books aplenty in this week's Listener

Books & Culture Editor Guy Somerset reports:

There are books aplenty in this week's Listener, kicking off with an interview with Christchurch Writers Festival-bound novelist Chris Cleave (left).

Susan Jacobs profiles the talent cut cruelly short that was Renato Amato, and we also have two online-only examples of his short stories  (http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/books/only-a-matter-of-grammar-by-renato-amato/ + http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/books/a-walk-into-the-shadows-by-renato-amato/).

We can't get enough war, with reviews of Michele Roberts's Ignorance, Simon Mawer's The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, Georgina Harding's Painter of Silence + Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic. Ann Packer rounds up books for children and young adults + Sally Blundell reviews Te Hao Nui: The Great Catch - Object Stories from Te Manawa.

Among new postings on our website, there are reviews of Emily Perkins’s The Forrests, Richard Ford’s Canada and Philip Larkin’s The Complete Poems (plus CK Stead’s poem Larkin - http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/poetry/larkin-by-ck-stead/).

Our Book Club podcast about Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies is now available to listen to, plus a podcast interview with New Zealand Post Book Awards judges convenor Chris Bourke (accompanied by our reviews of, and features on, all the finalists).

For July, our Book Club is going to have three choices – the awards’ fiction finalists: Fiona Kidman’s The Trouble with Fire, Paula Morris’s Rangatira amd Sue Orr’s From Under the Overcoat. We will have a special podcast discussion that month comprising three former award judges: Tilly Lloyd, of Unity Books in Wellington; Jane Westaway, writer and co-editor of New Zealand Books; and one Graham Beattie.

In August, out Book Club choice will be the Text Classics reissue of David Ballantyne’s 1968 novel Sydney Bridge Upside Down -  a book with many admirers, not least Kate De Goldi
(http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/books/sydney-bridge-redux/).