This week's biggest-selling books at King's Birthday Weekend
1 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
'She [Chidgey] seems to get a ridiculous amount of promotion through your column,' moaned Newsroom reader Louise Bryant in the comments section this week. Oh well! Here we go again, then, paying too much heed to the author widely regarded as the best living New Zealand novelist who appears to be at her peak, with her latest novel settling into its Number 1 bestseller position for the third consecutive week and likely holding onto that status for quite some considerable time to come as word of mouth continues to recommend The Book of Guilt as a scary, literary, absorbing story of children kept as lab rats. A free copy was up for grabs (alongside Delirious by Damien Wilkins) in last week's giveaway contest. The entries were so interesting – readers were asked to make some sort of comment about Chidgey – that I wrote a story about them on Thursday. The winner is Madeleine Setchell, chairperson of Fertility NZ, 'a small but mighty charity that walks alongside all New Zealanders facing infertility'. Huzzah to Madeleine; she wins Delirious by Damien Wilkins, as well as a copy of the cheerfully over-promoted The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey.
2 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
3 See How They Fall by Rachel Paris (Hachette, $37.99)
4 1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin Random House, $38)
A free copy of this tough new tale of Grey Lynn noir is up for grabs in this week's giveaway contest. Hoey is a sort of literary establishment outsider. So, too, is American writer Alex Perez, who posted an apparently controversial rant on Substack this week about one of the themes of Hoey's novel, the crisis of masculinity. He writes, 'The literary man is constantly haunted by the specter of masculinity. This is obviously an elite—and striver—problem, because working-class men, unless they somehow meet a New Yorker staffer on the construction site, haven't been aware that this discourse has been ongoing for a decade. The non-online man, warts and all, just is. He might be misogynist; he might be a brute. But he's just whatever kind of dude he is, and that's that. Most of my time is spent hanging out with regular dudes who aren't obsessed with their masculinity, so the neurotic behavior of the literary man is always jarring …'
To enter the draw to win 1985, read Perez's Substack argument, and remark upon it at whatever length in an email to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps A WORKING CLASS HERO IS SOMETHING TO BE by midnight on Sunday, June 1.
Good cover.
5 Tea and Cake and Death (The Bookshop Detectives 2) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $38)
6 Black Silk and Buried Secrets (Tatty Crowe 2) by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $37.99)
7 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $26)
8 The Good Mistress by Anne Tierman (Hachette, $37.99)
9 Sea Change by Jenny Pattrick (David Bateman, $37.99)
10 All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Hachette, $37.99)
I very briefly ran into the author at the recent Auckland Writers Festival. I got a bit lost trying to find the correct venue to watch Noelle McCarthy chair a Norwegian author, blundered into a room I thought was right, but instead saw Shilo Kino waiting to go onstage with Jeremy Hansen in a session about humour. Shilo said, 'Hi Steve!' I replied, 'Hi Shilo!' Then I turned and fled, pausing to say to Jeremy, 'You look younger every time I see you.' Anyway, it must have been a good session; Shilo's very funny novel was published over a year ago, but sales at the AWF have resurrected it into the top 10.
NONFICTION
1 Whānau by Donovan Farnham & Rehua Wilson (Hachette, 29.99)
2 Full Circle by Jenny-May Clarkson (HarperCollins, $39.99)
'Over time,' writes the presenter of Breakfast in her new memoir, 'the scrutiny wears you down. Not just the actual things that people say but the awareness of what they might say. When I started in television, the comments were mostly about my appearance. But, as I settled into my role at Breakfast, that started to change. Of late, a lot of the negative comments I get have been centred on who I am. My Māoritanga. I don't look at them, don't even get the Breakfast inbox emails on my computer, because if I had to read some of what comes in, I just wouldn't ever be able to say anything again. But every now and then, I'll catch something someone's said before I've been able to look away.
'The other day, I spotted a comment where someone was complaining about my use of te reo Māori. 'Don't like watching her, sick of her pushing too much Māori on to people, just speak English.' That sort of thing. Worse, usually. You know the style. I used to get absolutely thrown by comments like that but they don't rock me now. I just think, How bizarre. And how sad. Because it is sad. Sad that someone thinks it's okay to talk about another person like that. Sad that they don't accept that my reo is a big part of who I am as a person and that I am not only selected but endorsed by my employer, TVNZ. Sad that they don't realise te reo Māori is one of the official languages of our country, so there's no such thing as 'too much'. Sad that they don't know how precious and amazing it is that we have our reo.'
Striking cover.
3 Everyday Comfort Food by Vanya Insull (Allen & Unwin, $39.99)
4 Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw (Allen & Unwin, $39.99)
5 No Words for This by Ali Mau (HarperCollins, $39.99)
6 Atua Wāhine by Hana Tapiata (HarperCollins, $36.99)
7 Fix Iron First by Dr Libby (Little Green Frog Publishing, $39.95)
Self-helper all about iron. Blurbology: 'When iron levels are low, everything feels harder. Your energy fades. Your mood shifts. Your resilience diminishes … What's not recognised often enough is that low iron doesn't just make you tired. It can alter your brain chemistry, slow your metabolism, impact your thyroid, disturb your sleep and lower your emotional resilience … This book is for anyone who has ever felt persistently tired, anxious, low in mood, or disconnected from their spark – and not known why. It's for parents watching a child struggle with energy or concentration. It's for women navigating the rhythms of their menstrual cycle or the shifts of perimenopause. It's for anyone who feels like they're doing everything right but still doesn't feel like themselves – or who has tried, unsuccessfully, to restore their iron levels and is still searching for answers.'
8 Northbound by Naomi Arnold (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Two excellent books about the great New Zealand outdoors have been published in 2025. Northbound is the author's account of walking the Te Araroa track; Fire & Ice: Secrets, histories, treasures and mysteries of Tongariro National Park by Hazel Phillips is an illustrated book about the central plateau, and was reviewed very favourably this week.
9 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
10 Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins, $39.99)
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A summer-themed version of the Gregg's 'Different Faces' ad, 1970. When the Cat's Away were not the first singers to present an idealised view of New Zealand's race relations. In the same year that Blue Mink's original version of 'Melting Pot' hit the charts, nightly ad breaks on the country's sole television network began to feature a 50-second jingle for Gregg's coffee and would remain in rotation for much of the decade. It opened with the lines: 'Different faces, many races, living in the sun / good times to remember where all may live as one.' Sung with soulful conviction by former Sounds Unlimited frontman Alan Galbraith, this pop ballad-in-miniature plays over a fast-cut visual collage. A pipe-smoking, coffee-sipping Pākehā man stands on a city balcony, looking on as a cross-section of New Zealanders go about their daily routines, 'living in a place where each is free to go his way…' There are elderly couples, signwriters, students, hippie protesters, children, plus a couple of gratuitous rear-view shots of a woman in a miniskirt, cropped to show her only from below the waist. Among the predominantly Pākehā faces are several Asian and Māori ones. It is claimed to be the first non-animated television commercial in which Māori appear. But 'Different Faces' had echoes of an earlier song. Back in 1963, two years after the Hunn report, the Kini Quartet, a Māori vocal group from Gisborne, enjoyed a moment in the national spotlight with a record that delicately and poignantly illuminated both the hopes and hypocrisies of New Zealand's so-called race relations. 'Under the Sun' opens with a long chord and a solemn proclamation. It has been written in the Book for Man That all men are equal under the sun… Martin Kini's Biblical baritone is soon joined by a guitar playing a familiar jinga-jick rhythm – the classic Māori strum – while the voices of Joe Williams and Esther and Barney Taihuka slide into harmony behind him as he imagines a land, free from war, inequality, poverty or any of the other ills of the world. There is no war and so no pain All are as one Under the sun In the land of the free in our own country Where our babies are taught as one… For many Māori, there was a marked contrast between the song and lived experience. In a town such as Pukekohe, there had been recent cases of barber's shops, picture theatres, swimming pools and hotels imposing their own colour bans. Elsewhere Māori children were still being punished for speaking te reo in school. Babies 'taught as one'? Only if they conformed to the monoculture. Whose country was it, and free for who? Like the Kini Quartet, the song's author, Margaret Raggett, came from Gisborne, born at the height of the Depression. Her mother was Irish Pākehā, her father part-Māori, but the pair never married, and Margaret – who was always known as Tiny – was brought up by her solo mother. Life was tough and music was her refuge. She taught herself piano and guitar and began writing songs, even before she was at secondary school. Tiny married her childhood sweetheart, Bill Raggett, and the pair set up home not far from Te Poho o Rawiri marae. The marae was the hub of the local community and a hotbed of musical activity, and Tiny and Bill, who was Pākehā, spent much time there. It was here that she first encountered the Kini Quartet, a group of musical cousins who had caught the ear of Auckland record label manager Eldred Stebbing and were looking for original material to record. She wrote both sides of their first single, released in 1962. On the A-side was 'Hard Times Are Coming', a wry reflection on Pākehā economic anxiety. (The song suggested that while Pākehā panicked, Māori would easily survive a new depression because they would grow their own vegetables and catch kaimoana.) On the B-side was an early version of the song that would soon become known as 'Under the Sun', this version sung in te reo and titled 'Te Kotahitanga', which can be translated as 'The Unity' or 'Oneness'. The song shared its name with an organisation set up around the same time to teach cultural roots and self-worth to young Māori returning to the East Coast after spending time in the cities, where many had experienced homesickness and racism. 'Under the Sun' is a protest song of the subtlest kind. It doesn't bother to point out the injustices that are the reason for its being written in the first place. In the manner of John Lennon's 'Imagine' (composed nearly a decade later) it goes straight to the utopian alternative, depicting a perfect land, with a gentle optimism that flows from its lyric to its hopeful melody. The effect is bittersweet. The song became a local standard. Auckland folkies the Convairs covered it on a 1966 EP and, as 'Te Kotahitanga', it appeared on Maoriland Favourites, sung by Daphne Walker, Buddy Wilson and Morgan Clarke. Though the Kini Quartet would carry on through various line-up changes for another decade and record several more of Tiny Raggett's songs, 'Under The Sun' remains their biggest hit. I thought of The Kini Quartet, Tiny Raggett and 'Under the Sun' the first time I heard Te Whare Tiwekaweka, Marlon Williams' latest album, his first written and sung entirely in te reo Māori. Seeing Marlon perform these songs in concert, I was particularly struck by the segment when he and his band gathered together in one small area of the stage with acoustic instruments, all strumming and singing together on his beautiful song 'Whakameatia Mai'. In that moment they seemed to have transformed into the Kini Quartet. Though the album is, in one sense, a departure for Marlon, it can also be heard as a natural development of the music he has been making for the past decade or so. It still leans towards country, for which his mellifluous voice is the perfect instrument. But it is clear that he has also been thinking about the ways in which Māori – from the days of the Kini Quartet and earlier – have played their country music with a kapa haka twist. Driven by voices and acoustic guitars, with other instruments used only sparingly, it could almost be Gisborne in 1963. While the songs do not address political issues directly, to make an album in te reo at a time when Māori language and culture are being subjected to political attacks is a statement in itself. But it was also a practical way for Marlon to get past a writer's block. 'Te reo Māori allowed me to be more candid,' he says. 'If I tried to write those words in English, that'd be a really hard job.' Drawing metaphors from the land, the ocean and the elements – a common device in Māori oratory and song – he found he was able to poetically address such subjects as loneliness, parting, and the inner turmoil that comes from being an artist who, by necessity, is always on the move. But if the album leans heavily on sad love songs – which are, after all, country music's stock in trade – the total effect is optimistic and uplifting. For Māori it is a celebration of their musical heritage, their language and its poetic powers. For Pākehā it shows that te reo is not going to go away, nor need it be feared. It is something uniquely of this place that can contribute to everyone's sense of belonging. The title Te Whare Tiwekaweka – which can be translated as The Messy House – suggests neither a melting pot monoculture nor a utopian dream, but rather a work in progress. A home that is untidy yet alive.
