Our 2024 picks: Aotearoa general fiction
For our next instalment of our 2024 fiction picks we're selecting our Aotearoa New Zealand general fiction picks...
And what a year it's been for fiction releases here in Aotearoa New Zealand! So good it was difficult to know where to begin, but we have hopefully boiled down the many releases into a representative snapshot of the year in fiction in our own fair country in all its rich diversity. It is fabulous to see so many great authors and books out there, from authors old and new. Have a browse!
Our Top 20 are...
"In Auē eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother,Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Ārama’s aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but silenced by abuse her voice was absent from the story. In Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. As one, they return to her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins – the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of her tīpuna, the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the girl shot the man. Becky Manawatu’s new novel is the much-awaited sequel to award-winning bestseller Auē and is unflinching in its portrayal of the destructive ways people love one another and the ancestral whenua on which they stand." (Catalogue)
"A tender and fierce novel that asks what we do when faced with things we don't understand. Is our impulse to destroy or connect? Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren't hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe. When Janet's son Conor arrives home without warning, sporting a fresh buzzcut and a new tattoo, the quiet tension between the neighbours grows, but no one suspects just how extreme Conor has become. No one except Wairere, who can feel the danger in their midst, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting." (Catalogue)
"It’s 1818 on the East Coast of Te Ika-a-Māui, New Zealand. Hine-aute, granddaughter of the legendary warrior Kaitanga, is fleeing through the bush, a precious yet gruesome memento contained in her fishing net. What follows is a gripping tale of a people on the cusp of profound change that is destined to reverberate through many generations to come. The Europeans have arrived, and they’ve brought guns and foreign diseases, ushering in a whole new world of terror and trouble. They’ve also brought a new religion, which will cause Māori to question everything they had believed to be true. Hine and her sons Ipumare and Uha are caught in the crossfire of change, creating fractures in their close familial bonds and undermining everything they hold dear. From raids by musket-wielding war parties to heightened internecine warfare; from the influx of whalers, traders and Christian missionaries to the signing of The Treaty of Waitangi, Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment strikes hard and deep into the heart of the initial impact of colonisation on Māori, and is guaranteed to leave readers stunned." (Back cover)
All that we know / Kino, Shilo
"When Mareikura arrives at the marae to photograph the events of Waitangi Day, she is greeted by an elder at the gate. The woman's question - how will you speak our truths if you can't speak our language? - shakes Mareikura to the core. She already feels ashamed that she can't speak te reo, even though she has tried to learn. But where does she belong if not on her own whenua? Mareikura makes the decision to reclaim her culture, and she begins a year of full immersion language school. What she's not prepared for is the pain triggered by the long-buried traumas of colonisation, oppression, casual racism, and never feeling as though you belong. At the same time, she's navigating her love life - an intense relationship with Kat - friendships old and new, and a family history that she's buried for too long. All That We Know is a powerful story that speaks to some painful truths about our country's history, while keeping readers turning the pages with shining prose, brilliant characterisation, pitch-perfect humour, and a huge amount of heart. You really connect with Mareikura, and her voice in your head encourages you to ask yourself some important questions about our society, and to see some issues in a new way." (Catalogue)
"It’s time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren’t falling apart, but they’re watching each other – Pete with his tachcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee. Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it’s as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister’s shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered. An emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we’re lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around." (Catalogue)
"Poorhara is the story of nineteen-year-old Erin, her older cousin Star/Whetu and an impromptu road trip taken over a few days. With the demands and heartbreaks of whanau, poverty and trauma nipping at their heels, Erin and Star trace the path back their whenua, in the hope of salvation - something they ultimately find in each other..." (Catalogue)
When I open the shop / dissanayake, romesh
''In his small noodle shop in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a young chef obsessively juliennes carrots. Nothing is going according to plan: the bills are piling up, his mother is dead, and there are strangers in his kitchen. The ancestors are watching closely. Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes - as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa - it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.'' (Catalogue)
Bird child & other stories / Grace, Patricia
"Mythology and contemporary Māori life are woven together seamlessly in this spectacular collection by Aotearoa's foremost short story writer. The titular story 'Bird Child' plunges you deep into Te Kore, an ancient time before time. In another, the formidable goddess Mahuika, Keeper of Fire, becomes a doting mother and friend. Later, Grace's own childhood vividly shapes the world of the young character Mereana; and a widower's hilariously human struggle to parent his seven daughters is told with trademark wit and crackling dialogue. Moving artfully across decades, landscapes, time and space, with tenderness and charm, Bird Child and Other Stories shows an author as adept and stimulating as ever." (Catalogue)
The royal free / Shuker, R. Carl
"James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical editor tasked with saving the 'third oldest medical journal in the world', the Royal London Journal of Medicine, from the mistakes no one else notices - the misplaced apostrophes, the Freudian misspelling, the wrong subtype of an influenza strain (H2N1 or H5N1?) ... Attempting to grieve for his lost young wife, while haunted by a group of violent North London teenagers in a collapsing city, James is brought to crisis." (Catalogue)
The life and opinions of Kartik Popat / Gnanalingam, Brannavan
"Kartik Popat breezes through his teenage years despite having no friends. He has no time for his fellow Indians or immigrants. He wants to earn money, without doing any work. He dreams of being a filmmaker, but ends up working at Parliament, racing through the ranks of advisors and party hacks. As the Covid lockdown sets in, he learns that there are more grifts in the world, than doing a half-arsed job. Mr Popat disputes all of the above characterisations. The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat casts a sidelong glare at the rise of wannabe South Asian demagogues in Western democracies, and imagines a version fit for Aotearoa. The novel lampoons the concept of the model minority, as Kartik makes a mockery of representational politics and reacts to the echo chambers and political movements of the day." (Catalogue)
"Singapore, 1951. When Josephina is a girl, her parents lock her in a room with the father of the boy to whom she's betrothed. What happens next will determine the lives of generations to come. New Zealand, 1984. Josephina and her family leave Sri Lanka for New Zealand. But their new home is not what they expected, and for the children, Sithara and Suri, a sudden and shocking event changes everything. London, 2018. Arriving on her uncle Suri's doorstep, jetlagged and heartbroken, Annie has no idea what to expect - all she knows is that Suri was cast out of the family before she was born. Moving between cities and generations, Amma follows three women on very different paths, against a backdrop of shifting cultures. As circumstance and misunderstanding force them apart, it will take the most profound love to knit them back together before it's too late." (Catalogue)
"Thea lives under a mountain - one that's ready to blow. A vet at a mid-sized rural practice, she has been called back during maternity leave and is coping - just - with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss's search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy. But something is shifting in Thea - something is burning. Or is it that she is becoming aware, for the first time, of the bright, hot core at her centre? Then comes an urgent call... Ash is a story about reckoning with one's rage and finding marvels in the midst of chaos." (Catalogue)
"In this latest, stunning collection of short stories by acclaimed writer Owen Marshall, people teeter on the brink of experience. From murder to an affair, to a promotion or a breakdown, the array of vivid characters aren't always aware of what they encounter, not sure whether they are being given an opportunity, a challenge, a temptation, a lesson, or just another day to get through. Meanwhile, feelings of fear, lust, curiosity and frustration simmer beneath the surface. Will the people grasp what life throws at them?" (Catalogue)
Ōkiwi Brown / Sanders, Cristina
"The Burke and Hare ‘anatomy murders’ of 1828 terrify Edinburgh, until Burke is hanged and Hare disappears. Over a decade later, in the early days of New Zealand colonial settlement, a whaler washes up on the eastern shores of Port Nicholson. He calls himself Ōkiwi Brown, sets up a pub with a nasty reputation and finds himself a woman who had been abandoned on his beach. Nearby, children sing dark nursery rhymes of murder. One afternoon Ōkiwi is visited by a pair of ex-soldiers, a bo’sun looking for a fight, and itinerant worker William Leckie with his young daughter Mary. When a body is discovered on the beach, it could be that a drunken man has drowned. But it could be that the gathered witnesses know something more..." (Catalogue)
My brilliant sister / Brown, Amy
"While Stella Miles Franklin took on the world, her beloved sister Linda led a short, domestic life as a wife, mother and sister. In a remarkable, genre-bending debut novel Amy Brown thrillingly reimagines those two lives - and her own - to explore and explode the contradictions embedded in brilliant careers and a woman's place in the world. Sliding Doors meets Wifedom." (Catalogue)
"Laura and Doug were together for ages. Their breakup was just one of those things - she wanted children, he didn't, no hard feelings - at least not until, with their relationship barely cold in its grave, he got his new girlfriend pregnant. Now, seven years later, a polite social call to his parents lands Laura back in the family, helping Doug and his playboy younger brother to cope with a whole raft of crises. And what better time to re-evaluate your major life decisions than when you're wrangling a farm, a bookshop, two small children, your ex's wife and his two sick parents?" (Catalogue)
Checkerboard hill / Kake, Jade
"Checkerboard HilI is a story of belonging, dislocation, misunderstandings, identity and fractured relationships. When a family member dies in Australia, Ria flies from New Zealand and returns to the family and home in Australia she suddenly left decades before as a teenager. Waiting for her return are her husband and son in New Zealand. Neither family has met the other, and Ria has always kept her Māori, Australian, New Zealand identities and lives separate. But the family tensions, unfinished arguments, connections to places and meeting of former friends, lead Ria to revisit her memories and reflect on the social and cultural tensions and racism she experienced, and the decisions she made. The novel confronts the complexities of families, secrets and trauma and the way these play out across generations. It also explores the ways in which Māori cultural traditions and tikanga are transmuted and transformed across the Tasman, across time and space." (Catalogue)
"Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn is the inaugural title in a new series of short story collections from Landfall Tauraka and Otago University Press, celebrating the art of short fiction in Aotearoa New Zealand. Contradictions, misunderstandings, oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges - these messy troubles are the stuff of life. In Pretty Ugly, Gunn reminds us of her unparalleled acumen in handling ambiguity and complication, which are essential grist to the storyteller's mill. These 13 stories, set in New Zealand and in the UK, are a testament to Gunn's unrivalled ability to look directly into the troubled human heart and draw out what dwells there..." (Catalogue)
A house built on sand / Shaw, Tina
"Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files -- and her job as a result. Her marbles? 'Mild cognitive impairment', according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose. Rose has her own troubles with memory, a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere. Back in that house by the beach, Maxine and Rose try to find their bearings. But they can't move forward without dealing with the past -- and the past has a few more surprises in store." (Catalogue)
Ngāti Pātea = Pātea boys / Ngarewa, Airana
"From the bestselling author of The Bone Tree comes a lively and playful bilingual collection of stories about growing up in Patea. Interlinked and full of recurring characters, these stories are about growing up in small-town Aotearoa -- sneaking away during cross country or doing bombs while the lifeguard isn't looking. The collection is designed to bridge a gap between children's books in te reo and full-length literary works. With each story featured in both English and te reo Maori, it's the perfect resource for those on their reo learning journeys as well as for readers who enjoyed The Bone Tree." (Catalogue)
Oh, go on...
Alright, look - we have a confession to make... We were never going to be able to stick to 20 for this list!
Why did we impose such an arbitrary limit on ourselves? So, because we're sneaky librarians who both follow and flaunt the rules, we've snuck back to add just a few more! If we could go on (we can!), we would add...
The songbirds of Florence / Spooner, Olivia
"In 1942, a group of young women arrive in Cairo, Egypt. The Tuis, named after the beautiful New Zealand songbird, are the first women from their country to serve overseas. They are to provide respite and a touch of home to weary soldiers returning from the front line. Addy joined the Tuis for the adventure. Vivacious and outgoing, she is the life of the party, with an unforgettable voice. Margot is quiet and withdrawn, grieving the young husband she lost to the war. Despite their differences, the girls become fast friends. When the Tuis are relocated to Italy to set up clubs in grand venues, Addy and Margot are enchanted by the culture. But dark shadows loom, and when their illusion of peace is shattered by news of a devastating attack, the friends will find their endurance pushed to the limit." (Catalogue)
The ornithologist's field guide to love / Holton, India
"Two rival ornithologists. Seeking one dangerous, beautiful bird. Is the hunt of their lives also how they find the love of their lives? Professor Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare Deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, stealing both her bird and her imagination. For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Beth. When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. They're hunting the rarest of species. But will these rivals discover something even more endangered - true love." (Catalogue)
And that's a wrap on our picks of the 2024 Aotearoa general fiction - we're looking forward to another wonderful year of reading in 2025! See you in the New Year!