Director Kelly Reichardt shows that simplicity is not to be feared. First Cow gets to the root of human behaviour, all the while reaffirming our innate connection with nature. It refuses to get lost in plot, choosing instead to send us into a daze by letting the sounds and colours of the environment wash over us.

In the present day, a woman and her dog stumble upon two skeletons buried in a forest in Oregon. We return in the early 19^th century, where Otis ‘Cookie’ Figowitz (John Magaro) meets Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee) and aids him back to health. They soon reunite at a nearby village, where its richest resident, Chief Factor (Toby Jones), has just acquired the territory’s first cow. When Lu discovers that Otis can bake incredible cakes, he sees an opportunity for prosperity. All they need is some milk.

First Cow is unafraid of silence, or rather, it embraces the symphony of nature. Reichardt’s focus is connecting us with these characters, while in a way, the characters and their tale merely connect us with the Earth; Otis’ wardrobe, for example, seamlessly blends with his woodland surroundings. Decisions to shoot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and to allow branches or shrubbery to intrude in the frame show the director’s confidence and give the film its trance-like feel.

The story is meditative in a way few films this past year were, with the possible exception of Best Picture-winner Nomadland. The camera takes time to appreciate time-consuming tasks, until the home stretch when a sense of dread inevitably seeps in.

While part of me wishes the script allowed Magaro and Lee to grit their teeth a little more, the actors mine gold from the quiet bond between their characters. Jones delivers a standout performance as the wickedly snobbish Chief Factor. Watching our heroes screw him over time and time again never gets old.

First Cow is clear in its intentions, and whether you connect with them will be down to your own movie-going preferences. While it may seem light at first, it will weave its way into your mind and stick around for days.

The NZ International Comedy Festival kicked off to a full house on Sunday night as roars of laughter and tubs of mayo filled The Opera House at the Best Foods Comedy Gala.

Introducing some of the best comedians in the country, MC Justine Smith keeps the three-hour show cracking along with whizbang jokes of her own. Her sense of comedic timing makes her the perfect ringmaster, while her humour – grubby, stroppy, yet somehow still charming – sets her up as a consistent audience favourite.

“I feel like I did not make the best use of my allotted time”, Ben Hurley says at the end of his set. It’s one of the funniest moments of the night, as is Nick Rado’s aggressive imitation of kids jacked up on Raro. Guy Montgomery’s takedown of the 6 o’clock news is my gala highlight. I’ve always been a huge fan of his absurdly clever, cleverly absurd comedy.

Rhys Darby and Cori Gonzalez-Macuer are both standouts, Darby for re-enacting his anything-but-calm audition for the Calm app, and Gonzalez-Macuer for his understated but hard-hitting set on anxiety. James Nokise has us chuckling with the political, while Angella Dravid has us blushing with the overtly sexual. Spouting absolute filth while looking like a deer in headlights is a whole mood, and I’m here for it.

Musically we’re spoiled with a few treats, especially from Paul Williams on keys. That voice! His song about the dangers of walking home at night echoes Laura Davis’ wicked set, which disarms the audience by entwining serious issues with laughter. Fresh from Broadway, Jonno Roberts dazzles with a ditty on the difficulties of raising children (to put it mildly), but creeps me out by lusting after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Closing the show is Two Hearts, Laura Daniel and Joseph Moore, with Tummy Rosé. A Kiwi take on The Lonely Island, this musical comedy duo always delivers a banging finale with high production values.

What an outstanding night of standout stand-up.

Things I Know to be True is a poignant story of family, of loss, and of love. The play follows the Price family through the ups and downs of life over the course of a year, broaching problems and situations universally known to every family, to every human. The Price children (played by Heather O’Carroll, Jthan Morgan, Daniel Watterson, and Caitlin Rivers) have grown up and started their own lives, often fiercely independent from their parents, but seem to find themselves more often than not circling back to their childhood home, for advice, help, approval, rebellion, truth, and the comfort that only family can provide.

Things I Know to be True is exquisitely crafted. Each one of the actors portrays genuine, deep, relatable, and very real characters. Lara Macgregor delivers a phenomenal performance as Fran Price, flitting between anger, joy, pride, longing, fear, and devastation as she desperately tries to make the world right for her children. As her counterpart Bob Price, Stephen Lovatt delivers a much more subtle character, enacting a stoic yet utterly tender performance of a devout father and husband.

As the backdrop for the lives of the Price family, set designer Andrew Foster creates the garden world in which the story unfolds. Four rosebushes mark the passing of time and the seasons, changing in size, shape, and foliage throughout the play as we transition between summer and fall, or from one character’s story to the next. Leaves fall from the ceiling as well as real rainwater, making the play alive and dynamic.

Though heart-wrenching, Things I Know to be True is also heart-warming. Life is not perfect for the Price family but it is real. In their lives we see our own, raw and difficult, delicate and utterly beautiful. Through their story we find comfort in knowing that though all of us share heartbreak, we also share resilience and compassion in overcoming it; and this I know to be true.

Fleur Adcock’s poetry left me simply wanting more. The Mermaid’s Purse is imbued with a sense of magical realism. As the reader winds their way through the twists and turns of Adcock’s mind we encounter her memories; meet old friends, attend shows, dinner parties, travel to distant lands while bats and birds fly overhead. The Mermaid’s Purse focuses on memory, tinged with a hint of nostalgia as death, and the predestiny of ageing, dance along the fringes of her poems.

Adcock’s poetry feels like a moment in time, as if she has pulled back the veil shrouding a distant remembrance, and captures the impression of a bygone moment. The Little Theatre Club and In the Cupboard address how a moment is in fact remembered. The latter uses items to evoke a story, the former directly inquires: “how will you remember, my young dears?” Adcock in this particular instance remembers the moment simply through a pair of apple-green tights. Her poems are transient, each one feels like a memory in and of itself.

Many of Adcock’s poems seem to be more about the feeling they evoke rather than the actual subject. Giza for example is not truly about her dress, rather about the memory the dress conjures. Similarly, Porridge tackles grief at the loss of our poet’s friend, using his Pyrex dish as a metonymy for his memory. Perhaps my favourite poem in The Mermaid’s Purse is House, which paints a home through memory, sunsets, kauri flooring, a pōhutukawa planted over the daughter’s umbilical cord, only to conclusively “melt” the house into mere money as the children sell it. Endings seem both a choice and inevitable.

This kind of worldbuilding is almost always reduced to an anticlimax in many of Adcock’s poems, making her collection transformative, circular, and self-aware. Perhaps this tactic is intended to mimic the burden of ageing, something Adcock seems to be reckoning with in her poetry as her words gracefully and rawly wrestle with the inevitable expiration date that is death.

Families are complicated and that is exactly what Jessica Dettmann exposes in her latest novel, This Has Been Absolutely Lovely. The story centres around a large extended family and their struggles surrounding the death of the grandfather. The family events and celebrations that follow are the perfect set-up for serious themes that include heartache, motherhood, unfulfilled dreams, and mental health. It’s not all doom and gloom, as Dettmann does an incredible job of pulling these serious themes together with some witty humour.

The protagonist, Annie, battles endlessly to balance her desire for music stardom with her never-ending duties as a mother. Despite not being a mother, I found the concept of turmoil between one’s pursuit of their dreams and the obligations that come with relationships extremely relatable. Dettmann writes in a poetic way that pulls you tightly into her characters’ psyches.

“She would close her eyes and step off the cliff. Her body hummed with the thrill of the decision. How it would affect her kids, she still didn’t know, but they’d survive. She felt the force of her mother’s unlived dreams behind her, and her daughters’ and her grandparents’ unrealised futures.”

Having said this – and apologies in advance – the characters were absolutely not that lovely for me. With the exception of one or two, I found most of them incredibly irritating and unlikeable. I believe this is what held me back from truly enjoying this book. Selfishness and self-centredness are repeated attributes and felt so turned up at times that they even came off a little unrealistic.

Overall, this book has achieved what it set out to: exposing the complexities and seriousness of family life in an easy-to-read and engaging way. Although I was not fully charmed by the plot, I am certain that this book will tickle many who love dramas and are looking for an easy book to finish and discuss later with friends.

Man Alone tells the story of the main protagonist Johnson who, in the aftermath of World War I, tries to make a new life for himself in New Zealand. We see him drifting from place to place, never staying put for too long and as he calls it, only living for the good times. Unfortunately, the good times soon come to an end, and it isn’t long before Johnson’s way of life is under threat. 

Before you even open the book, your mind is going to be flooded with images of the late, great Barry Crump and the clichéd picture of the southern mountain man: stoic, silent, and individualistic. Johnson exemplifies all of these qualities, minus Crump’s charm and old-fashioned good manners. While I definitely admire him as a character, I just couldn’t get behind him. 

Early on, Johnson is involved in a scuffle during a workers’ protest where he winds up assaulting a policeman, and while making his escape, he steals a hat and scarf from a sleeping vagrant. It is examples like these that made it hard to like him and kept me from seeing him as anything more than a one-dimensional character. Whether that was by design or not, we’ll never know, since Mulgan took his own life in 1945.

Still, I have to acknowledge that Johnson is a product of his time, living in a New Zealand far removed from the one you and I would recognise. Life was harder back then – no internet, no lattes, and if you wanted to fly, you had to have wings! (Domestic travel didn’t become common until the 1950s.)

Ironically, Man Alone’s biggest downfall isn’t in the book itself but its back cover. It essentially gives away the story’s major plot points and unforgivably spoils what could have been a shock ending. 

However, if you can overlook this, then Man Alone is a good example of the literature of its time (1939) and is definitely worth
a look.

For someone who has always been diametrically opposed to science fiction, fantasy, and anything remotely masquerading as such, Monsters in the Garden, with its eclectic mix of short stories and excerpts, was an excellent way to dive right in.

I love that there are names I recognised of well-established New Zealand authors who I have read on occasion, the likes of Margaret Mahy and Witi Ihimaera included. Mahy’s Misrule in Diamond from her unpublished manuscript was everything I never knew I needed: fantasy, princes, court jesters, treacherous siblings, and what could have been a hint of romance that unfortunately may never be explored. I long for what is left of Mahy’s unpublished manuscript and the hidden possibilities within.

Maurice Gee, Keri Hulme, the list goes on. You will find previously unpublished authors sharing their wares here as well. I love the feel of these stories. Phillip Mann flips the lid on iconic characters in The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse, where Mickey Mouse turns dictator and Sherlock Holmes is not as we know him. Editors David Larsen and Elizabeth Knox seem to have no particular rhyme or rhythm to their selection. There’s the weird, the wonderful, and the unsettling in between, all vying for your attention. There’s knitted dolls, and worried sheep. The stories all seem miscellaneous, and perhaps this is what science fiction is all about – strange, weird, assorted, and a challenge to the impossible.

Emma Martin’s In the Forest with Ludmila, about two sisters raised by a disturbed mother and grandmother, felt disconcerting in its violence and unsettling.

I wouldn’t say I am now a convert to all things sci-fi but rather, I’m open to a world where speculative fiction not only lives but thrives; all the better with a uniquely Kiwi feel too. Knox accepts this anthology doesn’t represent all genres, writing “It’s an anthology among anthologies and a good place to start.” For the uninitiated like me, it has been just that.

In a quite extraordinary book about regained fragments of childhood memories, Debora Harding has composed a simply beautiful book about a horrific crime committed against her when she was 14 years old. Her salad days destroyed.

Told in diary form, Harding takes us on a trip of remembered events. This tool is a clever methodology of drawing the reader in. I won’t spoil the reason behind the title of the book other than to say it’s pivotal in Harding’s grasp of who, at the time of the crisis, became her rock.

As horrific as the crime was, and this aspect should never be understated, Harding suffers from self-inflicted victim persecution when told years later that the event never happened. It is Harding’s mother who planted the seeds of doubt in her daughter’s mind as regards the abduction and rape. This might come as a shock as the reader is drawn into a long dark tunnel of her mother’s deteriorating mental health battles. Her father, a man who seems never to lose his temper and has a unique approach to sorting out life’s problems, is quite the opposite. Though later in life he also is diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.

Eventually, this manifests itself in Harding’s mind as she battles melancholy, depression, seizures, and episodes of collapsing. Harding has to question herself, is she following in her mother’s footsteps with this debilitating anxiety?

Years later, a newly married Harding confronts her past. In piecing together the known facts, Harding and her husband Tom delve into old FBI records and eventually, she plucks up the courage to visit her abductor and rapist who is about to be released after serving a jail sentence of 25 years.

She looks at Charles Goodwin and practises what she is going to say to him. In facts she reveals, and I quote, “They say with severe crimes there’s no avoiding the aftermath. What they don’t say is how post-traumatic stress can become a disorder because of your childhood family, the one you’re trying to survive”. A wonderful cathartic book.

“throw your words on the floor, you don’t need them
forget your real name
forget how old you are
your name is denatured, unfit to drink
your words are poison, unfit to eat
assume everyone is watching”.

In the afterword to her first book, How to Take off Your Clothes, Hadassah Grace writes, “I don’t really like a lot of poetry but here I am writing a book of it.” A contradiction characteristic of her debut poetry collection, Grace’s poems juxtapose a diverse range of her experiences. Darting from being raised by Christian folk-singing celebrities to working as a sex worker, these works illustrate that many things, in simultaneity, can be true for one person.

“I don’t do forever
why keep feeding a campfire when you’re not cold anymore
even emails with attachments make me nervous”.

Although contemporary poetry is synonymous with the autobiographical, the heights Grace’s introspection reaches in her poems separates them from anything I have ever read. The result? A peculiar and bold lucidity.

“we are ruined women, and we are here to ruin you

we’ve always been here
the witches you burned because you knew we were magic
swapping our vacuum cleaner for broomsticks
and cackling about castration under the light of the full moon
we’re the girls you said were begging for it, too horny to be forced”.

Grace’s poems remind me of the clarity that strikes while mulling over an argument; here are the words you wish you had thought and dared to say. No ums or aahs.

His name is Thomas Flannery and he’s 42 years old. Or is he? As a master bluffer, perhaps even the most rudimentary facts about him may just be another bunch of bull. Reading Bluffworld means delving into a particularly clever book. Author Patrick Evans, who has taught New Zealand literature and creative writing, is in a class of his own.

Flannery has a PhD in bluff, moseying down the university halls spouting fluffed-up knowlege from goodness knows where. Certainly not the books he hasn’t read, the thesis he hasn’t written, or the references unknown that he regularly alludes to, quotes, and regales others with. Flannery starts his university life with garden-variety bluff or bull, quite unsure of where his bluff begins and ends himself.

Evans’ footnotes really make this book, even more so if you posses a university lens to view it through. I’m sure there are those readers who will recognise the sensibilities, language, and comedy only a university frame of reference can afford. Each footnote is an exposé of his own protagonist’s dire attempts at seeming erudite. Evans cuts through Flannery’s extended hyperbole, consistent bluffing, and ever-apparent bulls**t with dry and comedic wit. Each footnote is a clarification, commentary, or straightout nod to dismiss the withering bunkum you have just read and move on. Quickly.

The more brazen and audacious Flannery becomes, the more he relies on the inner workings of the university environment and the special variety of inhabitants that walk the halls there, seemingly lapping up the pontificating addictive bluff he espouses. Perhaps it just intertwines with their own.

Bluffworld is a robust read and particularly clever, yet one I had to perserve with. Thomas Flannery, or is it “foolery”, learns bluff can only get you so far.

Crediting a sage professor who encouraged him to the see the comedy of campus life, Evans has done a fabulous job of bringing this to life in Bluffworld. If you can see through the smoke and mirrors, even more so.

From clinical psychologist, speaker, blogger, and best-selling author Gwendoline Smith comes The Book of Angst, written to help people recognise their anxieties and cope with them.

According to statistics, one in four New Zealanders will experience anxiety at some point in their lives.  A frightening thought when you consider it can lead to more dangerous conditions – both physical and mental. Irritability, palpitations, and restlessness can be all caused by anxiety, and without help, they could cause bigger problems down the road. It’s something that has to be tackled sooner rather than later, and Smith’s latest work is definitely a step in the right direction.

Like her previous books, The Book of Knowing and The Book of Overthinking, The Book of Angst is something that anyone can pick up and read without needing a degree in psychology to understand it. I especially liked her down-to-earth sense of humour, how she explained things without all the psychological jargon, and the illustrations that helped get her ideas across. A favourite of mine was the chapter on social anxiety – also known as the fear of judgment – and the idea that it’s actually linked to our instinctive need to be included. As someone who’s had this particular phobia, it’s one that I was interested in.  

As primates, the theory goes that as social animals, we all have an innate need to be liked, to be loved, and to feel included. Social anxiety comes from the fear of not being accepted or included by others. A person suffering from it may have been bullied or excluded from groups in the past, so they avoid groups or strangers to protect themselves, or as Smith puts it, to “avoid the anticipated pain of rejection, criticism, and exclusion.”

I cannot stress enough how important this book is. There really is no downside, and with everything that’s been going on with COVID-19 lately, this book is a literal must in anyone’s collection.

Author and personal finance journalist Mary Holm brings 184 relatable reader stories to the fore in A Richer You, giving advice in response. It’s all the more relatable in a New Zealand context and Holm is a stalwart of the genre, having written about financial matters for many years. The scenarios that you will find tell of the successes and failures, reflections and plans of many a letter writer, laying bare their personal journeys with money including their intrinsic fears, hopes, and aspirations.

There’s a familiarity with many of the letters, and their authors often sound as if they are writing to a dear and trusted friend. It’s great to have this level of insight into the lives of others and be able to recognise yourself and your own circumstances in some of them. There’s single mums striving for home ownership, retirees sitting pretty after making wise financial decisions, separated couples navigating the ins and outs of relationship property. Separations, investing, home ownership, saving for retirement, it’s all here. I learned a lot about KiwiSaver as well. As for what I didn’t learn, I now have some idea of the knowledge I need to seek in the future. With every circumstance, Holm provides sound and practical advice. Her readers are engaging and there is humour to be found in their words too. Holm certainly takes it on the chin when people strongly disagree with her advice or have pressing opinions to express, like being told she is a financial expert, not an agricultural one.

When it comes to the subject of money, there is so much to talk about. It can be deeply personal, come with emotional baggage, create a life less ordinary, bring joy or sadness, or make life a struggle.

A Richer You is a great place to start if you really want to know how safe your bank is, who else out there is investing, and whether you can put your ‘trust’ in family trusts.

From famed poet and author Tracey Slaughter comes Devil’s Trumpet, a triumphant collection of short stories that harmoniously mixes poetry and narrative writing to create something that I think is unique.

Each story is wonderfully imaginative, engaging the reader and keeping them hooked until the very end. Some will break your heart, others will intrigue you, but all of them command your attention.

Slaughter has done an amazing job here; I felt that each tale had a deeper meaning to it, and there were times when I found myself doubling back to find it. She has this ability to subvert your expectations completely and make you think about what she is trying to say rather than focus on the plot. These are not straightforward stories with a beginning, middle, and an end. I had no idea how they would conclude until the very last page.

Be warned though, her works are not going to be for everyone. She goes into some pretty dark places that can hit fairly close to home. From a wife’s cancer to cheating spouses and marriages falling apart, Devil’s Trumpet takes these stories and somehow finds a certain type of beauty lurking beneath them. 

For those unfamiliar with Slaughter’s work, her writing style can come off as a bit of a mystery. If I had to describe it in just one word, I would call it lyrical, but the truth is that ‘lyrical’ doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what’s on offer here.

Devil’s Trumpet leans heavily into the realms of poetry, so if you’re not a big fan of the form, I have a bad feeling you’ll lose interest before you really get started without giving Slaughter and the book a chance to work their magic on you. That would be a huge mistake in my opinion because, with a bit of perseverance, there really is a huge amount to enjoy here.

A compelling and melancholic protest in the face of the climate crisis, Ash Davida Jane’s How to Live With Mammals is a must-read for our generation. Through extended metaphors, dramatic irony, and very intentional perspective, Jane clears the smoke, showing us our burning, yet still beautiful world.

Jane’s voice is tinged with urgency, anxiety, and fear, but her words also paint images of hope and inspiration. Where her poems confront the inevitable decay in the face of an unsustainable lifestyle, they also present a hopeful alternative. Each poem sets a scene in which the world blossoms in all its splendor and hope, only to decay into false dreams, destroyed by human greed and the empty promises of consumerist ideals.

Jane’s writings often pit opposites against one another. The abnormal and grotesque become normalised, as in the poem 2050 where a post-apocalyptic world soaked in air pollution and acid rain provides a home for playing children. In all the other animals are in their prime, Jane juxtaposes the natural against the artificial, placing animals within cities where they are dependent on human innovation, pondering the possibility that our human impact is so great we may not be able to reverse the damage we have done.

The collection recognises a disconnect between society’s God-complex and the delusion that notion is. pool party poignantly captures humanity’s unsustainability, sending humans into space in search of new homes just to destroy them and “[draw] up plans for a new planet without the design flaws of the last”. location, location turns Venus into suburbia, where we slowly watch our Earth fall apart and find “new ways to ruin our lives”.

How to Live With Mammals desperately asks us to recognise humanity’s dependency and vulnerability. It paints the beauty of our current world but with nostalgia, exposing humanity’s greed, denial, and delusion in an attempt to wake us before our world becomes the distant memory of Jane’s poems.

More The Twilight Zone than The Pit and the Pendulum, many of these eight short stories have been written for The New Yorker and collected here for the first time.

In a book that is designed to scare all who believe in the malevolence of social media, we are taken down paths of a haunted house (Signal) with a ghost that takes pleasure (or is it) in watching children absorbed by social media – be it the internet, PlayStation, or any gizmos that drive people who grew up with hula hoops, conkers, and hopscotch insane. You can hear these people inwardly scream, “In my day we all played outside!” But this is the now, a time when the hosts of a wedding at a posh mansion provide a special room for the children to indulge in their fantasies whilst the ceremony is going on.

In a society that finds itself increasingly unable to switch off the machine, these skeletal missives are the finger-pointing messages to be wary about what is real and what is not.

Most of the characters embedded between the lines are academics, scholars, professors – in short, those who you’d think would know better. They are better able to focus and analyse, yet still remain on the lower rungs when it comes to figuring out how to rage against the machine.

The same night that I read the story Coffin Liquor I was plagued by a horrendous dream in which myself and staff were working 24-hour shifts at a record store whilst surrounded by ‘suits’ babbling on in pseudo-speech about blamestorming, gig economy, clickbait, and offshoring. What the linguists call lexical innovation. This haunts the most dislikeable smarty-pants Professor Watkins
who is delivering a lecture in Romania. Using his translation earphones, he taps into audiobooks only to find that the storylines from both Charles Dickens and Richard Dawkins have been hacked (or were they?) to intrinsically sound the same. The point being made, once again, is about technology going AWOL. That is a fear untoward itself.

Eight tales of technophobia then.

I’m not quite sure where Cook, Eat, Repeat stops being a cookbook and starts being a novel; it’s like a melting pot of literary and culinary offerings.

A little bit of Lawson’s heart and soul seems to accompany her recipes. Inside you will find ingredients, recipes, and stories with her memories entwined. There’s the wistful fondness she feels for her spiced bulgur wheat with roast vegetables, as it was the last meal she cooked for friends before lockdown. There’s the soupy rice with celeriac and chestnuts, which Lawson says is a favourite in her home and I know why. It was rich, warm, and nutty. Satisfying pre-winter fare.

Cook, Eat, Repeat is not a quit sugar, ditch the cheese, and lose the dessert type cookbook. Instead there’s a whole chapter dedicated to pleasures and in classic Nigella fashion a whole narrative on the joy she celebrates in food. It’s just pleasures, no guilty involved. Food like pasta with clams and bottarga is to be enjoyed. There’s something here for all palates. There’s the black pudding meatballs, which for all intents and purposes look delicious but not enough to ever consume. For the brave and unsqueamish, they may just be a culinary delight. Oxtail bourguignon makes an appearance too, though again not on my table.

There’s pairings like pappardelle with cavolo nero and ‘Nduja. Lawson eloquently describes it as a “gorgeous and wintry, rib-sticker of a dish just right to bolster and brighten, where skies are dark and the air is chill”. There’s a little bit of poetry here and even a vegan lemon polenta cake that will not disappoint.

Cook, Eat, Repeat is exactly what you would expect from an author invested in food and the joy that comes with it. It seems on occasion Lawson’s voice leaps from the page as she shares her thoughts, inspirations, and kitchen temptations – like eating flapjacks before they are cold, unabashedly without a care for them falling apart.

At some point, many of us are confronted with questions that seek to define the nature of our existence. Questions that ask – what is our consciousness? How do we find our purpose? What is purpose? In the novel Tranquility and Ruin, Danyl McLauchlan is on a quest to beat his long-term mental health problems. His journey takes him on a path of self-discovery where he explores the answers to life’s tough questions in a bid to relieve himself of his troubles. He writes first of his experience meditating in Buddhist monasteries and follows with his time at a retreat by the New Zealand branch of Effective Altruism.

Effective altruism is a movement that I had never heard of. Their objective is to challenge human morality and the outcome is endless interesting discussions. One such discussion involved the infamous question posed by the philosophical teacher Peter Singer, who asks, “if you could save a child that was drowning right in front of you, would you?” People’s first reaction is to be shocked and say “of course”, but as Singer points out, there are children dying all over the world, so why are we not trying to save them?

I have visited many of the kinds of places described in the book. You experience crazy things when you are in a meditative state and whilst many choose to decide that there are angels, spirits, or a higher self involved, I am (and it seems McLauchlan is too) far more cynical. I do not have enough word count to explain the crazy events that happen during these retreats, but things get pretty wild and it’s easy to lose perspective.

I love books about spirituality, but I am also a social science student who is obsessed with facts and research. McLauchlan’s journey is not simply a personal experience, but one supported with studies and evidence. This was one of those rare times I read a book that discusses topics and themes in a way that I do in my personal life. I loved it and have already recommended it to so many of my friends!

19-year-old Mattie (Lily Harper) is about to move out of home for the first time. Mum (Trudy Pearson) is taking her to college in just a few hours, but here’s the thing… Mattie hasn’t packed her bag yet! You know when you’re spring cleaning or moving and every item you own suddenly springs forth memories that take you back to a different time or special moment from your past? That’s happening to both Mattie and Mum as they attempt to bundle her life into a duffle bag, reminiscing all the way. Meanwhile through direct audience address, Mum shares her experience of raising a child with Down syndrome.   

Mattie’s imagination is extraordinary, her memories vividly brought to life in Up Down Girl. A number of production elements help us see into her world. Firstly, her friends (the delightful Michiel van Echten and Mycah Keall) pop out of the wings to play police officers and doctors, evil grocery shoppers and hot Westlife singers. They also serve as backup dancers for the fabulous lip-sync numbers, which Harper nails with total star power. Then there’s Ian Harman’s bright, homely set and Isadora Lao’s colourful lighting design, which leans into Mattie’s every wonderful whim. Let’s not forget the old overhead projector that sets so many magical scenes.

From patient to cranky, loving to fierce, Pearson beautifully portrays all the nuances of a mother exhausted by prejudice. Harper’s performance is funny and sassy as all heck. The relationship between the two characters gives me tingles, accentuated by the chemistry and respect the two actors clearly share.   

Up Down Girl is a feel-good play that leaves the audience grinning from ear to ear. At the same time, it is a poignant, triumphant tale of overcoming adversity (preferably while wearing a cape), embracing our differences, and the unique perspective that a person with Down syndrome can bring to the world.

Needless to say, it hit me right in the heart.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a movie full of moments. While it makes powerful use of Billie Holiday’s signature tunes and Andra Day delivers a Herculean performance in the titular role, jarring visual inconsistencies and a supreme lack of structure make the troubles of one of the most important figures in American music feel superficial.

Billie Holiday, one of the world’s most highly regarded jazz singers, spends her life battling the trauma of abuse and drug addiction. Her refusal to let racial inequality go unaddressed leaves her stalked by the FBI, who would rather put her behind bars than ever hear another performance of Strange Fruit, the heart-wrenching and provocative ballad that has since cemented her legacy.

The use of a sit-down interview with an eccentrically ignorant reporter as a framing device leaves me trepid just minutes into the film. Strangely, this is drawn back to so infrequently it seems utterly pointless, a mere excuse for the story to jump around without aim. While Day’s Holiday is transfixing from the word go, the world and characters around her feel skin deep, the blame for which falls squarely on director Lee Daniels.

If there was ever an artist full of complexities it was surely Billie Holiday. Daniel’s direction makes her problems seem trivial. Narratively, the film doesn’t so much shift gear from scene to scene as crash land in a new environment and atmosphere and burst into flames at a moment’s notice. Visually, we might go from watching a fluid and cinematic performance to an overly stylised documentary-like scene transition, for seemingly no justifiable reason. This cheapens the experience and makes the stories of supporting characters feel disconnected.

The film builds towards a performance of Strange Fruit, which is truly magical. It’s about the only scene in the film that strives for any kind of subtlety. The United States vs. Billie Holiday suffers from a director’s desire to cram everything in, but what is the focus here? Sadly, I never find out.

“Are we gonna have fun tonight Wellington?” shouts Freddie Mercury (Dominic Warren) during the concert starter A Kind Of Magic, and it’s obvious the audience is in for an interactive experience.

“This is a rock ‘n’ roll gig so we’re gonna treat it as a stadium – on your feet!” This at the start of the second track Radio Ga Ga, and we are up dancing!

This concert is a recreation of the 1986 World Tour – and a lot of attention has been paid to ensure the authenticity of the costumes, instruments and equipment, background videos, stunning lightshow, and state-of-the-art sound system.  

All their biggest hits follow: Another One Bites the Dust, featuring the solid bass guitar of John Deacon (Nigel Walker), Play The Game and Killer Queen, with Brian May (Luke Wyngaard) exquisitely playing the famous guitar riffs, Fat Bottomed Girls and Tie Your Mother Down featuring a thunderous but impeccable drum solo by Roger Taylor (Michael Dickens). Bicycle Race, Save Me, Don’t Stop Me Now – after which Freddie asks for a selfie with the band, and for the audience to stand and raise their hands, with Crazy Little Thing Called Love closing the first half.

A frenetic I Want It All starts the second set, with It’s A Hard Life segueing effortlessly into You’re My Best Friend. A superb guitar solo by Brian May is followed by I Want To Break Free, whereupon Freddie (in drag) comes down into the first few rows to sit on a few male laps – rubbing some with his feather boa!

The hits keep coming – Hammer To Fall, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, We Are The Champions – with the last song of the set the anthemic We Will Rock You.

The encore starts with Love Of My Life featuring Brian May’s sublime acoustic guitar playing and gorgeous vocals by Freddie, finishing with a climactic Bohemian Rhapsody.

Overall a clever, well-spaced production that, with the strong vocal harmonies and musicianship of the band together with Freddie’s powerful vocals and stage presence, creates an enjoyable Queen experience.