (Jonathon Cape, $37)
The new McEwan novel is top of the pops in Welly, too! The Washington Post tells fans of Atonement not to worry – Lessons isn’t like McEwan’s recent novels, “minor, fantastical stories, wormy with weird wit” (Nutshell, Machines Like Me, The Cockroach). It’s a real goodie: “There’s something close to divine in this process of creating the entire span of a person’s life embroidered with threads trailing off in every direction. Here is a narrative that moves with such patient dedication into the circuitous details of an ordinary man’s experience that by the end I knew Roland better than I know most of my actual friends.”
2 All the Broken Places by John Boyne (Doubleday, $37)
From the beloved author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies, A History of Loneliness, and A Ladder to the Sky – this is the adult follow up to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Cheering ensues.
All the Broken Places centres on Gretel Fernsby, now 91, and guilt-ridden over the death of her young brother Bruno and the crimes of her parents.
From the Guardian: “The book forces us to consider the nature of atonement, and whether violence can ever justify the prevention of something even worse. All the Broken Places is a defence of literature’s need to shine a light on the darkest aspects of human nature; and it does so with a novelist’s skill, precision and power.”
3 Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers, $35)
Winner of this year’s Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and winner of the Allen & Unwin Award for Best Commercial Fiction Book for Adults at this year’s PANZ Book Design Awards.
4 How to Loiter in a Turf War by Coco Solid (Penguin, $28)
We’ll loiter with Coco Solid anytime.
5 Ithaca by Claire North (Orbit, $38)
New fiction by the author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Ithaca retells the story of Penelope of Ithaca, wife of Odysseus. Fellow author Jennifer Saint calls the novel “breathtaking”.
Incredible facts: Claire North is a pen name for author Catherine Webb. Kate Griffin is another pen name for Catherine Webb. Together, the “three” women have published 23 novels. Catherine Webb is only 36 years old.
6 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf, $38)
The new novel by the author of Hamnet.
7 Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Arcia Tecun, Lana Lopesi and Anisha Sankar (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
The newest book of essays by BWB, focusing on new ways to talk about race in Aotearoa. We recently published an excerpt of an essay by Tze Ming Mok, examining how “White” and “Black” is applied to Asian peoples. Here’s a taster:
“‘You’re either White or you’re Black,’ said one of my interviewees, a thoroughly working-class and middle-aged Turkish Cockney, ‘…Is there any other colours?’ He laughed. ‘I know some people would say Chinese are yellow, but that’s stupid. You’re either White or you’re Black.’
“‘OK,’ I said, with a knowing sense of dread, ‘am I White or Black?’
“‘You?’ he said with a hint of incredulity that I would even ask this, ‘You’re White!’
“I took this in, and inquired as to the status of my husband, an Indian.
“‘Oh, he’s Black.’ No question.”
8 Atomic Habits by James Clear (Random House, $40)
Make your new good habits stick like… when chewing gum gets in your hair.
9 The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (Viking, $37)
The third novel in the Thursday Mystery Club series, set in an upscale retirement village. Fans on Goodreads are making exclamations like “better than ever!” and “BEST ONE YET!” and “I’m honestly not sure we deserve Richard Osman or the utterly adorable, cantankerous, frankly dangerous Thursday Murder Club but I will take them and hug them and squeeze them for as long as I am able.” That last one may have been more of a gush than an exclamation.
10 The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi by Ned Fletcher (Bridget Williams Books, $70)
Josie Pagani in Stuff gave a neat summary of lawyer and historian Ned Fletcher’s new book: “It demolishes the argument that there were two unreconciled versions of the Treaty. He shows the English version is the same as the Māori version. Pākehā who signed on behalf of the Crown were not trying to trick Māori. Sovereignty, or kawanatanga, meant the same to English signers as it did to Māori. The Crown would dispense justice, preserve the peace and good order, and regulate trade. The betrayal came later, thanks to the New Zealand Company.”
WELLINGTON
1 Lessons by Ian McEwan (Jonathon Cape, $37)
2 Peninsula by Sharron Came (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)
A local debut novel containing ten interwoven stories, set in a rural Northland farming community. Damien Wilkins says: “This stunning book casts an unusual spell. At first blush it all seems as New Zealandy as sheep dogs, septic tanks and muting the TV when visitors arrive. Then you notice the creeping poetry of lives coping with change and how this vividly imagined world of tramping huts, bush runs and squash clubs contains other worlds. Sharron Came is writing from deep intimacy with the rural community she summons on the page. Her terse, funny and hugely poignant stories restore a sense of possibility to the future without turning away from its terrors.”
3 Exiles by Jane Harper (Macmillan, $38)
New mystery novel by bestselling author of The Dry. “Exiles is an outstanding crime novel, rich in mystery and atmosphere and full of heart.” says C. L. Taylor, “Utterly immersive, captivating and beautifully written; I lost myself completely within its pages and was bereft when it ended. Jane Harper is a rare jewel of an author and Exiles deserves to be huge. It blew me away. It’s my book of the year so far.”
4 The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (Viking, $37)
5 I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster, $56)
Memoir by the ex-child star of iCarly. A shocking title, yes. A good book? Apparently, also yes.
6 Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Arcia Tecun, Lana Lopesi and Anisha Sankar (Bridget Williams Books, $40)
7 The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf, $38)
8 Kawai: For Such a Time As This by Monty Soutar (Bateman, $40)
The first in a trilogy of historic novels that follows nine generations of one Māori family. Kawai takes off in the mid-18th century, up to the arrival of Europeans.
9 The Joy of Small Things by Hannah Jane Parkinson (Guardian Faber, $23)
Since 2018 and across the bleak Covid days, Parkinson wrote a column for the Guardian about small things that give her joy. Now – you guessed it – a book of her columns has been born. The Guardian reviews their sprog (and we call nepotism): “It could so easily become cloying over 250 pages, but Parkinson deploys her droll cynicism to good effect. Where there is positivity, mordant wit and pathos are never far behind”.
10 Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
Our favourite fictional siblings.
