HOME WHERE THE HEART IS
ABSORBING READING FOR COOLER EVENINGS FROM CAROLE BEU AT THE WOMEN’S BOOKSHOP Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus - $37 Fantastically funny and feminist! Elizabeth Zott is one of the most original, stunning, forthright literary characters I have ever encountered. Being a scientist was a nightmare for a woman in the 1950s and 1960s. Zott is uncompromising, outspoken and subversive in this bitingly satirical novel. Brainier than her bosses, she makes the patriarchy look ridiculous and TV cooking shows extremely unusual and exciting! Brilliant! Booth - Karen Joy Fowler - $37 A fascinating, sweeping historical novel that focuses on the whole Booth family, not just the ninth child, John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Lincoln. A marvellously theatrical family (the father and three of the sons were famous for performing Shakespeare all over the USA), they were torn by different beliefs and values - very relevant to what is happening in our world today. The author is renowned for her earlier novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Love Marriage - Monica Ali - $35 This is an absorbing and hugely entertaining exploration of family dynamics and cultural differences. Yasmin and Joe,
an engaged couple, are junior doctors in the same London hospital. Yasmin is from a good Muslim family; Joe’s mother is a firebrand feminist. The delightful characters are vividly drawn and often very funny as they grow to new understandings about themselves and others. Nuku: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women -
Qiane Matata-Sipu - $65 This is a glorious book with stunning photographs created by and entirely about indigenous women - Maori, Moriori, Pasifika, Melanesian, Wiradjuri, Himalayan and Mexican. Recognising the power of storytelling and honouring the female essence, this book celebrates the wahine experience who these women really are, not who they’ve been told to be. Magnificent! Dip into it each evening and be inspired. 30 Queer Lives: Conversaions with LGBTQIA+ New Zealanders - Matt McEvoy - $40
This is a big-hearted book in which Matt McEvoy lets the thirty participants speak in their own voices. The result is a fascinating range of individuals, of different ages, ethnicities and sexual orientations who reveal the challenges and successes of their lives with candour and warmth - doctors, farmers, politicians, musicians, fa’afafine, businesspeople including Carole Beu from The Women’s Bookshop! Remote Sympathy - Catherine Chidgey - $35 This brilliant novel has just been longlisted for the international Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) - a huge and well-deserved honour. Set in a vividly created Nazi prison camp, Chidgey reveals the secrets, deceptions and wilful obliviousness that are necessary for survival - for those living in the town nearby and for those in power, as well as their victims. Engrossing and deeply moving, this is an extraordinary novel from one of New Zealand’s finest writers.
THE WOMEN’S BOOKSHOP, 105 Ponsonby Road, opposite Ponsonby Central. www.womensbookshop.co.nz
72 PONSONBY NEWS+ May 2022
PUBLISHED FIRST FRIDAY EACH MONTH (except January)
