Kiwi Authors at Young @ Heart Book Group

This month at Young @ Heart bookclub we enjoyed hearing about some New Zealand authors.

Kate di Goldi is from Christchurch. She is well known for her children’s and YA books and has won multiple fellowship and awards for her writing since 1997. She is also a popular and respected book reviewer on radio and TV.

Eddy Eddy is set after the Christchurch earthquakes. Eddy is an orphan, who has somehow sabotaged his school life and now has to find ways to make ends meet and get through at least till Christmas. He begins a pet minding job which starts getting out of control as his responsibilities increase, and the past is fast catching up with him, demanding to be confronted. This is a delightful book, a love story, a chronicle of family life, grief and personal reckoning, with trademark di Goldi beautiful use of language. Well worth a read on a rainy day.

Eileen Merriman lives in Auckland and is well known for her YA novels, especially Pieces of You. She is an author who seem to be either loved or not so much – some find her dialogue old fashioned and the plots less than gripping, but as a multiple award winning author it is well worth exploring her books and forming your own opinions.

The Night She Fell is her first adult novel. It begins with an accidental death in a Dunedin student flat. Or is it an accident? The victim wasn’t a particularly nice person, but was there reason enough for murder? The characters are a good mix of rich and poor, transparent and guarded, likeable and nasty, and the story is told from the point of view of the victim’s boyfriend and her flatmate. There is a plot twist at the end, but readers were divided on whether it was predictable or not, which polarised opinion as to whether the book was fascinating, or not requiring enough critical thinking to be more than a light read.

You can find both books at Hastings Library - give them a try and see if you agree with the readers from Young @ Heart. This book group meets at 10:30am on the first Thursday of the month at Havelock North Library.

12 August 2024

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