Delirious

by Damien Wilkins

THE AWARD-WINNING, WORD-OF-MOUTH NEW ZEALAND BESTSELLER

NOMINATED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

WINNER OF NEW ZEALAND'S JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE

It's time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband Pete, a former librarian, have decided to move into a retirement village. Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but the past, it seems, has other ideas. A detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who died in an accident forty years earlier. Mary finds herself returning to the last months of her sister's shortened life. And Pete is haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered.

An unforgettable novel of rare power and grace, Delirious poses the questions we all eventually face, if we're lucky - or unlucky - enough. How do we care for others? How do we face each new phase of life? And how do we ever cope?

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Grief, Family, Literature, Book Club

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

About the author

Damien 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.

Reviews

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jodi (on "Have to get back to life" hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of an aging New Zealand couple—Pete and Mary—who lost their son, Will, 40 years prior in a freak summer camp accident. He was just 11. Pete and Mary spend a lot of time wallowing in guilt, while second guessing themselves for insisting Will attend the camp. He was an unusual child, and they hoped he might come out of his shell by being with other children at the camp. Sadly, rather than coming together to talk about their loss and the guilt they feel, they suffer alone in self-reflection.

In addition to the loss of their son, each grieves separately for another major loss. For Pete, it’s his mother, Margaret, who experienced a sudden and acute delirium that lasted several months before she eventually passed away in a care home. For Mary, it’s her sister, Claire, who had just six months of life between diagnosis and death. She passed just two years after Will.

Delirious is mainly a story about aging and death. But even so, I was surprised to find myself laughing on several occasions throughout the book. It's a wonderful read and just the kind of book that offers something for everyone!☺️ Recommended.

4 “We–both–died–that–day.–I–just–kept–breathing.” stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Claire Fuller]

Thanks to Sceptre for the proof. Delirious by Damien Wilkins is already published in New Zealand where it won the country's Book Prize, and will be published in the UK in August 2026. I LOVED this novel and it's jumped straight onto my top ten reads of the year. It reminds me of the Olive Kitteridge books by Elizabeth Strout, with the emotional preciseness of Sally Rooney's writing.
Mary and Pete are in their seventies and contemplating moving from their house to a retirement village when Mary gets a call from a police officer telling her that he has some information about their son, Will who died many years ago when he was eleven. I've made it sound like this is a big mystery, but it really isn't - this is a book about a long marriage and what it has weathered. It's a quiet book, stunningly written.
With precise emotional acuity, Wilkins shows us old age, old love, and old loss.

[Courtney Johnston]

I 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.

[Rod MacLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Hannah Neverman · Rating 3 out of 5]

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!

[Maxine Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this
NZ version of Olive Kitteridge

[jimmy ellison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of just sad??? Well written and very nz coded but this is a character driven book about grief and getting old

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

>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...

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...

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Sophie Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Maggie Walch · Rating 4 out of 5]

made me sob

[Zac · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant.

[Merryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stark dive into what's ahead as we age! DW nailed this book. Great characters, well-written prose and a storyline that works.

[Kathryn Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary and Pete’s move to a retirement home stirs up a swathe of unfinished feelings about people who left them behind. A son, a sister, a mother, a dog…
I loved the writing, the characters and the subject matter. We need more stories about this phase of life. Not a lot needs to happen for the details to be rich.
I felt let down by the last third of the book though. The author backed away from the emotional peak he’d set up, and it was weird that another traumatic incident was revealed late and without impact to character, relationship or story.

[Ashley Lamont · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really 4.5 almost 5 (may yet be)

[Nomie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Susan Wilson]

I 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.

[Larissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book to ponder over that’s for sure. I liked that it is set in Kapiti, a place I love spending time in. A slow, melancholic read about an older married couple Mary and Pete, getting towards the end of their lives. It follows their decision to sell their home they have resided in for decades and move into a retirement village, which they instantly regret and cannot settle. The narrative mostly follows Pete and Mary’s meanderings and introspection. They revisit parts of their lives including the tragedy around their only child. Not much happens in the book and yet… everything happens, because their thoughts and memories are what fill in their days now. Damien Wilkins has nailed the characters of Mary and Pete. The story really resonates with me as I am going through similar circumstances with my father. I’ve heard it said that older people become invisible… I thought that today as a group of 4 high school girls approaching me on a path, failed to move at all or even acknowledge that I had to step off the path onto the muddy grass berm to let them pass. I thought…. I was once your age as you will one day be mine.

[Anne Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jakob Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Helena Douglas-Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relatable as a kiwi, the way it glances off things and buries itself in houses and rooms

[Jillwilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven’t heard of this New Zealand writer, yet apparently he has written 14 novels over thirty years. This novel won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Thom Conroy, the convenor of judges, said: “What stood out to the judges was the assured but understated touch of prose as it flows elegantly across decades, threads the intricacies of relationship, and fathoms the ongoing evolution of a couple’s grief.”

The book opens with: ‘That year. That year. People always said, that year.’ The significance of ‘that year’ is later revealed to be the year, 40 years prior, when main characters Pete and Mary lost their only child, Will, to a school camp accident. That grief is exacerbated two years later when Mary’s sister dies. And the grief threatens to resurge in the current content of the novel when Mary receives a phone call from the police regarding their son’s death.

Delirious is told in the alternating close third-person perspectives of the two main protagonists of the book. One reviewer notes: “In any close third-person perspective the writer has decisions to make about what we can see of the character’s thoughts and what we can’t. Close third-person is an imaginative construct – much like an alien invasion – but a certain type of reader will be able to very quickly slip into immersive reading which renders the construct invisible.” (https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/10/boo...) There is an excellent description in that review of how this technique plays out in Delirious and the ways in which Wilkins builds an intimacy with the narrating characters. She notes that there is often a meanness about the character’s inner thoughts that is disguised by their outer actions. It’s a way of surviving in a relationship – the fact that you can mask how you really feel sometimes. (Or our partners would be dead! Murdered!) This ability to hide emotions is contrasted with some characters in the novel who no longer have this ability. Pete’s mother has dementia and spends her time planning hits with a pair of scissors on other residents in her nursing home. Mary’s sister was so sick with cancer that “Home” was the only word she could mouth in hospital (over and over and over).

In a conversation between two readers, the following comments were made: Reader 1: “I found it fascinating that Pete is a librarian and Mary is an ex-police officer. Those roles mirror their personalities in a way. I found how muted they are with each other both moving and frustrating. Did you find that?” Reader 2: ”Their relationship is remarkably understated, there’s hardly even any dialogue between them, it all seems to be between the lines. Is this what marriage is like after so many years? I don’t know!” (https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/05-12-...)

This is a very quiet book. Mary and Pete are trying to decide whether to sell their house and move into a retirement village. Mary needs to decide what to do about the call from the police. One reviewer notes; “The writing is sharp, clean, astute. There’s no need to reach for language beyond the ordinary, no showing off, just a quiet pleasing excellence throughout. I laughed, as only someone who has tackled agapanthus might, at Wilkins’ description of the workers at a beach dune clean up: ‘They nodded, happy, standing among the slaughtered agapanthus like proud soldiers.’” (https://www.nzreviewofbooks.com/delir...)

It is also quite sharp on the subject of old age and the options available to people. Here are some examples: “You were aware not of being served but of being looked after. She and Pete were becoming children again. The woman next to her looked at her stew and said, ‘Oh goodie!’ Mary watched an elderly gent tuck some bread rolls into his trouser pocket. Their eyes had met and he gave an encouraging wink. Go on, help yourself. Balloons often hung from the ceilings. Wherever they walked, balloons.” And:
“Almost immediately they were miserable in the village, in their fine new home. Give it time, they told themselves. It felt unlikely. Pete seemed depressed. She asked him if he was feeling okay, with his heart and so on. He waved her off. He missed his books. He hadn’t unpacked his LPs. Their furniture and possessions looked odd in the new setting. Shabby. Unsympathetic. Old. As though they were camping in a hotel. They felt ashamed somehow. But that wasn’t the worst of it. They disliked being on the flat although of course it was easier to get around. But get around what? The pretend streets, the crawling cars, the pretend letterboxes (black with gold lettering for the word POST). The word weighed on her. Post was what they’d become, Mary thought. Post-living.”
The Spinoff reviewer noted: “What struck me most about Delirious is how real it all felt. It started with the way that Mary and Pete inhabit their house, the little details like the curtain that was too short because the chimney sweep put it through the dryer, and then unfurled from there into how they inhabit the world and live in it. Perhaps it is fiction, but I can’t help but feel Wilkins must be the most astute observer of people and little, tiny, meaningful details.” (https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/15-05-...)

I found it affecting though perhaps a little bit light-on in terms of what happens during the novel. I understand that it is meant to be as understated as it is – still rivers etc – but there was something about the repression of both of the main characters that made it almost painfully quiet.

[Laurence · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Carol Griffiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Patricanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.