Kirsty Gunn

Gail Ching-Liang Low

Imagined Spaces

Infidelities

The debut of an astonishing new literary talent, Rain proves that its author, Kirsty Gunn, is already a master of her craft. Written in luminous prose and embroidered with sensuous imagery, Rain is an unforgettable novel. Twelve-year-old Janey and her younger brother, Jim spend summers at a lake with their parents. Ignored for long stretches and then called upon suddenly to mix drinks or receive drunken kisses, the children huddle together in tender, compulsive closeness. Nourished only by their devotion to one another, the two fill their neglected hours exploring the lush, dangerous landscape and protecting each other from the unpredictable moods of the dark adult world that surrounds them. A haunting, beautifully rendered story that explores the hidden dangers of childhood, Rain has established Kirsty Gunn as one of the most promising and original writers of her generation.

Rain

Gail Low

Our everyday senses supply only a small fraction of what we actually perceive—the rest is filled in by what we think we already know, or have learnt from newspapers and magazines, and other media. So how much of our experience is really thought about, felt and reflected upon? This ground-breaking anthology asks us to consider the space between the known and the unknown, between fact and the imagination, between the external and the internal. In words and images that explore our environment and culture, that reflect on literary and artistic creation, mortality, mental wellness, home and belonging, Imagined Spaces returns the essay to its original activity of having a go, trying and weighing something out, taking a risk. An exciting and provocative collection that is fun, entertaining, and deeply serious. Join us in the space that follows and be part of an adventure essaying into the unknown...

This new collection of stories offers a candid peek at infidelity in all its guises. These are tales of lust, deceit, resentment and regret - and of the secrets and lies that can chip away at human relationships. In a series of interwoven dramas, we find mothers yearning for adventure, for the exhilaration of the open road or the anonymity of the forest; fathers absent in body or mind; husbands who look the other way; complacency turned to spite and apathy turned to betrayal. At the same time Gunn pursues the glorious rush of a snap decision, the liberty of answering that siren call of a better life elsewhere. Written with Gunn's trademark attention to nuances of behaviour, motive and even landscape, Infidelity is a temptingly beautiful work that asks 'What if?' and dares to find out.

Poetry to Empower Every Woman

Such a Sweet Singing

'Alright' I said, 'I'll try...' This is how Emily Stuart opens her intricate tale of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline's Bikini: a swirling cocktail of infatuation, obsession, and imagination. The moment that Emily's friend Evan Gordonstone - a successful middle-aged financier - meets Caroline Beresford - a glamorous former horsewoman, and now housewife, hostess, and landlady - there is a 'PING!' At least, that's how Evan describes it to Emily when he persuades her to record his story: the story of falling into unrequited love, which is as old as Western literature itself. Thus begins a hypnotic series of conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West London's bars, fuelled in intensity by endless G&Ts and Q&As. From the depths of mid-winter to July's hot swelter, Emily's narration of Evan's passion for Caroline will take him to the brink of his own destruction. Written in a voice so playful, so charismatic, and so thoughtfully aware of the responsibilities of fiction it can only be by Kirsty Gunn, Caroline's Bikini is a swooning portrait of courtly love - in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!

Caroline's Bikini

Art needs a sense of lack to bring about its own effects; where there is no feeling of need to make up a shortfall, there will be no work. Alright' I said, 'I'll try...' This is how Emily Stuart opens the intricately involved account of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline's Bikini: a tale of hope, passion, and the power of the imagination. For they say, the story of love - or, rather, falling in love - is timeless, and that unrequited love is the most passionate of all. It's certainly a narrative that is, in its own curious and enticing way, as old as Western literature itself.

In this exquisitely written ‘notebook’, Kirsty Gunn explores the meaning of home. Returning to the city of her birth after an absence of thirty years, Gunn’s exploration quickly takes on new forms, developing into a ‘Katherine Mansfield Project’. Zig-zagging across Thorndon streets, Wellington hills and New Zealand childhoods, Gunn’s project charts a terrain of emotional attachment and the source of potent imaginative forces. A wonderfully connective work from the winner of the 2013 New Zealand Post Book of the Year.

Wellington and Home: My Katherine Mansfield Project

Thorndon

Owen Marshall

Maurice Gee

Martin Edmond

Award-winning New Zealand writers Martin Edmond, Maurice Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Owen Marshall explore life and memory in this bundle of BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. Martin Edmond’s Barefoot Years is a memoir in which the author attempts to re-inhabit the lost domain of childhood. Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers, Maurice Gee has written virtually no non-fiction. The exceptions are the two exquisite childhood reminiscences combined in a mini-memoir, Creeks and Kitchens. In this exquisitely written ‘notebook’ – ‘My Katherine Mansfield Project’ – Kirsty Gunn explores the meaning of ‘home’ in Thorndon. Owen Marshall reflects at length on his writing career and the forces that have shaped him as a writer, in Tunes for Bears to Dance To. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

BWB Texts: Writers' Lives

The mysterious disappearance and absence of a young woman from an isolated Scottish town have a profound impact on the lives of everyone she touched, but her possible homecoming could provide a catalyst for even more unsettling changes in their lives. By the author of Rain. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

Featherstone

A collection of short stories explores the paradox of home as both a place of departure and return, comprising a mosaic of voices portrayed with breathtaking skill by an acclaimed new author. Reprint.

This Place You Return to Is Home

A young woman returns again and again in dreams and her imagination to the stories that her mother told her about a father who loved her but whom she did not know until she starts to relive her mother's abandonment

The Keepsake

Kirsty Gunn is known for the powerful use of landscape in her fiction. In Going Bush, landscape again comes to the forefront as she revisits the vistas of her childhood in New Zealand, evoking an ethereal and meditative autobiography of place. Revisiting with words the landscapes she once explored by sight, sound, and touch, Gunn uncovers what is wild about these places, in particular the bush. Interweaving essay, memoir, and narrative, she recalls the ways in which the landscape's very foreignness could also have provided refuge to a child--an escape from the suffocating cultural norms of colonial society. Gunn's words are accompanied by a series of images made specially for the cahier by her sister, Merran Gunn, which extend the exploration of words' capabilities--and their limitations--in attempting to address the particularities of place.

Going Bush

In 2009, Kirsty Gunn returned to spend the winter in her hometown of Wellington, New Zealand, also the place where Katherine Mansfield grew up. In this exquisitely written “notebook,” which blends memoir, biography, and essay, Gunn records that winter-long experience and the unparalleled insight it allowed her into Mansfield’s fiction. Gunn explores the idea of home and belonging—and of the profound influence of Mansfield’s work on her own creative journey. She asks whether it is even possible to “come home”—and who are we when we get there?

My Katherine Mansfield Project

From the author of Rain and Featherstone comes a story of a sun-drenched, sea-soaked day which changes a boy's life forever. At the start of a summer's day, Ward is waiting on the beach. His friend, Alex, wants him to come to a party at Alison's where there'll be girls and drinks and the possibilities of fun. But Ward is shy and self conscious and struggling to move from under the weight of his powerful father. He'd rather wait on the beach for the surf to come up. As the the sun moves towards its highest point and the girls' laughter carries along the wind towards Ward, the tide changes and Ward is faced with a dramatic event that will change his life forever. This beautiful and intense coming-of-age story captures perfectly the discomforts and challenges of being fifteen years old with the world stretching out in front of you. Sensual, heady, as though dazed by the heat of her pages, Gunn slowly unfolds a tale of danger and sexuality, of mothers and sons and the fathers who rule them, and of the sea.

The Boy and the Sea

Es ist Sommer, und der fünfzehnjährige Ward verbringt die Ferien mit seinem Vater am Meer. Die Luft flimmert, tiefblau hängt der Himmel über dem heißen Sand. Die Zeit scheint angehalten, das Leben ist leicht und voller Verheißung. Wards Freunde wollen surfen gehen, während die Mädchen der Clique eine Party vorbereiten. Die Jungen stürzen sich mit ihren Brettern in die Brandung. Ward folgt ihnen nur zögerlich. Um ihn herum rauscht das Meer, lockt und flüstert: "Komm zu mir." Ward weiß, dass ihn sein Vater beobachtet, der auf der Veranda hinter ihm mit den Mädchen flirtet, in deren Anwesenheit er selbst immer nur hilflos um Worte ringt. Doch in diesem Sommer wird das Meer alles verändern... Mit "Der Junge und das Meer" hat Kirsty Gunn ein literarisches Juwel von hypnotischer Kraft und lyrischer Schönheit geschaffen, das vom Aufruhr des Herzens erzählt: zärtlich, erotisch und geheimnisvoll.

Der Junge und das Meer

The Big Music tells the story of John Sutherland of 'The Grey House', who is dying and creating in the last days of his life a musical composition that will define it. Yet he has little idea of how his tune will echo or play out into the world - and as the book moves inevitably through its themes of death and birth, change and stasis, the sound of his solitary story comes to merge and connect with those around him. In this remarkable work of fiction, Kirsty Gunn has created something as real as music or as magical as a dream. One emerges at the end of it altered and changed. Not so much a novel as a place the reader comes to inhabit and know, The Big Music is a literary work of undeniable originality and power.

Kirsty Gunn

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