The Latest from Hastings Library Book Chat

24 August 2026

Our August session of Book Chat began with some well-recommended non-fiction. This included The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee, a memoir and recounting the author’s escape from North Korea at the age of fifteen, which would have been terrible for her family left at home. Twelve years later she took steps to bring her mother and brother across the border. The book describes ordinary life in North Korea under one of the world’s most ruthless dictatorships. Our reader really enjoyed Lee’s story.

Simon Burt’s Route 52: a big lump of country unknown describes a road trip, the author taking his trusty caravan along and stopping to talk to the people he meets on the way. The journey he takes is a tortuous back road between Masterton and Waipukurau and there are lots of interesting characters. Our reader thought it was a bit like Country Calendar. A great read.

Anyone who has lived in or who visits Wellington will find Elizabeth Cox’s Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington street by street a fascinating read. Surveyor Thomas Ward recorded every building from Thorndon to Berhampore over ten years in the late 1800s. The map gives you a sense of what life was like in Wellington at the time and the people who lived there.

Tina Makereti’s book of essays, This Compulsion in Us was extremely well reviewed, describing, among other things, pakeha from a Māori perspective. These frank and moving essays are lyrical, personal and critical, the author exploring the different ways she has learnt from family and ancestors how to be a wahine Māori.

Among the crime fiction enjoyed by the group was Elizabeth George’s A Banquet of Consequences featuring posh detective Inspector Lynley and his dogged partner Barbara Havers. Can there be a link between a young man’s suicide and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge. Our reader found it a good story, although was appalled at the crime described.

Click is the new book by Aussie Noir author Sarah Bailey. When the body of a backpacker is found with a cryptic note attached, and two more women disappear, Melbourne is gripped by fear. Photos arrive in the inboxes of the police and the media, sent by the killer. Journalist Oli Groves has a new digital news site and sees the story’s potential to build an audience. And we’ve also got a rookie detective eager to prove her worth, but the danger is closer than they think. This book was a really enjoyable crime thriller.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s crime novel, The Wake was described as enjoyable if a little unbelievable. Medical examiner Idunn is called to assist when two bodies are found on a rocky beach in the Westman Islands off the Iceland coast. A group of old friends had stayed at a lighthouse near the beach while attending a wake. There are secrets from the past to uncover; meanwhile Idunn is haunted by memories from her time growing up on the island.

Janine is an author with writer’s block in The Secrets of Strangers by Jess Kitching. Seeking a fresh start she and her husband move to a quiet English village, but things are less than peaceful when a woman with odd similarities to Janine goes missing. Janine decides to investigate the disappearance, but gets caught up in a tangled web of secrets and lies. Well recommended.

Also heartily enjoyed was The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening by New Zealand author Naomi Kuttner. This is a cosy mystery, the first in a series about Dante, who moves to Te Kohe, a quiet coastal town, for some peace and quiet. But he’s soon caught up in investigating crime with his hard to ignore visitors, Charlie, a gardener with secrets, and redoubtable Eleanor with a spooky talent, to help.

Still with the cosy mysteries was the new Bookshop Detectives mystery, Murder and Mojitos by Gareth and Louise Ward. Another enjoyable crime caper with lots of fun local colour. We’ve got an Art Deco event at the bookshop involving Cuba’s queen of crime fiction – an event sure to bring in the punters. But things take a darker turn when mysterious parcels arrive at the shop and a body discovered on the beach, both of which point to a sinister killer from Garth and Eloise’s past.

We heard about several historical novels set during World War Two, among them The Gift of Rain, an earlier book by Tan Twan Eng. In this book we’re in Penang in 1939 and our main character is Philip Hutton who is half Chinese, half English, but never felt he belonged. Until he befriends a Japanese diplomat, which becomes problematic when Japan invades Malaya. This is a great story, made even better by the author’s extraordinary writing.

Award-winning author Catherine Chidgey often turns up at Book Chat. Her 2016 novel The Wish Child takes us to World War Two in Germany, where two children witness their parents’ involvement in the Nazi regime and “the puzzling mechanisms of power”. Our reader liked the story which takes you through the war and its aftermath, the children’s resilience and survival.

Still with World War Two, The End and the Beginning by K J Holdom is a novel based on a true story. Brother and sister, Max and Anna are French children who are caught up in the Nazi invasion – Max sent to Hitler Youth Camp and their mother having to work for a Nazi officer while trying to protect Anna. Although this was an interesting story it felt somewhat disjointed at times.

A kind of fantasy novel with a historical basis is The Unicorn Hunters by Kathryn Arden, set in mediaeval France. Anne of Brittany is sovereign duchess in a country occupied by the French, expected to marry their king. Desperate not to lose her country, she makes an alliance with the king of France’s greatest rival. The story also brings in the magic of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. If you’re not usually a fantasy reader, this is still very readable because of the historical interest.

Among the contemporary fiction we discovered Mr Sidhu’s Post Office by Amman Brar. The story takes us back to the UK post office scandal, in which a huge number of innocent sub-postmasters were accused of theft and false accounting due to a computer glitch. Mr Sidhu is a much respected postmaster, his shop a community hub. This is also a lovely family story, with conflict between generations – modern ways and old expectations.

Another recommended read was Country People by Daniel Mason, a different sort of story that follows Miles, who takes up a professorship at in Vermont, at his wife’s suggestion. He’s been late with his PhD thesis and feels a disappointment to his family. He soon becomes absorbed in the lives of the quirky characters he meets.

A new Elizabeth Strout novel is always a joy, and one reader picked up The Things We Never Say, the new book, also long-listed for the Booker Prize.  We’ve got Artie, a man with secrets, who is  connected by his work as a history teacher, and through parties and neighbourliness, but all the while he feels isolated. The book looks at a world gone mad, while a discovery seems set to change the course of his life.

In Transcription by Ben Lerner, our narrator is due to interview his old mentor, Thomas, for an important article, likely enough to be the last time in the ninety-year-old's life. But when he drops his smartphone, our narrator has to do the interview with no recording device. The novel describes a character realizing how obsessed he is with his phone. A clever story about technology, memory and connection.

Hastings Library Book Chat meets on the third Wednesday of the month in the Wattie Room at 10.30am - new members welcome.

Posted by JAM

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