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THE WATERS, by Carl Nixon (Vintage, $37)
Carl Nixon's fifth novel is described as "a novel in 21 stories", and some of these story-chapters will be familiar to readers from the story competitions Nixon has won, or from anthologies or magazines in which they first appeared. The Waters is less a typical novel about the Waters, a troubled family from near Christchurch, and more a collection of Waters-adjacent short stories that jump between characters, points of view and decades to build this dark family drama from the outside in.
The Waters themselves are as much a fixture of their small Canterbury town as "the pub, the two-classroom school or the old jetty". Mark, the oldest brother of the family and the novel's first point of view, is a loner, with a mysterious scar over one eye and an affinity for violence directed mostly at his father, Pat.
The next one down is Davey, the best looking of the family, who develops a drug problem, and caring Samantha, the baby of the family, who grows up with foster parents. Marika, their mother, makes her first appearance in a Hanmer hot pool, confiding in a stranger:
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Denne historien er fra August 5-11 2023-utgaven av New Zealand Listener.
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One of the stranger characteristics of the populist oligarchy mobilising around Donald Trump's new administration is the interest taken in the domestic politics of the UK.
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Fleeing the nest
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No free lunch
The new, cut-price school lunch programme will shut out many community providers. But will bulk-supplied meals meet children’s needs?