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Delirious
It’s time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren’t falling apart, but they’re watching each other – Pete with his tachcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee.
Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it’s as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister’s shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered.
An emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we’re lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around.
Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it’s as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister’s shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered.
An emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we’re lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2024
47 people are currently reading
850 people want to read
About the author
Damien Wilkins
22 books27 followersDamien Wilkins writes fiction, and he has published short stories, novels, and poetry. His writing has been described as ‘exuberant and evocative, subtle and exact, aware of its own artifice yet relishing the idiosyncrasies and possibilities of language’. Wilkins has had books published in New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and he has won and been nominated for a range of prizes and awards. He also edited the award-winning anthology, Great Sporting Moments: The best of Sport magazine 1988-2004 published in 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
December 8, 2024
This is so close to a 5 star read for me, only stopped because it took me a while to get into it. But the book will stay with me for a very long time. Lots of ordinary people dealing with everyday, and not so everyday, problems. The protagonists are Mary and Pete, about to enter a retirement village. Their relationship is so believable. Wilkins feels like a kiwi Elizabeth Strout. He makes these people so real. And all the peripheral characters, you just want to know more about all of them. Mary’s sister Claire, Mary’s police colleagues, their parents. There is drama, there is humour, the dialogue feels just like eavesdropping.
December 13, 2025
4.5 stars
Did this cut so close to the bone! I'm at that stage of life where all this feels real, prescient and really summed up past experience in dealing with elderly parents, dementia and the loss of both a partenr and a sibling.
Quietly devastating, that beautifully sums up the human condition.
Did this cut so close to the bone! I'm at that stage of life where all this feels real, prescient and really summed up past experience in dealing with elderly parents, dementia and the loss of both a partenr and a sibling.
Quietly devastating, that beautifully sums up the human condition.
Read
January 4, 2025I loved this. I especially loved how Wilkins doesn’t play his story for drama or comedy — instead it’s compassionate, feels like the characters are deeply honest in their reflections and observations, folds in a way that is constantly quietly surprising but never a “twist”. Small seemingly inconsequential moments are treated with the same care and clarity as life-shaking events. Won’t be surprised if this is my NZ book of the year.
May 21, 2025
Look, I think the synopsis on the back did a perfect job at summing up this book. So much so, that there really wasn’t a whole lot more to discover along the way. Which is fine!! It was charming and thought provoking as promised.
I loved the stream of consciousness we got from both Mary and Pete. Being an NZ novel, it was so easy to get caught up in the scene setting of the places and character interactions which was a tender feeling really. Definitely makes me want to read more local stories.
It felt very casual, the insights that we got into their lives. I believe this is purposeful and it worked well but it was frustrating how fleeting some of the scenes or connecting flashbacks were. I was invested in the characters enough that I would’ve loved to have delved in further and been allowed to really sit with them and those feelings.
Alas, still a GOOD book! I’m sure I got teary thinking of my own grandparents in those moments of loneliness. The casualness in those parts was particularly effective!
I loved the stream of consciousness we got from both Mary and Pete. Being an NZ novel, it was so easy to get caught up in the scene setting of the places and character interactions which was a tender feeling really. Definitely makes me want to read more local stories.
It felt very casual, the insights that we got into their lives. I believe this is purposeful and it worked well but it was frustrating how fleeting some of the scenes or connecting flashbacks were. I was invested in the characters enough that I would’ve loved to have delved in further and been allowed to really sit with them and those feelings.
Alas, still a GOOD book! I’m sure I got teary thinking of my own grandparents in those moments of loneliness. The casualness in those parts was particularly effective!
February 9, 2025
Simply wonderful. A stunning piece of writing about grief, loss, aging and yes, death. Sounds daunting but it isn’t, it’s a joy to read and the characters are all so believable
May 31, 2025
>Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Damien Wilkins' eleventh novel Delirious is a somewhat melancholy meditation on ageing. If you're thinking (as I did), hmm, not too enticing really, you should know that...
He's a playwright, poet and short story writer too, with collections called The Veteran Perils (1990) and For Everyone Concerned and other stories (2008), and a volume of poetry called The Idles in 1993. A quick glance at Goodreads shows his novels consistently rating about 4 stars. But truth be told, I thought I had never heard of him until I searched my own blog and found his longlisting for Somebody Loves Us All in ANZ authors on the IMPAC longlist 2010.
Still, the judges made a brave choice in choosing Delirious because (as you can see here in a review by Sarah Borrowdale at the NZ Review of Books)
That is true, and for me (somewhere between the 'elderly' and the 'middle-aged') the bams! when they occur make for absorbing reading. Delirious is also surprisingly funny, without mocking the perils of its characters.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/05/31/d...
Wilkins is the author of fourteen books, most recently Aspiring, winner of the Young Adult Fiction Award in 2020. His first novel, The Miserables, won the New Zealand Book Award for fiction in 1994, and he has been long-listed three times for the Dublin Literary Award. He received a Whiting Writers' Award from the Whiting Foundation, New York in 1992, and an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Award in 2013. He is a professor at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters Te Putahi Tui Auaha o Te Ao. As a musician and Songwriter, he writes and records as the Close Readers. (Author profile from the inside book cover.)
He's a playwright, poet and short story writer too, with collections called The Veteran Perils (1990) and For Everyone Concerned and other stories (2008), and a volume of poetry called The Idles in 1993. A quick glance at Goodreads shows his novels consistently rating about 4 stars. But truth be told, I thought I had never heard of him until I searched my own blog and found his longlisting for Somebody Loves Us All in ANZ authors on the IMPAC longlist 2010.
Still, the judges made a brave choice in choosing Delirious because (as you can see here in a review by Sarah Borrowdale at the NZ Review of Books)
Ageing is not a particularly sexy topic: it’s challenging material, and potentially difficult to find a readership for – do the elderly want to read about others like themselves slowly down-grading their lives? Do the middle-aged want to see what waits for them? Are the young at all interested? And yet, like living beside elderly people, the rewards of Delirious are significant. There’s always a bam! somewhere around the corner.
That is true, and for me (somewhere between the 'elderly' and the 'middle-aged') the bams! when they occur make for absorbing reading. Delirious is also surprisingly funny, without mocking the perils of its characters.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/05/31/d...
May 27, 2025
This book was a hard one to score. It kind of rambled on about mundane existences from chapter to chapter, but when you weren’t reading it, it was calling you back. However by the end, it was a relief to finish it.
July 3, 2025
I LOVED THIS BOOK! Read a spinoff article that it was going to win an Ockham and wanted to read it before it did. Such a realistic and wonderfully immersive character study.
July 7, 2025
3.5 ⭐. A tender kiwi read.
It took me a little while to get into the rhythm, especially with the sometimes abrupt shifts between past and present, but once I settled in, I appreciated how well it was written. The story explores love, loss, grief, and aging with quiet depth and truth.
It took me a little while to get into the rhythm, especially with the sometimes abrupt shifts between past and present, but once I settled in, I appreciated how well it was written. The story explores love, loss, grief, and aging with quiet depth and truth.
April 3, 2025
made me sob
June 20, 2025
3.5 stars
This jumped around a bit much for me. I was hoping that the jumping around would lead to something or bits would be more relevant but it wasn’t the case. There were a couple of times where it was hinted that there were details that had been hidden for years (like the police file and the secrets that Shaun Anderson had kept) but these never came to anything. In the end it felt like a frustrating read.
This jumped around a bit much for me. I was hoping that the jumping around would lead to something or bits would be more relevant but it wasn’t the case. There were a couple of times where it was hinted that there were details that had been hidden for years (like the police file and the secrets that Shaun Anderson had kept) but these never came to anything. In the end it felt like a frustrating read.
August 10, 2025
The period of anticipated decline and start of decline is carefully and relatably laid out in this story of a couple making their final move(s) as they reflect on life, particularly their inability to close the chapter in which they lost their only child.
February 28, 2025
Absolutely brilliant.
December 15, 2024
Really 4.5 almost 5 (may yet be)
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May 10, 2025I struggled with the pace of this novel. Not much really happens. Maybe that's the point but it was lost on me. I understand that because it’s about a couple facing the next stage of their lives (they are selling their house to move to a retirement village), it made sense for the story to be introspective. However, reflections and reminiscing formed the most part of the plot and didn’t work for me. I never became particularly connect to any of the characters or feel particularly drawn into their lives and stories. At times, they were not consistent and confusing for being present. How did angry Collin become considerate nephew doctor? Did he live with them or go to his dad’s? Why does Louise appear and what was the issue? Mary’s character does not read like a cop. Why were Jan, and Jack and his wife in the book?
With the plot, some aspects (like revisiting the river or final move) didn’t ring true to me, or seem to have much point. Maybe I missed the point.
I was happy to finish the novel. It just didn’t make me feel anything.
With the plot, some aspects (like revisiting the river or final move) didn’t ring true to me, or seem to have much point. Maybe I missed the point.
I was happy to finish the novel. It just didn’t make me feel anything.
December 11, 2025
Can’t quite put my finger on how I feel about this book. The persistent pangs of sadness I felt throughout aren’t the typical vibe I go for. Maybe I would be able to appreciate the beauty of this book if I was older. Still good though
May 27, 2025
Winner of this year’s NZ Ockham prize for fiction, I loved the NZ setting of this book, the places, birds, plants etc. It’s got the potential to be sad, involving old age, deaths, old and young, but somehow isn’t. The story develops more depth about what getting old means, as well as exploring significant events in the main characters’ younger lives. There’s a gentleness in the telling, a sharing of what are mostly ordinary events and feelings. Ex Cop Mary and former librarian Pete are just such authentic creations. Their relationship during life’s challenges change is full of convincing moments. I really enjoyed reading it.
October 17, 2025
A pleasant tale of Kapiti Coast living. I was fortunate enough to have the author's daughter's signed (but not dedicated to me) copy.
I would recommend it to someone who was living overseas and missed New Zealand. But not in the same way as, say, Greta & Valdin—this book's description of New Zealand is less sharp.
I would recommend it to someone who was living overseas and missed New Zealand. But not in the same way as, say, Greta & Valdin—this book's description of New Zealand is less sharp.
July 27, 2025
Relatable as a kiwi, the way it glances off things and buries itself in houses and rooms
February 13, 2025
Excellent writing, but it was all a bit too familiar - it could be the story of many of my friends. I enjoyed reading it, and understood the characters very well, but was not that interested or engaged in them or what happened to them. My problem not the author's.
May 3, 2025
Maybe 3.5! I liked this book mostly for its New Zealand setting. The description of the challenges of aging were well done, but could be a little depressing! Having said that, (and I don't think it is a spoiler) - I liked the ending.
June 2, 2025
An ok read without much to say. Told from the POV of 2 septuagenarians, but unfortunately mainly reflects what younger people think old people think and feel, which seems to be confused and not knowing what they want. I would not have given this book a prize.
May 27, 2025
Not sure what didn’t click for me but I found this boring and meandering. People compare it to Strout but Strout’s characters and mini plots are much more engaging and beautifully written.
July 9, 2025
Well written and evoking but I prefer books with a stronger plot or meaning made clear - a tale of getting old but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone so 2 stars
May 29, 2025
To say Did Not Finish would be incorrect, more like Did Not Start.
If you've heard of the New Zealand Cinema Of Unease well this would sit well in its bookcase.
So what's wrong here? Reading it reminded me of my mum telling of an event in the family, she'd start but digress, then come back, then digress again, until finally she'd get to where she started out going but by then I'd lost interest.
And so it was here.
The narration starts in this very manner, beginning at the present in the story, then it would go back to the past for no apparent reason then come back, this happened endlessly until I felt like I was being suffocated in trivia and fluff.
There's a facet of New Zealanders where nothing is addressed directly, or at all. Just like the aforementioned movies, you sense evil or malevolence all around but everyone us acting as if nothing much is going on. And here we are again, she gets a phone call from the police about her dead son (a detail we got in the first few pages but delivered as an aside. For her the death of her son is obviously a BIG event but it is not addressed directly but through a series of banal asides and nondescript reminiscences.
Why did I give up? Simply because I could feel this skirting around the bush stretching out forever in front of me and just finishing leaving me wondering not only what I had just read but why I had read i? Is there a point to this story?
Just like my experience with In A Fishbone Church. A frustrating read that just stops with so much unexplained.
Why doesn't the author just get on with the story? A wandering series of banal asides is not a narrative and not a story either.
Did the author feel they did not have sufficient material for a story so it is padded out ad nauseum to somehow compensate? Whatever it is I give up.
I'm thinking about those Aussie outback stories where the main event happens real soon and then the book is filled with a series of asides and banal recollections. But in that case they do not read like fluff or padding, they feed the mystery because as a reader you have no idea what is relevant and what isn't but at least you have a context in which to digest them.
Delirious fails to offer any context in which to place the endless stream of trivia that get delivered in lieu of a story.
The main character talks like she is filled to the brim with anxiety, you can feel the anxiety but not what its focus is, hence the unease.
If you've heard of the New Zealand Cinema Of Unease well this would sit well in its bookcase.
So what's wrong here? Reading it reminded me of my mum telling of an event in the family, she'd start but digress, then come back, then digress again, until finally she'd get to where she started out going but by then I'd lost interest.
And so it was here.
The narration starts in this very manner, beginning at the present in the story, then it would go back to the past for no apparent reason then come back, this happened endlessly until I felt like I was being suffocated in trivia and fluff.
There's a facet of New Zealanders where nothing is addressed directly, or at all. Just like the aforementioned movies, you sense evil or malevolence all around but everyone us acting as if nothing much is going on. And here we are again, she gets a phone call from the police about her dead son (a detail we got in the first few pages but delivered as an aside. For her the death of her son is obviously a BIG event but it is not addressed directly but through a series of banal asides and nondescript reminiscences.
Why did I give up? Simply because I could feel this skirting around the bush stretching out forever in front of me and just finishing leaving me wondering not only what I had just read but why I had read i? Is there a point to this story?
Just like my experience with In A Fishbone Church. A frustrating read that just stops with so much unexplained.
Why doesn't the author just get on with the story? A wandering series of banal asides is not a narrative and not a story either.
Did the author feel they did not have sufficient material for a story so it is padded out ad nauseum to somehow compensate? Whatever it is I give up.
I'm thinking about those Aussie outback stories where the main event happens real soon and then the book is filled with a series of asides and banal recollections. But in that case they do not read like fluff or padding, they feed the mystery because as a reader you have no idea what is relevant and what isn't but at least you have a context in which to digest them.
Delirious fails to offer any context in which to place the endless stream of trivia that get delivered in lieu of a story.
The main character talks like she is filled to the brim with anxiety, you can feel the anxiety but not what its focus is, hence the unease.
October 26, 2025
We lived 3 years in New Zealand, and I never really felt at home among New Zealanders. I was always an outsider, less ready to accept them, if I'm completely honest, than they me.
In one sense, fiction is impersonal. It is a window through which one can look without guilt. Though the narrative be ever so intimate, I'm there by invitation and I'm not invading anybody's privacy.
New Zealand is blessed with some very good novelists. Maurice Gee is one of my favourites. I used to remark that I liked him because 'He really understands old men.' I can't remember now what gave me that impression, but it must be true or I wouldn't have said it. Aging, in Gee's fiction, may be an incidental theme; it is front and centre in Damien Wilkins' novel, 'Delirious.' Other themes are grief, responsibility, forgiveness, indignity, the workplace, marriage, Pakeha-Maori relations - it's quite a roller coaster ride. Wilkins writes with delicacy about the distances and the tenderness between his main characters, Pete and Mary, a retired couple anticipating the inevitable drift toward decrepitude and painfully remembering their only child, a boy drowned at the tender age of 11 years.
One thing of which this novel has reminded me is that Pakeha, ie. New Zealanders of European heritage, may feel no less alien around Maori than I do around New Zealanders in general. Pete and Mary are good, conscientious, liberal-minded people, and because of their goodwill they're more conscious than otherwise of a tension that is eternally present in that strange land. Fluent te reo Maori (the Maori language) is an accomplishment to which many aspire but few achieve. However, New Zealand English is peppered with Maori words and phrases, and Maori concepts inform much public discussion. A glossary of Maori terms would be helpful for overseas readers of this novel.
I bought myself a dictionary within a few days of arriving in Auckland. Without one, many items in New Zealand newspapers are incomprehensible. I've often wished that I had cut out and saved a little item explaining a policy of the Chinese Communist Party using Maori jargon and concepts. Reading that, for me, was truly a 'We're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-Toto' moment. Many years on I continue, through the medium of fiction, to puzzle about what makes those strange people tick.
In one sense, fiction is impersonal. It is a window through which one can look without guilt. Though the narrative be ever so intimate, I'm there by invitation and I'm not invading anybody's privacy.
New Zealand is blessed with some very good novelists. Maurice Gee is one of my favourites. I used to remark that I liked him because 'He really understands old men.' I can't remember now what gave me that impression, but it must be true or I wouldn't have said it. Aging, in Gee's fiction, may be an incidental theme; it is front and centre in Damien Wilkins' novel, 'Delirious.' Other themes are grief, responsibility, forgiveness, indignity, the workplace, marriage, Pakeha-Maori relations - it's quite a roller coaster ride. Wilkins writes with delicacy about the distances and the tenderness between his main characters, Pete and Mary, a retired couple anticipating the inevitable drift toward decrepitude and painfully remembering their only child, a boy drowned at the tender age of 11 years.
One thing of which this novel has reminded me is that Pakeha, ie. New Zealanders of European heritage, may feel no less alien around Maori than I do around New Zealanders in general. Pete and Mary are good, conscientious, liberal-minded people, and because of their goodwill they're more conscious than otherwise of a tension that is eternally present in that strange land. Fluent te reo Maori (the Maori language) is an accomplishment to which many aspire but few achieve. However, New Zealand English is peppered with Maori words and phrases, and Maori concepts inform much public discussion. A glossary of Maori terms would be helpful for overseas readers of this novel.
I bought myself a dictionary within a few days of arriving in Auckland. Without one, many items in New Zealand newspapers are incomprehensible. I've often wished that I had cut out and saved a little item explaining a policy of the Chinese Communist Party using Maori jargon and concepts. Reading that, for me, was truly a 'We're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-Toto' moment. Many years on I continue, through the medium of fiction, to puzzle about what makes those strange people tick.
November 14, 2025
This novel is a worthy winner of the New Zealand 2025 literary prize. It is a book about grief and about ageing but it is also about healing, however long that may take.
The opening chapter establishes that Mary and Pete’s young son Will has died and that Mary has been a police officer. She has gone to her friend's beach house to grieve alone. The book then moves on many decades to a time when Mary and Pete are retired and considering leaving their beachside home for a retirement village. Mary receives a call to say that the man who caused Will's accident finally wishes to meet them. This sets the plot of the novel in motion.
As we move backwards and forwards in time, we also get to know the people who have played a part in their story - their mothers (Pete's mother died with dementia), Mary's sister (who died of cancer) and her nephew Colin who was an older friend to Will. Colin has supported Mary and Pete at different times over the years.
Finally, Mary and Pete face the prospect of meeting the man they feel was responsible for their son's death. Although what happens next is not predictable, it enables them to move forward in unexpected ways. This section of the novel was beautifully written, I thought.
I enjoyed the novel a great deal. My only beef is that the title did not reflect the story or its themes in any way. A marketing ploy to sound more dramatic than it is? There is delirium in the book (in both senses of the word) but as a title it does not reflect the quiet, reflective and serious themes that are the book's main strengths.
The opening chapter establishes that Mary and Pete’s young son Will has died and that Mary has been a police officer. She has gone to her friend's beach house to grieve alone. The book then moves on many decades to a time when Mary and Pete are retired and considering leaving their beachside home for a retirement village. Mary receives a call to say that the man who caused Will's accident finally wishes to meet them. This sets the plot of the novel in motion.
As we move backwards and forwards in time, we also get to know the people who have played a part in their story - their mothers (Pete's mother died with dementia), Mary's sister (who died of cancer) and her nephew Colin who was an older friend to Will. Colin has supported Mary and Pete at different times over the years.
Finally, Mary and Pete face the prospect of meeting the man they feel was responsible for their son's death. Although what happens next is not predictable, it enables them to move forward in unexpected ways. This section of the novel was beautifully written, I thought.
I enjoyed the novel a great deal. My only beef is that the title did not reflect the story or its themes in any way. A marketing ploy to sound more dramatic than it is? There is delirium in the book (in both senses of the word) but as a title it does not reflect the quiet, reflective and serious themes that are the book's main strengths.
April 23, 2025
This book will appeal to some readers more than others depending on where they're at in their life journey. Younger people and those without children or older relatives needing support may admire the writing craft but could step away unengaged.
On the other hand I related to so much and so many details in this book that it felt like a personal memoire and I wondered how Damien knew so much about lives my parents and their neighbours and friends may have led. Ditto with my partner's father who was present in lots of these scenes. Even little touches like the cartons of enriched drink Fortesip for people who've mostly stopped eating? We gave our relatives boxes to the Wellington City Mission for any of the homeless people to take as healthy drinks.
If you haven't lived through the Springbok tour or sending a reluctant child to a school camp or visited a retirement village for a relative to see if it'd work out for them, you'd miss how accurate and moving these scenes were. Me? I cried a bit at how familiar and sad but reassuring so much of this book was.
On the other hand I related to so much and so many details in this book that it felt like a personal memoire and I wondered how Damien knew so much about lives my parents and their neighbours and friends may have led. Ditto with my partner's father who was present in lots of these scenes. Even little touches like the cartons of enriched drink Fortesip for people who've mostly stopped eating? We gave our relatives boxes to the Wellington City Mission for any of the homeless people to take as healthy drinks.
If you haven't lived through the Springbok tour or sending a reluctant child to a school camp or visited a retirement village for a relative to see if it'd work out for them, you'd miss how accurate and moving these scenes were. Me? I cried a bit at how familiar and sad but reassuring so much of this book was.
July 11, 2025
Never get old.
My late father-in-law always offered me that advice. And now, some thirty-three years after his death, and over a decade since my own parents died, I am starting to wish I could take that advice.
Most days I walk past three different iterations of retirement villages in the suburb where I live. Over the past fifteen years I’ve exchanged greetings with residents of all three. Some I knew before they moved into the villages, others I have met since, several have become friends. Some are delighted with the transition, others are more guarded. Not all change is beneficial.
Set in New Zealand, Mr Wilkins’s novel is about Mary, an ex-police officer and her husband, retired librarian Pete. They have decided to move into a retirement village but find that the past cannot be left behind so easily.
I was drawn into this story, happy with its conclusion, and left wondering about the choices (and different lives) that lay ahead for Mary and Pete. I finished this story, wondering the same for myself. Lives are complicated.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
My late father-in-law always offered me that advice. And now, some thirty-three years after his death, and over a decade since my own parents died, I am starting to wish I could take that advice.
Most days I walk past three different iterations of retirement villages in the suburb where I live. Over the past fifteen years I’ve exchanged greetings with residents of all three. Some I knew before they moved into the villages, others I have met since, several have become friends. Some are delighted with the transition, others are more guarded. Not all change is beneficial.
Set in New Zealand, Mr Wilkins’s novel is about Mary, an ex-police officer and her husband, retired librarian Pete. They have decided to move into a retirement village but find that the past cannot be left behind so easily.
I was drawn into this story, happy with its conclusion, and left wondering about the choices (and different lives) that lay ahead for Mary and Pete. I finished this story, wondering the same for myself. Lives are complicated.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
August 12, 2025
I tried hard to give it 4 stars but I am not sure I would be recommending it to others. Although this was my book choice for our book club this year based on a RNZ review. Off to discuss it straight after this.
I found the book quite hard to get into and I think that was because the book starts with a Mary chapter; the chapters roughly alternate between Mary and Peter. Their voices come through in the prose so if you dived into the middle of a chapter you would know who was talking. I found Mary's style more difficult to get used to, Pete was quite logical and it felt easier to follow, maybe the librarian in him!
I've just turned 61 and to be honest the idea that I am only 15-16 yrs away from them gave the book a slightly depressing edge. Depressing I think because the author wrote their inner and outer dialogues so well and they resonate personally.
My main issue with the book is that the stories of their past didn't really capture me emotionally and the last couple of chapters felt out of place.
I found the book quite hard to get into and I think that was because the book starts with a Mary chapter; the chapters roughly alternate between Mary and Peter. Their voices come through in the prose so if you dived into the middle of a chapter you would know who was talking. I found Mary's style more difficult to get used to, Pete was quite logical and it felt easier to follow, maybe the librarian in him!
I've just turned 61 and to be honest the idea that I am only 15-16 yrs away from them gave the book a slightly depressing edge. Depressing I think because the author wrote their inner and outer dialogues so well and they resonate personally.
My main issue with the book is that the stories of their past didn't really capture me emotionally and the last couple of chapters felt out of place.
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