Tears of the Moon is the second book in Nora Roberts’ Gallaghers of Ardmore trilogy. The magic continues when the first of three spells has been broken for Carrick and Lady Gwen to finally be together. Is this an opportunity for the second part of the spell to be broken? “His heart’s in his song.”

I felt like I had been placed under a spell myself when I read this book and instantly got transported to the wonderful countryside of Ireland. Nora’s writing style is easy on the eyes and flows as if she is telling you the story herself. Her descriptions of scenes in the story are so vivid that you can see the vision of Lady Gwen, smell the delicious mulligan stew that Shawn is cooking in the pub, and feel the burning desire of two souls that want to be together. She had me lapping up every word that I read, and I didn’t feel the need to skim a page in case I missed something.

Compared to the first book Jewels of the Sun, Tears of the Moon is a little less dreamy romance and more battle of the wits between Brenna and Shawn, neither of whom want to admit their romantic feelings for the other. The stubbornness of these two characters makes you want to jump into the book and slap some sense into them, however, it is quite amusing to read how they quarrel with each other when jealousy creeps up. There are family matters that also come into play and personally I was rooting for their success in their potential business venture. Having everyone in town involved and keeping family close really got me deeper into the story as it felt close to home for me.

I could not put the book down and found myself smiling and laughing out loud. Magic, wit, and romance next to a warm fire on a cold rainy day was just what the doctor ordered.

Lyrical, eloquent, and impressionistic, Fancy Dancing is a word collage of memories and moments. Bernadette Hall’s life, and the many lives she seems to have lived, find a voice in her poems, this collection acting as a sort of memoir.

At times abstract and labyrinthine, Hall’s poems are very intimate. More than once I felt as though I was looking in on a private moment of remembrance, not unwelcome but certainly an outsider to the personal memory unfolding behind the curtain of allegory, metaphor, and simile. Poetic imagery intentionally lures the reader into the poem, but also renders it more intricate and impenetrable.

The poems in Fancy Dancing walk a narrow line between withholding and exposing moments of Hall’s life. Incongruous images lay side by side, juxtaposed in such a manner that their association is often startling and unpredictable, just like the inner workings of the mind, the fabric of dreams, or the twists and turns of life. In The Holy Ground, a monk’s sandals “flap flap flap,” until they unexpectedly and seamlessly transfigure into a salmon hauled onto dry land, gasping for air. Hall continuously plays with the margins, boundaries, and confines of poetic language and imagery. Perhaps through the incongruity of her images, Hall is able to make sense of the natural disorder of life.

Despite the highly complex imagery however, Hall’s poems are not weighty. In fact they seem lighthearted, sprightly, and even playful. Ironic and rather level-headed, Hall doesn’t seem to take life too seriously. She captures a moment frozen in time. The poems accept what life gives them, no matter how disjointed or unexpected, and make a memory worth remembering, whether good, bad, or somewhere in between. Nothing seems inherently good or bad in the realms of Hall’s poems. Fancy Dancing as a whole is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. The poems are realistic tableaus of life that though complex and perhaps a little convoluted, are also evocative, transient, and inherently beautiful.

In How Do You Live, author Genzaburo Yoshino captures the human spirit and it is both beautiful and confronting. How Do You Live is the poignant story of a 15-year-old boy growing up in 1930s Japan, a boy whose father’s last wish was for him to be a great example of a human being.

Copper is a boy intrigued by the world around him and begins to wonder increasingly about all the human intricacies and life’s unknowns that surround him, all while navigating the friendships and adventures of youth. How Do You Live offers an insight into Copper’s world and the heart-warming relationship he has with his uncle, who stives to mentor him after his father dies.

His uncle writes to Copper in a notebook with words that gently speak to what he knows and feels about life. He wants to explain the complexities of the human condition and what it means to truly live. He speaks as if to Copper’s soul, to encourage him to see all possibilities.

His words are pragmatic and philosophical and implore Copper to view humanity and all it entails with a great sense of pride and connection. Copper begins to consider everyone and everything, from the people who make his clothes, to the farmer who provides his milk. Copper in his wonder learns to see the bigger picture.

His uncle sees the promise in Copper, his greatness and his failings. “It’s hard to admit our mistakes. But in the pain of our mistakes there is also human greatness,” he writes.

Copper takes his uncle’s guidance to heart. When he fails his friends Kitami and Uragawa, he realises he can rise above his mistakes: “still I can become a good person. I can become a good person and create one good person for the world.”

In How Do You Live, the human spirit prevails. There’s a great lesson here: how we treat people will ultimately prove our character.

Hands up, who had no idea that micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) are just as important to the overall health of our brains as macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats)? In their new book The Better Brain, Julia Rucklidge PhD and Bonnie Kaplan PhD explain how these tiny nutrients help the brain function properly and can treat anxiety, ADHD, and a host of other mental illnesses.

Much like the last book I reviewed titled Mental Fitness, I found The Better Brain quite an easy read. Nothing went over
my head, and I felt both Rucklidge and Kaplan cared about the subject matter they were talking about, as well as the people reading the book.

Their writing is simple to understand and down to Earth, with no technobabble or complicated jargon that gets in the way of the ideas explained in the book. Because of that, I came away with a greater understanding of my brain and how micronutrients play a key role in its wellbeing.

What I most loved about The Better Brain was that it helps to empower readers to take charge of their mental and physical health. Think of it as a guidebook giving you helpful advice on what you need to keep on top. Imagine your brain as an engine, and nutrients act as the fuel that keeps it running properly. What kind of fuel we choose can dramatically change our lives for the better.

While I was surprised that these nutrients could have such an effect on us mentally, what shocked me the most was that a lot of psychiatrists seem to have no idea about the positive contribution they play. Even more shocking was that a majority of medical schools glaze over them in favour of powerful pharmaceuticals. For that reason, I think people owe it to themselves to give this a read. Seriously a must have in any home.

Margaret Atwood’s collection of poems Dearly is unsurprisingly a work of art. Every word is elegant, significant, and intentional, all working together to craft the ethereal world of memory, age, and finality, but also new beginnings. Each poem confronts inevitable finality, whether in death or heartbreak or even just a moment, yet in some way each poem is seeped with the beauty of memory and the life that once belonged to the ineluctable end.

Atwood juxtaposes reality against illusion, playing with both abstractions. In some poems dreams and fantasy are more real than reality. Blizzard for example is a heavy-hearted poem about the unwillingness to let go of a mother, more alive in dream-world than in the material one. In other instances, illusion is ridiculed in its attempts to ward off inevitable and unpleasant reality. In Princess Clothing humans, like silkworms, adorn themselves in decorative things, hoping to become metaphorical butterflies. Atwood wafts away our delusions however, for much like the silkworms we destroy to turn into adornments, our fate is not to become butterflies.

Oh Children mourns the decay and death of nature, the world, and life if human carelessness and destruction continues, but it does so by inquiring as to whether future generations will be forced to grow up (if they grow up) without all the things we take for granted. The poem ends with a final question: “oh children will you grow up?” Foreboding, final, fatal, but beautiful in its glimmer of hope.

Though each poem verges on hopelessness and often cynicism, it is crafted in such a way as to underscore loveliness that shall be lost, in this way imbuing Dearly with a sense of melancholic nostalgia. These endings are often cathartic, and in each one there is the potential for a new beginning. Though inevitable and fatal, beauty in Dearly is in fact found in finality; everything is beautiful precisely because it is doomed, to be reborn some other way.

What I like best about Harry Ricketts’ Selected Poems is the picture they present of the man. The collection is comprehensive, spanning 40 years of experiences and observations garnered from a life of travel, cultural reaction, and scholarship – not to mention personal life. “The unexamined life is not worth living”, noted James Baldwin. Ricketts is a fine example of how such an attitude might demonstrate itself in writing.

He’s warm, he’s generous, he’s able to admit faults, and he thankfully lacks the tendency towards cold intellectualism and obscure referencing that plagues some contemporary poetry writing.

A Peking History Lesson and Tales of Old Hong Kong will satisfy the student of the East, redolent with such images as “Mao’s portrait synthetically benign” and the subalterns who “giggled at the size of their hostess’s feet”. And do look out for The Elephant’s Nest Shuffle!

I could easily have missed the author’s note in which Ricketts confesses to the inclusion in his early poet’s training of limericks composition. Such verses are often sneered at for being lowbrow, so I was delighted that our erudite poet found an exploration of that as well as other literary forms “enormously liberating”. His collection includes several examples, and they provide the added pleasure of having fellow poets as targets. Elsewhere, references to writers Lauris Edmond and Frank Sargeson will be recognised by the general reader.

In more serious vein, we get a metaphor for marriage in Nothing to Declare, a salutary dissertation in The Necessity of Failure, and are invited to share the wistfulness of The unmade bed.

Amongst his new poems, I was especially struck by the starkness of Last day, evoking as it does a sad reality. And Arguments for religion, which aligns old religion with the new, aptly listing “social media, imperial nostalgia, dark money and fake news” as responsible for the questionable morality of the day.

Read Selected Poems and be reminded, admonished, touched, and entertained by this most human of poets.

Words like ‘suspenseful’ and ‘nail-biter’ are often thrown around casually, but when was the last time a thriller truly sent a tidal wave of terror washing over you? Coming Home in the Dark is an ever-building symphony of dread informed by strong characters, a gripping story, and an intimate camera.

High school teacher Alan ‘Hoaggie’ Hoaganraad (Erik Thomson) and his wife Jill (Miriama McDowell) are enjoying a picnic with their two boys when they are interrupted by a pair of drifters, Mandrake (Daniel Gillies) and Tubs (Matthias Luafutu). Soon their idyllic day turns into a nightmare road trip, and what Hoaggie at first believes to be a random encounter may actually be rooted in the sins of his long-buried past.

In his feature debut, director and co-writer James Ashcroft shows he is perfectly willing to test an audience’s limits. At times he and co-writer Eli Kent play the game as you’d expect, but other moments will send unexpected shockwaves through the crowd, including a particularly ballsy beat that sets a brutal tone early on. With hints of stylistic prowess from the book of De Palma and sensibilities reminiscent of the Coens’ darker entries, this is as confident a debut as any director has made in recent memory and an invigorating addition to Aotearoa’s feature filmmaking roster.

Much of the movie takes place inside a car, but thanks to Ashcroft’s gift for visual suspense and committed performances all-round, it never stalls. Thomson screams everyman, and his grounded portrayal of the frightened, guilt-stricken family man contrasts magnificently with Gillies’ sinister turn. He makes the villainous Mandrake a ghostly figure, one who seems to move with the wind and commit excruciatingly unpredictable acts, much in the vein of Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men). Despite this, we can’t help but admire his intelligence, wit, and charm.

Coming Home in the Dark is filled with risks, which makes it stand out as an assuredly fresh thriller. Who is right and who is wrong is up for debate, but what isn’t is the hold this film will undoubtedly have on those who see it.

As Ginette McDonald pointed out to me at halftime, I (a 20-something) am not quite the target demographic for Winding Up, the latest play from Sir Roger Hall about 70-somethings Barry (Peter Hayden) and Gen (McDonald herself). Seeing as the two-hander picks up on the lives of the central couple from Conjugal Rites, which Hall wrote before I was born, I’m inclined to agree. But I didn’t need context to root for Barry and Gen in this tender and touching chapter of their 50-year marriage.

Winding Up is set in the retired couple’s upmarket apartment while other happenings – like family dramas and flirtations with nosy neighbours – occur offstage. Barry and Gen often bicker and tease each other but their love shines through above all else, accentuated by a script that jumps from sharp to sassy to sweet in a heartbeat. Moments that make me fall in love with them in turn include a hilariously awkward (attempted) love-making scene and a gentle slow dance in which the full gamut of emotions runs across McDonald’s face, beautifully lit by Marcus McShane.

Hayden’s portrayal of a kind man with lots of zest (and patience!) is wonderfully offset by McDonald’s nuanced but no-nonsense Gen. Both veteran actors, their chemistry sparkles and sizzles as five decades of marriage are expressed in the touch of a hand, an exasperated eye roll, the tucking in of a blanket.

With the couple contemplating going on a cruise, I initially hope the setting will shift from the apartment to a boat but end up enjoying the slice-of-life perspective from their living room. Plus, seeing the pictures of their holiday afterwards (set and AV design by Lisa Maule) is a lovely touch. Together, Maule’s sleek set, Sheila Horton’s sophisticated costume design, and Michael Nicholas Williams’ gorgeous classical music design (particularly effective during the transitions, some of which are a tad too long) show a well-off couple in years made golden not just by age but by love.  

I expect you, like me, have never wondered what happens when a wallpaper realises it is being watched. However, this fascinating “three-course meal” of domestic history, spoken word, and sensory dance experience seeks to answer that very question.

On arrival at Katherine Mansfield House, audience members have 15 minutes to enjoy the hors d’oeuvres, the lovingly recreated rooms of the home of one of New Zealand’s most famous writers. We’re told that rooms in the house have been reclad in facsimiles of the original wallpaper that neatly sets the scene for what’s to come and helps make this venue an inspired choice.

Once settled in an upstairs room, the petite audience of 10 is treated to the sumptuous main course, a reading from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 19^th-century short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. This is the tale of an unnamed narrator who is prescribed bed rest in an old country estate and eventually grows fond of her cage-like room and its garish wallpaper. The lush and poetic descriptions of the patterns and shapes on the walls that surround the narrator are beautifully read by Liz Butler, who wears a suitably yellow dress, and conjure unexpectedly creative imagery from something as mundane as a wall covering.

Dessert is taken in a different room and, like all good sweet treats, it tickles the senses with its scent of spicy incense, hypnotic music (Aaron Dupuis), and soft, yellow light (Matilde Vadseth Furholm). Two dancers (Abi Sucsy and Ellen Butler) employ sensuous and sinuous movement – often in harmony, occasionally in conflict, sometimes together, sometimes apart – to bring the spirit of the yellow wallpaper alive.

With creative direction from Butler and Andrew Ford, Yellow Cat Collective have pulled off the seemingly impossible – making wallpaper interesting. Having sampled their tasting plate of creativity, I’m left hungry for the full buffet of storytelling they presented at this year’s Fringe Festival to describe “the sprawling waves of optic horror” that so enthralled the unnamed narrator.