Linda Johnstone – festival committee deputy chairwoman
My summer reading includes meeting up with authors I know will tick the boxes of enjoyment for me. However, before Christmas I read Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly, and wondered if I would finish it. I did, and only near the end did it grow on me. I then heard it on RNZ’s Nine to Noon and realised its narrative style was totally suited to an audio production and I became immersed in the story in a new way I enjoyed more.
At present I am reading my Christmas gift book, Winter Time by Laurence Fearnley (Thanks Paiges). She was introduced to me by our Sarjeant Gallery when she spoke there during the Fringe events for the 2019 Literary Festival. I read her book of that time, Scented, and so admired it that when asked what Secret Santa should provide me with this year, I did not hesitate to ask for her latest novel, Winter Time. Set in the deep south, she has a gentle way of building her plot and the characters that I enjoy. I have yet to finish the book so will hold more comment.
An all-time favourite author for me is Elizabeth Strout so I have thoroughly enjoyed her latest novel, Lucy By The Sea, the follow-up to her Booker short-listed book Oh William. The characters in Strout’s books pop up and down, which is sometimes testing of my memory of them in earlier books and has me revisit them to revise. This book covers the main character’s life through the Covid pandemic as well as the political upheavals in America, issues she touches on with great insight.
Paddy Richardson’s books, Through the Lonesome Dark and By The Green Of Spring, have their titles drawn from the poetry of wartime poet Siegfried Sassoon. I was immersed in the first book, set in New Zealand before war involved two main characters and shifted the focus. The novel had several interesting threads that it would have been good to be able to follow and maybe her next book does that.
Mary Anne Sleyer – festival committee treasurer
A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Not one of his recent publications (2010) but an easy read about a dinner party planned by a politician’s wife to include a cross-section of the MP’s constituents. To keep the interest and tension, a young potential terrorist is plotting to create some havoc that could affect the attendees at the dinner party. It is a very interesting social commentary.
Yes by Joan Rosier-Jones, our highly acclaimed local author, is a study of close relationships and death. It is an insightful look at a threesome of close friends (two of them being a married couple) at a time when one of them is facing death.
Their life circumstances bring them all together and the dynamics change dramatically as they deal with the imminent death of one of them.
It is written with the stream of consciousness of one of the three informing the reader throughout the story. Definitely a book that once started can’t be put down.
Margaret Samuels – committee member
Expat Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss was long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 and I read it on the recommendation of a local review. It’s both witty and raw in its account of the main character’s struggle with long-term, undiagnosed mental illness camouflaged by a family secret. It’s compelling reading, beautifully written.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is about a smart young woman who refuses to be dumbed down in the academic scientific world of the 1950s. Protagonist Elizabeth Zott is unable to progress through the university system of her colleagues and eventually moves to television, unexpectedly a single parent needing a job, any job. She becomes the host of an increasingly popular cooking show where she subtly educates viewers about chemistry. This is human behaviour shrewdly observed and delicately described.
