Bobby Palmer's debut Isaac and the Egg, about a grief-paralysed widower whose life improves when he meets an ET-like creature, was a big hit. The British author's second novel also has the flavour of a modern-day fable. What makes it like a fable is not so much the - yes - talking fox, but more the novel's rhythmic prose and its sense that there can be communication between all living things.
The story centres on the relationship between city-dweller Jack, for whom "finance felt like a calling, the ultimate question to be solved", and his naturalist father Gerry who never leaves Moles End, the remote and ramshackle country home he shares with Jack's mother Hazel and sister Charlotte.
We first meet Jack when the finance sector start-up he works for goes bust. He is devastated but has no one to tell. He lived for work, has no friends and little contact with his, to him, depressingly rustic and unambitious family.
SMALL HOURS
by Bobby Palmer (Headline, $37.99)
Esta historia es de la edición March 30 - April 5, 2024 de New Zealand Listener.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 30 - April 5, 2024 de New Zealand Listener.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
A big noise
Scott Kara pays tribute to alternative rock figurehead Steve Albini.
Fiddling on the roof
After the doco recut by Peter Jackson, the original Let It Be returns as odd as ever.
Get with the pilgrim
Australian film-maker Bill Bennett thought turning his Camino de Santiago experience into a movie would be a good walk ruined. But he did it anyway.
The real queen of Bridgerton
Regency women would have a ball if they were transported from 'the Ton' to the present day, author Julia Quinn says.
Setting boundaries
A giant in the philosophy of gender seems unwilling to engage with alternative points of view or the reality of biological sex.
Affair of the heart
Miranda July's second novel, a wild ride through an unconventional relationship, is not for the faint-hearted.
A continent of no laws
A Kiwi investigative journalist has spent 21 years trying to get to the bottom of what many believe is the suspicious death of an Australian scientist in Antarctica.
I'm Jo Peck again
Four weeks after her 60th birthday, Jo Peck's husband of 25 years told her he was seeing someone else. In a new book, she details how shock and disbelief made way for happiness and contentment.
A mayor for everyone
The Far North's first Māori mayor is one of an emerging political generation bringing equity to the forefront. But a government reversal on Māori wards looms as a stumbling block.
We need to talk about dying
Whether by choice or weight of numbers, more of us will die at home in future. And with pressure to ease assisted dying restrictions, the gaps in community-based care need fixing - before time runs out.
