Sascha Stronach. Photo / Sylvie Kirkman
The Dawnhounds, by Sascha Stronach (Saga Press, $35). Reviewed by David Herkt
An eerie ship – half-plant, half-vessel – sails into a harbour with only nine of its 20 crew remaining alive. The hatches to the hold are nailed shut because something is down there. A sudden unexplainable fogbank rises. The single guiding lighthouse lamp disappears into mist. Filled with tension, the crew sing a ragged chorus against a moist and blinding white threat. Then the shooting begins…
Sascha Stronach's novel The Dawnhounds has obtained that rare thing for a Wellington writer: an American publisher, an advance of more than $125,000 and a three-book deal. It is part sci-fi, part bio-punk, part noir, but also something that belongs uniquely to New Zealand. In an early shorter version, it won the Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2020, but after interest was expressed by Simon & Schuster, it was substantially re-written, enlarged, and has been re-launched globally.
Many of its concepts and language are a unique blend of Māori and the Kiwi vernacular which has not been watered down for a non-New Zealand audience. The novel is also an imaginative feat where a vividly-described world of density and thickness makes many other fictive creations feel façade-thin.
Opening on a mysterious craft with its unknown cargo, Stronach switches to the story of Constable Jyn Yat-Hok in the port city of Hainak. She has been demoted because of her "lifestyle choices" after being found in a queer club. Her lover, Kaida, has also vanished in a city where vanishing is only too common. Jyn smokes kiro, an illegal substance to soothe her sense of loss and the strange haunting memories that seem to surface with frequency. Then, on night-patrol at the wharves, she stumbles across a dead body – and she is killed by two fellow officers for what she has seen. But death is not the end….
Stronach's world is mycelium-based. It is a novel about fungi as technology in a post-apocalyptic environment. They are the building-blocks of the era, a means of communication, lighting and manufacture. Atomic and quantum physics have been the mainstay of many sci-fi books over the last 50 years, but Stronach plunges the reader into a new biology-inspired imagining. This is a bold move on his part, but one that is irresistible and entirely fresh.
The Dawnhounds has it all: a detective story, spectacular fungal cities, corrupt police-officers, a motley 'pirate' crew, fragments of future history and technology, and an ominous tropical threat, while also being a story of queer love and loss. The novel knows exactly when to explain and when to leave the reasoning to the reader.
The sci-fi genre has always been a balancing act between imagination and logic – and Stronach's fine handling of pace and information means that the book is a superior example. The sense of mystery, suspense, and revelation is continuous. Jyn is by no means an unflawed protagonist and those that surround her also possess their strengths and weaknesses. Stronach's settings change with frequency, opening up fresh perspectives with every iteration.
The Dawnhounds requests participation from a reader and this is one of its strengths, rewarding them by providing something new and unexpected. Exploring Stronach's story becomes an act of equal creation in its wonders.
I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki, by Baek Sehee (Bloomsbury, $33). Reviewed by Karen Tay
An intriguing title like I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki invites the reader to imagine some vivid possibilities for what lies within, which turns out to be a self-help memoir for the TikTok generation.
Baek Seehee, the author and protagonist, has dysthymia, or persistent mild depression, for which she's endured a decade of treatment. She writes in what feels like frenetic bursts, looping around her sessions with a psychiatrist, back to personal essays that read more like slightly confusing diary entries. Baek writes candidly and with heart – you get the sense she's trying to sound self-deprecating and mature – but this is hard to do when writing about depression because it's a condition that makes people focus inward to the point of myopia.
In the memoir, Baek is still ensnared by her dysthymia. Like a butterfly in a net, she's caught in destructive thought spirals that can make for a very exhausting read. What could have made this memoir truly different is more reflection on the cultural landscape from which Baek writes. South Korea is a beauty-obsessed society, particularly for young women who are pressured to conform to impossible ideals in terms of looks and size. Baek's psychiatrist attempts to snap her out of a negative thought pattern around weight by pointing out the absurdity of her belief: "I'm a failure if I weigh over eight stone (50kg)". Unfortunately the book then just moves on, without questioning the cultural mores that normalised this ridiculous notion.
There also isn't much mention of the titular tteokbokki, a Korean street food of rice cakes smothered in a rich spicy sauce. The popular snack does bring to mind the duality of living in a culture that is so food-obsessed while at the same time so exacting about weight, particularly to women. Tteokbokki is delicious, misogyny is not as enticing. But again, there's no mention of this.
It's interesting that the book is labelled self-help because it doesn't really give any answers, or start conversations. There isn't a defined connection between the therapy segments and the essays. Baek mostly just romps from one thought to the next. Mental illness is a serious issue in most Asian cultures, and one that still isn't really talked about, so it would have been interesting to see how younger generations are fighting that battle (which they are). It feels like another missed opportunity not to explore this.
I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki could be a gift idea for a teenager for Christmas. Tell them the book is endorsed by BTS, the world's biggest K-pop band, and it might make you sound cool for approximately three seconds. If you're looking for a more serious or even humorous take on depression, then I'd move along.
No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand Edited by Jordan Hamel, Rebecca Hawkes, Erik Kennedy and essa ranapiri (Auckland University Press, $30). Reviewed by Sophie van Waardenberg
This new anthology of climate change poetry is a book blessed with editors aware of their project's limits, yet ambitious enough to present a varied abundance of concerns, forms and poetic voices. "A poem may not be a binding policy or strategic investment," they write, "but poems can still raise movements, and be moving in their own right. And there is no movement in our behaviours and politics without a shift in hearts and minds."
This, then, is what the anthology sets out to do—not to reform climate deniers, nor really to offer a scientific education, but to move. And it succeeds. The work chosen for this book is so abundant, diverse and urgent, that any reader—however cynical—will be jostled by it somehow.
The material is not just confined to Aotearoa. Australia-centred poems by Laniyuk and Dadon Rowell flow into Victor Billot's Scott Morrison-dedicated piece, followed by Tusiata Avia's bitter ode "Jacinda Ardern goes to the Pacific Forum in Tuvalu and my family colonises her house".
This collection's most exciting work comes to life in the clash of the personal with the political. As Tim Jones writes, to be in the trenches of our climate battle can mean "fighting over inches, kilograms of emissions, / redesigning systems, writing notes for speeches / that no one delivers." Nina Mingya Powles approaches this balance of disastrous chaos and grounded fact in "The Harbour" with variations on a theme by Lucille Clifton. Where Clifton wrote, "the fact is the falling / the dream is the tree", Powles writes, "The fact is the running. The dream is the sea."
Dani Yourukova writes, "The planet is dying and so is my half-price orchid from Bunnings", in one of many poems in the anthology which bring care and apathy, playfulness and desperation together. Ash Davida Jane does this too, with a weightily ironic first line: "I don't ask for much.... I just want everything".
Where another team of editors may have attempted to build an exterior structure into this kind of project, to stack up poems about planes against poems about whales, in No Other Place to Stand work flows more conversationally, encouraging in their order slight overlaps while leaving plenty of room for a reader's own meandering and connection making.
There are poems that ring out as anthems, protest songs, mōteatea and other chants; there are new poets and poet laureates; there is illustrated poetry, Hannah Montana poetry, and poetry that riffs on Wallace Stevens. The success here is due, of course, to the skill and deliberation of the editors, and to the craft and life of the chosen work, but also to the fact that these four editors' own backgrounds and artistic practices are so diverse. It's important, I think, that a subject of such breadth and urgency be allowed this kind of abundance and multiplicity of editorial vision, just as in Chris Tse and Emma Barnes's collaboration on the Out Here anthology.
No Other Place to Stand proves that climate change poetry is not one-note, more than just the word 'HELP' written in driftwood on a burning beach. In order for poetry of fossil fuels and carbon emissions to touch us, it must coexist with all our confusion, laziness, consumerism and aesthetic preoccupations. These editors have not tried to carve out a moral higher ground. There isn't one left. So in reading, there's room for our own anxieties and guilt, acceptance of our shortcomings and perhaps a small part of each of us that can be moved—yes, even by poetry—into making change.
• Sophie van Waardenberg is a recent graduate of Syracuse University's MFA in Creative Writing. Her first chapbook-length collection of poems was published in AUP New Poets 5. A longer version of this review will appear at www.anzliterature.com
You have a huge reputation in New Zealand literature and readers have certain expectations. Do you ever consider that when writing? I'm not much concerned with the expectations of others, and rather than seeking out what seems to be popular and basing work on that, I write what concerns and interests me and hope that readers may find some relevance to their own lives. In my novels, short fiction and poetry I attempt to explore and understand the business of living. I just do the best I can. No doubt readers recognise certain themes, attitudes and settings that are repeated in my writing, but as Flannery O'Connor said - `There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it.'
Your writing has often been described as dark as well as beautiful. How would you describe your body of work? Most of my fiction is realistic and contemporary, although I have written one historical novel and some post-modern and surreal stories. My main concern is with character and motivation. I do consider myself a visual writer and so setting is important. I try to show not just who my characters are, but where they are and how that influences them. As to darkness in my work, I think the serious writer explores all aspects of life and character - the joyous and the tragic, the good and the bad, optimism and despair, laughter and tears.
You were a teacher for 25 years. What did that experience teach you? I was a secondary school teacher for many years and more recently taught at Aorangi Polytechnic, and the University of Canterbury which appointed me an adjunct professor in 2005. I enjoy the interaction and the collegial challenges to my reading and writing from various age groups. Writing is essentially a solitary and inward occupation and teaching has helped keep me involved in the community and aware of changing circumstances and attitudes.
This is your first short story collection in 10 years. You write across genres, so how do you prioritise what to do when? It's interesting that although my novels have been the most successful of my books, both commercially and in terms of awards, many people see me as primarily a writer of short stories. When I was a full time teacher I concentrated on short fiction, not just because I enjoyed the form, but because it suited my lifestyle at the time. Only when I became a professional writer did I feel I had the blocks of time necessary to concentrate on the novel as well as short stories. I was also able then to find time for poetry as well. I have always had a fondness for the short story, which has an especially honourable tradition in New Zealand literature, but novels and poetry provide a variation of challenge.
If readers choose just one story from Return to Harikoa Bay, which should it be and why? I hope readers will choose to read more than one story from the collection! Reading is a collaboration between writer and reader, each brings individual experience, attitudes and predilections to the table, and so readers' responses are subjective. I hope most readers will find something of interest and relevance in the book.
• Owen Marshall's new collection of short stories, Return to Harikoa Bay (Penguin, $37), is out now.
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