Here's a story about how to become middle-aged and middle-class - without noticing it.

Harbour mastery Marcus Lush's North kicks off with a kindly look at a "poor-cousin" waterway, writes Deborah Hill Cone.

Rating: 4.5/5

Rating: 2.5/5

Rating: 3/5. Verdict: Soul, funk and artful rock from the late Jeff Buckley's girlfriend

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: More blues. Less metal. Just as heavy.

Romeo and Julietgets probably its kitschiest makeover yet, set in a world of garden gnomes. With music from Elton John, it's an unusual combination of tragedy, plaster and flamboyance.

Craig Cliff's first collection of stories heralds the arrival of an electrifying new voice on the New Zealand writing scene. These stories are standalone gems, but the collection also brings together satisfying harmonies as a whole.

John Irving is the king of the long, multilayered novel. In the tradition of Dickens, he cleverly weaves together the intricate threads of cross-generational storylines.

There's the boy who kills sheep and gouges out their eyes. There's the young man who wishes literally to eat his girlfriend but who angrily denies he is a Hannibal Lecter figure.

This intermittently charming animated offering from Disney relocates Shakespeare's famous love story to the secret world of garden gnomes, then adds Elton John music.

Prepare to be outraged by this political drama, based on the autobiography of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Paul Torday produces an intriguing page-turner that won't fail to surprise.

This work of speculative fiction arrives on New Zealand shelves with the degree of hype usually reserved for angst-ridden teen vamps or boy wizards.

Mayfield was just a teenager when a copy of an album she'd recorded in her bedroom fell into the hands of Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys.

Rating: 4.5/5

Rating: 3/5

Rating: 3/5. Verdict: More soul to her cry

Rating: 3.5/5. Verdict: Still dour, but more diverse second offering from London trio

Jeff Bridges' Cogburn retains the Wayne eyepatch and the girth but he's not up for the carbine twirl.

Fela Kuti was a revolutionary and a rogue. And man, could the Nigerian musician and pioneer of Afro-beat sing, dance and play saxophone.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Get down with the coolest grandma.

Director Danny Boyle goes from a cast of many with Slumdog Millionaire to pretty much a cast of one, in an intense tale of survival that takes the saying "I'd give my right arm ..." to a new level.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Folk fellow finds the funk on his fifth.

With so much of Auckland's attention focused on Monday's Laneway Festival, it was always going to be interesting to see how Les Savy Fav's first New Zealand show was going to go.

The Laneway Festival was loud and proud yesterday and in the process it found its home in the newly revamped Aotea Square.

Paul Auster writes splendidly about disaffected, damaged people, usually alienated from society in some way, often isolated, physically and/or psychologically.