This review first appeared on The Spinoff on 11 July 2017.
Last week’s “Break the Silence” series by Olivia Carville in the New Zealand Herald was intended to start a national conversation about youth suicide. Are we not already having that conversation? From my own high school days, some 20 years ago, I remember much handwringing and hyper-vigilance about peers who were at risk of self-harm; we all talked about it then. These days we have 13 Reasons Why, (everyone’s talking about that) and news media are slowly but surely breaking down the legal wall that prevents them reporting in detail about suicide. Yet suicide is still, according to the blurb on the back of Sarah Quigley’s new novel, the “last taboo”, and in The Suicide Club she is the latest to enter the conversation.
Continue reading “Review: The Suicide Club by Sarah Quigley”
On 30 May 2017 I was on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme reviewing a new literary biography of Australian author Helen Garner, A Writing Life, Helen Garner and her Work, by Bernadette Brennan. We also discussed Helen Garner’s back category. You can listen 
In June 2017 I published a short memoir about my experience in Parliament, becoming a mother, and then stepping down when it became too hard to combine my care responsibilities with my career. After leaving Parliament, I set myself a challenge to only read books by women for a year (which turned into two), and this was the starting point for this book.
On 14 March 2017 I reviewed An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme.
On 19 December 2016 (stepping out of my comfort zone somewhat!) I reviewed Desire: 100 of Literature’s Sexiest Stories chosen by Mariella Frostrup and the Erotic Review on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme.