- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape (1 Oct 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224088939
- ISBN-13: 978-0224088930
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 532,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
` Grimshaw's vivid descriptions of the scenery and animals of New Zealand are a joy' --Times Literary Supplement
Book Description
A compelling and powerful new collection of stories from one of New Zealand's most gifted writers
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Singularity is an intriguing book,the plots of each story are subtle. The same characters reappear in different stories,and at different times, so you see them from different points of view. I read this before reading Opportunity, the authors first collection of stories, which apparently contain the same characters.
Her sense of place is haunting, with what you can only think are first hand observations. The same goes for her character portrayal, each is individual, thinking and behaving differently, by reading each story you inhabit a different character, understanding events and decisions from their thought processes.
I hope by reading the first book Opportunity second, this sense of building personal insight into people,events and place wont be spoiled.
Her sense of place is haunting, with what you can only think are first hand observations. The same goes for her character portrayal, each is individual, thinking and behaving differently, by reading each story you inhabit a different character, understanding events and decisions from their thought processes.
I hope by reading the first book Opportunity second, this sense of building personal insight into people,events and place wont be spoiled.
Format:Paperback
I did like the writing, Grimshaw has a relaxed style which dips deceptively deeply into her protagonists lives. Each story is complete in itself, but they often feature the same people at different times of their lives. I found after reading this book that Grimshaw had established for me a surprisingly large cast of people. The setting is nominally a city in New Zealand, but Grimshaw takes some of her people to Australia, to London and to New York.
The social setting is also remarkably diverse, so we meet people on the edge of poverty who have difficulty making a living, and there seems to be a generalised sort of middle-class who have varying degrees of success, and a few very comfortably-off. Many of the characters stood out as memorable, and the storylines were well developed - for example, the story of a girl adopted by Simon and his wife Karen. They already have two children but Karen wants another. Theirs is a mixed race marriage but Simon is a doctor and they are well off. His feelings for the little girl they adopt change as he begins to appreciate her as an individual and his feelings for his jealous older daughter are made clear to her in a way that defies all the accepted conventions of sibling rivalry. Another story concerns a trek into the bush that goes wrong for a trio of youngsters, and this left my heart in my mouth for far too long for comfort; in another a young journalist behaves unethically when she is attracted to the brother of a man on trial for rape. This episode has a judiciously ironic ending.
These are absorbing, often wide-ranging and affecting stories about life in New Zealand and further afield. Because they are not consecutively organised, and because some stories don't link in as well or as quickly as others. there is, for me a little too much dislocation between me, the reader, and the novel as a whole.
The social setting is also remarkably diverse, so we meet people on the edge of poverty who have difficulty making a living, and there seems to be a generalised sort of middle-class who have varying degrees of success, and a few very comfortably-off. Many of the characters stood out as memorable, and the storylines were well developed - for example, the story of a girl adopted by Simon and his wife Karen. They already have two children but Karen wants another. Theirs is a mixed race marriage but Simon is a doctor and they are well off. His feelings for the little girl they adopt change as he begins to appreciate her as an individual and his feelings for his jealous older daughter are made clear to her in a way that defies all the accepted conventions of sibling rivalry. Another story concerns a trek into the bush that goes wrong for a trio of youngsters, and this left my heart in my mouth for far too long for comfort; in another a young journalist behaves unethically when she is attracted to the brother of a man on trial for rape. This episode has a judiciously ironic ending.
These are absorbing, often wide-ranging and affecting stories about life in New Zealand and further afield. Because they are not consecutively organised, and because some stories don't link in as well or as quickly as others. there is, for me a little too much dislocation between me, the reader, and the novel as a whole.
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