just when you thought books were good

... the new zealand book council makes them even better!

enjoy XX



p.s. this short film is also now the proud bearer of two film craft lions awards from the cannes lions international advertising festival. hear hear!

my mistress's sparrow is dead

a collection of love stories edited by jeffrey eugenides. reviewed by kimberley.

don’t be fooled by this book. yes, it is a collection of love stories but not in the sense you might immediately imagine. absent are the happy ever afters, the swooning princesses, and the gallant knights: this is a collection of stories that show love as it is. together they remind us that there is no one kind of love and it is not confined to one kind of relationship. individually, they show us how love is not always tender, is hardly ever perfect, and how, sometimes, you even find yourself pretending to be someone you’re not because of it.

i could go into detail about why i appreciated every single one of the stories in this collection, but i’ll be considerate of your time (and your capacity to listen. i could go on for hours) and only deal with my favourites.

the first, “something that needs nothing” by miranda july, needs no explanation because i’ve already talked about it on this blog and i loved it this time for the same reasons i loved it the last time i read it. it’s the story of one person desperately in love with someone that will never love her back unless she pretends to be someone she’s not. it’s a story that sensitively captures the hopeless devotion love can entail. visit the post on miranda july’s short story collection nobody belongs here more than you to read more.

moving on. the thing i appreciated the most about the next, “jon” by george saunders, was actually the writing style. this is a story of young love and first compromises between a boy and a girl who have grown up in an environment, saturated with labels and logos and advertising, that is isolated from the “real” world. when the girl falls pregnant, she decides to return to the real world for the sake of her baby, and the boy (who narrates the story) is faced with the decision of whether or not to follow her. his is a voice imbued with the products and advertisements he has been absorbing all his life – he describes everything that happens to or around him with reference to a product he has tested or an ad he has seen. there’s a certain roundaboutness to his way of describing things that is both endearing and also feels familiar in a world where we often relate our own experiences, including that of love, to the media imposed upon us. take the following passage, for example:

and though i had many times seen LI 34321 for honey grahams, where the stream of milk and the stream of honey enjoin to make that river of sweet-tasting goodness, i did not know that, upon making love, one person may become like the milk and the other like the honey, and soon they cannot even remember who started out the milk and who the honey, they just become one fluid, this like milk/honey combo. (298)

while there were a number of other stories in this collection that i would really like to talk about here, i won’t. i'd like to leave them for you to discover for yourself. for there’s one thing that this collection of stories emphasised for me and that was that what we think of as the universal experience love is incredibly diverse, not just in terms of who it impacts and how but how each person experiences it differently from anyone else. which is why it's only natural that every reader’s experience of each of these stories will be as diverse as their individual experiences of love.

xx

no one belongs here more than you

one of the most enjoyable things about this touching and very human collection of short stories is the delightfully quirky bent that author miranda july (in true miranda july style) brings to it. if you've seen her film me and you and everyone we know then you'll already be familiar with ms july's heartwarmingly awkward presence and you're bound to love this book (if you haven't seen the film: go. now).

all the stories are pretty cool but there were a couple that really stood out. the first was "something that needs nothing" which tells the tale of a painfully half-realised love – in this story the joy of one character finally fulfilling their desire for another is bitterly balanced out by the pain they feel at only being able to do so partially. it's a tricky sensation to try and describe but i think the closest image i can apply is that of being able to constantly smell your favourite meal cooking (and feeling your mouth water and stomach gurgle) without ever being able to actually eat it.

the other that really struck me was "the boy from lam kien" which describes the situation of a woman so painfully shy she won't even leave her own home. the isolated world she inhabits within her four walls is broken in upon one day by a young boy who, completely unaware (in the way that kids usually are) of what's going on in the woman's head, sees no reason not to invite himself round to his neighbour's house for afternoon tea and a chat. what i liked so much about this story was the contrast between the (totally self-constructed) complexity of the woman and the almost selfish simplicity of the boy. plus my heart broke a little bit for this lady who was so terrified of life she wouldn't live it.

which leads me to add, actually, that my heart broke a little bit for each of the characters in these stories and, each time, it was because i could see a little bit of my own awkwardness or that of someone i love in them.

XX

p.s. if you are completely unfamiliar with miranda july then visiting her website for this book will give you some idea. just go look, i can't explain: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/ .

paper cut perfection

for quite some time now we've been big fans of nikki mcclure's paper cut art.

this very clever lady, a self-taught artist from olympia, washington, uses an x-acto knife to carve incredibly intricate images out of paper. the trick is that every single one of her images remains an entire sheet of paper (no mean feat when you see just how much detail she has cut into them).

her work speaks of community, family, sustainability, and the environment. it encourages us to slow down and take time to look at all the simple things around us that we so often miss in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

nikki's art is something that always revitalises us when important (a.k.a boring but stressful)things get us frazzled. we hope it does the same for you too.

xx

the book of love

cathie recently finished reading this book and loved it so much she's got a few thoughts about it to share with us:

the book of love was recommended to me by two wonderful women – bonnie the artist and sue the writer. this is a woman’s book – like no other except possibly some parallels with the red tent by anita diamante. the book of love is a moving novel with some fascinating historic research woven throughout. if the lands of france and italy speak to you in ways you can’t easily explain then this book will also speak to you. art, architecture, history and intrigue ... you'll enjoy this one! p.s. the book of love is kathleen mcgowan's sequel to her earlier book the expected one. XX cathie