The latest Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list, described by Steve Braunias
FICTION
1 Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
A free copy of Pet was up for grabs in last week's book giveaway. Readers were asked to read the author's recent short story "Babydoll" and make any kind of remarks about it. It was a very popular contest and the replies were probably the smartest, most literate I've received in book giveaway history. They were such close readers, were so invested in Chidgey's imaginative parable of a meth-head and a little girl and her Mum's sexy negligee.
I loved this appreciation of detail, from Raewyn: "Favourite part was the cold pouring out of the fridge and through the house." Look at this fantastic sentence from Joy: "Her writing resonates with another 8 yr old growing up in small town NZ under the cloak of decency where these same currents ran in through the cracks around poorly fitted windows and doors up dark passages in the dead of night." This was maybe even better, from Neil: "The meth-head comes out of it quite well in this litany of passive aggression, open aggression, shattered dreams, exploitation and middle-class judginess." Pauline wrote that the story brought "another image to mind", and quoted from the Gerald Manley Hopkins poem 'Spring and Fall':
Ah, as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Lovely. But the winner is Nikki Ferguson-Brown, who wrote, "The moment you know a writer is on top of their game, really in possession of something special, is when a single sentence hits like a sucker-punch to the gut. When I read Catherine Chidgey’s 'Babydoll' – in its entirety a brilliant piece of writing – I found myself gripping my unsuspecting husband’s forearm and somewhat alarming him with my intense speechless gaze. It’s very seldom I’m speechless – he probably thought I was having a medical event. In fact, I’d just read a real doozy of a sentence. Not necessarily grammatically striking, or figuratively beautiful, the sentence stunned me for its restraint, its ordinary expression, its precision timing, its 17 words absolutely loaded and perfectly aimed. It appears just after the narrator Jess explains her mother’s lesson to her pre-teen daughter that 'you couldn’t always have what you wanted the moment you wanted it' – not a bad lesson, not a bad sentence, effectively doing the work to set up the shot which Catherine Chidgey fires in the next sentence, the one that floored me: 'She, for instance, wore a rubber band on her wrist and snapped it if she felt hungry.'
"Boom! Immediately Mum’s character and body hang-ups snap into sharp focus, the era is vividly evoked - Jazzercise, Solid Gold Dancers, Weight Watchers, the punishment women put themselves and each other through, but more importantly, what her daughter actually observes, a sense of what a preteen girl might make of such denial of her body’s needs…"
Huzzah to Nikki; a free copy of Pet is hers.
2 The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
In which the great Chidgey continues to make history as the first New Zealand novelist to have the number one bestselling novel and number two bestselling novel in the same week – for the second consecutive week. Woah!
3 Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
4 Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
5 Kāwai by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)
6 The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer (Hachette, $36.99)
Oho! Meyers' historical novel received just about the worst review of all times at RNZ, but has shot to number six in its first week of sales. Good. The Witching Tide, based on the 17th Century witch hunts when brutes and maniacs and women haters terrorised East Anglia, is actually a clever, knowing, passionate novel, really first-class.
A free copy is up for grabs in this week's giveaway. To enter the draw, share a story or an insight about witch hunts, and email it to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps I WANT THAT WITCH NOVEL. Entries close at Sunday midnight, June 25.
7 Tangi by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House, $38)
8 The Deck by Fiona Farrell (Penguin Random House, $37)
9 PS Come to Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $36.99)
Pellegrino is one of New Zealand's greatest food writers, maybe the very best in our fiction; her Italy series are a feast of amazing dishes cooked and eaten by her characters as they gallivant around Italia. I asked her this week if she would write a winter warmer recipe for ReadingRoom. She has done so, and I much look forward to publishing it. Warning: involves cabbage.
10 The Last Days of Joy by Anne Tiernan (Hachette, $36.99)
NONFICTION
1 This is ADHD: An interactive and informative guide by Chanelle Moriah (Allen & Unwin, $32.99)
Huzzah to Catherine Chidgey but it's possible 24-year-old Chanelle Moriah has made chart history, too: as maybe the youngest New Zealand author whose first two books (their debut I am Autistic was published last year) have both shot to number one on the Nielsen bestselling list. The author has also written a very honest, very powerful story about their autistic social differences, which will appear in ReadingRoom next week.
2 Whakawhetai: Gratitude by Hira Nathan (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
Gratefulness.
3 Under the Weather: A future forecast for New Zealand by James Renwick (HarperCollins, $39.99)
"I was once interviewed for television while standing on the beach not far from my home. At one point, the interviewer said to me, 'So, by the end of this century, all these houses we see along the beach here will be gone?' I paused and took a breath, looking up and down the beach, before replying. 'Yes,' I said": from the author's excellent book on the climate crisis.
4 Billy Bush by Bill Bush (Upstart Press, $39.99)
Rugby.
5 There’s a Cure for This by Emma Espiner (Penguin Random House, $35)
6 Fungi of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson (Penguin Random House, $45.00)
Fungus.
7 Winter Warmers by Philippa Cameron (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
Food.
8 Second Chances by Hayley Holt (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Memoir.
9 From There to Here by Joe Bennett (HarperCollins, $35)
"From There to Here is a long letter from Lyttelton. It's typical and vintage Bennett, an easy and familiar ride. But there is a new register. He has always had a marvellous sensitivity, a genuine feeling for the vulnerable; finally, at last, he turns it on himself. He opens up. He writes about his love life. He writes about his sexuality. More so, he writes about beauty – male beauty, first felt at 14": from my review.
10 Sure to Rise: The Edmonds Story by Peter Alsop & Kate Parsonson & Richard Wolfe (Canterbury University Press, $59.99)
Edmonds.
