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Starlight Peninsula
Eloise Hay lives on the Starlight Peninsula. Every weekday she travels into the city to work at Q TV Studio, assisting with the production of a current affairs show. One night she receives a phone call that will change her life forever.
Thrown into the turmoil of a sudden marriage break-up, Eloise begins to perceive that a layer of the world has been hidden from her. Seeking answers, she revisits a traumatic episode from her past, and in doing so encounters an odd-eyed policewoman, a charismatic obstetrician, a German psychotherapist, and a flamboyant internet pirate wanted by the United States Government. Each of these characters will reveal something about the life of Eloise Hay, answering questions that she hasn't, until now, had the courage to ask.
Tracing the lines that run through our society, from the interior life of one lonely young woman to the top tier of influence in the country, Charlotte Grimshaw's powerful novel demonstrates how little separates us and how close we really are: rich and poor, famous and hidden, virtuous and criminal.
Thrown into the turmoil of a sudden marriage break-up, Eloise begins to perceive that a layer of the world has been hidden from her. Seeking answers, she revisits a traumatic episode from her past, and in doing so encounters an odd-eyed policewoman, a charismatic obstetrician, a German psychotherapist, and a flamboyant internet pirate wanted by the United States Government. Each of these characters will reveal something about the life of Eloise Hay, answering questions that she hasn't, until now, had the courage to ask.
Tracing the lines that run through our society, from the interior life of one lonely young woman to the top tier of influence in the country, Charlotte Grimshaw's powerful novel demonstrates how little separates us and how close we really are: rich and poor, famous and hidden, virtuous and criminal.
352 pages, Paperback
First published June 26, 2015
4 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Grimshaw
21 books56 followersCharlotte Grimshaw is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels and outstanding collections of short stories. She has been a double finalist and prize winner in the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, and in 2006 she won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award. In 2007 she won a Book Council Six Pack prize. Her story collection Opportunity was shortlisted for the 2007 Frank O'Connor International Prize, and in 2008 Opportunity won New Zealand's premier Montana Award for Fiction or Poetry. She was also the 2008 Montana Book Reviewer of the Year. Her story collection Singularity was shortlisted for the 2009 Frank O'Connor International Prize and the South East Asia and Pacific section of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Grimshaw's fourth novel, The Night Book was shortlisted for the 2011 NZ Post Award. She writes a monthly column in Metro magazine, for which she won a 2009 Qantas Media Award.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 9, 2017
Charlotte Grimshaw continues to be the absolute Queen of modern NZ literature in my eyes. I can't believe I've had this sitting on my shelves for two years (who am I?!).
Starlight Peninsula sees Grimshaw pick up her somewhat familiar cast of characters, in a novel which is much more introspective than her earlier works, The Night Book and Soon. This is a novel of personal crisis; one which is almost all consuming. It is about the way we shut things out and let them in, and how we cope and endure the things that almost break us. This is a melancholy novel; it has that almost typical gothic, brooding undertone which so much NZ literature is built on. Grimshaw is, as always, expert in her characterisation, drawing on but twisting the familiar in such a way that it forces sometimes intense personal reflection. The star of this novel though, is not Eloise Hay, but Starlight Peninsula its self. An intricate example of setting as character, Auckland is the living, beating heart of this novel. I loved it.
Starlight Peninsula sees Grimshaw pick up her somewhat familiar cast of characters, in a novel which is much more introspective than her earlier works, The Night Book and Soon. This is a novel of personal crisis; one which is almost all consuming. It is about the way we shut things out and let them in, and how we cope and endure the things that almost break us. This is a melancholy novel; it has that almost typical gothic, brooding undertone which so much NZ literature is built on. Grimshaw is, as always, expert in her characterisation, drawing on but twisting the familiar in such a way that it forces sometimes intense personal reflection. The star of this novel though, is not Eloise Hay, but Starlight Peninsula its self. An intricate example of setting as character, Auckland is the living, beating heart of this novel. I loved it.
August 11, 2024
I liked a lot about this book, but found it distracting trying to identify places I know in Auckland and the thinly disguised people from the news headlines a few years ago. I've also just realised this book seems to follow 'Soon', perhaps if I had read that first I might have managed to get all the significant characters straight in my head a bit quicker.
July 12, 2016
STARLIGHT PENINSULA is about a young woman who, after the breakdown of her marriage, looks back at her life. Particularly to the time when her first real love, Arthur died. Needless to say there's much about this that is reflective, bordering sometimes on melancholy. To match that mood, the location fits perfectly. Eloise Hay lives on the Starlight Peninsula, in Auckland, an odd combination of modern housing and windswept marsh, occupied yet strangely deserted and isolated, it's a quiet place, the sort of place that somebody could love to be in, and yet find it's atmosphere overwhelming.
Personal crisis however does not overwhelm all of her life and Eloise, who works in the media supporting a news team of celebrity newsreaders and journalists, has plenty of external things to distract from her own life mess. Those distractions will ring bells with those who follow the daily news - from the larger than life "dotcom" internet hacker who is wanted by the United States, to a prime minister battling poor polls in the face of calls for removal.
In an interesting twist, there's absolutely nothing in STARLIGHT PENINSULA for the longest time that gives the reader any hints on where all this is heading. Because Eloise's focus is backwards for a lot of the time - reflecting back to Arthur's death, the police investigation, and his poking around in others personal lives, the forward connections are a mystery. Everything floats gently on waves of the day-to-day - contact with old friends and long-fought family battles and interactions, occasionally enlivened with something new - a new neighbour, something slightly unexpected at work, something weird in the house, scattered like breadcrumbs on a trail for the very keen eyed.
Which overall adds up to STARLIGHT PENINSULA actually being very clever. Passive people, passive situations and oddly disconnected pathways are combined with sparse and elegant storytelling to expand a central character who on the face of it shouldn't engage. But within that sense of ennui there's something unexpectedly compelling. As passive and drifting as she may be, the way that she drinks too much, avoids decisions and any form of personal resolution, or much in the way of actual action, she's also quite possibly completely unreliable. Needless to say, something about Eloise and her situation might not be what it seems, and that's mesmerising. Which made STARLIGHT PENINSULA the most difficult book to put down for quite a while.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...
Personal crisis however does not overwhelm all of her life and Eloise, who works in the media supporting a news team of celebrity newsreaders and journalists, has plenty of external things to distract from her own life mess. Those distractions will ring bells with those who follow the daily news - from the larger than life "dotcom" internet hacker who is wanted by the United States, to a prime minister battling poor polls in the face of calls for removal.
In an interesting twist, there's absolutely nothing in STARLIGHT PENINSULA for the longest time that gives the reader any hints on where all this is heading. Because Eloise's focus is backwards for a lot of the time - reflecting back to Arthur's death, the police investigation, and his poking around in others personal lives, the forward connections are a mystery. Everything floats gently on waves of the day-to-day - contact with old friends and long-fought family battles and interactions, occasionally enlivened with something new - a new neighbour, something slightly unexpected at work, something weird in the house, scattered like breadcrumbs on a trail for the very keen eyed.
Which overall adds up to STARLIGHT PENINSULA actually being very clever. Passive people, passive situations and oddly disconnected pathways are combined with sparse and elegant storytelling to expand a central character who on the face of it shouldn't engage. But within that sense of ennui there's something unexpectedly compelling. As passive and drifting as she may be, the way that she drinks too much, avoids decisions and any form of personal resolution, or much in the way of actual action, she's also quite possibly completely unreliable. Needless to say, something about Eloise and her situation might not be what it seems, and that's mesmerising. Which made STARLIGHT PENINSULA the most difficult book to put down for quite a while.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...
January 26, 2025
Sequel to Soon, more NZ politics, lots of intrigue and suspicion dating back to the murder of Arthur Weeks in the last book. Helped to have read that. The book intertwined suspicion and grief with an almost otherworldly sixth sense. It was a good read and carried the reader along but not great
September 14, 2018
It was okay and interesting enough to keep me reading, but it wasn't exciting, and it could have been. Low key NZ fiction.
January 20, 2016
Charlotte Grimshaw is a widely-acclaimed author from New Zealand, winner of the 2006 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award and a string of prizes for her pithily titled fiction:
Provocation (1999); Guilt (2000); Foreign City (2005); Opportunity (2007); Singularity (2009); The Night Book (2010); and Soon (2012). I don’t like her terse, unadorned writing style, but I found myself drawn into her latest novel, Starlight Peninsula in spite of myself…
It’s the story of a young woman called Eloise Hay who belatedly realises that there’s something odd about the death of her lover, Arthur. When the story opens the husband she married on the rebound has just left her, and her grief about that rekindles her memories of the shocking day when she came home to Auckland to find the police at her home and the discovery of his body.
Eloise works in media, support staff to the beautiful people who read the news. The big story at the time she has her existential crisis is the prospect of a prime ministerial dumping because his polls are poor. There’s also an Julian Assange-type internet hacker who has ruffled international feathers and is wanted by the United States. None of this seems connected to Eloise and the misery which drives her to see a psychiatrist – until she starts asking the questions she was too shocked to ask at the time of Arthur’s death. He was an author who pillaged the lives of others for material, and he was poking around in old personal histories that others would rather keep private
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/07/29/st...
Provocation (1999); Guilt (2000); Foreign City (2005); Opportunity (2007); Singularity (2009); The Night Book (2010); and Soon (2012). I don’t like her terse, unadorned writing style, but I found myself drawn into her latest novel, Starlight Peninsula in spite of myself…
It’s the story of a young woman called Eloise Hay who belatedly realises that there’s something odd about the death of her lover, Arthur. When the story opens the husband she married on the rebound has just left her, and her grief about that rekindles her memories of the shocking day when she came home to Auckland to find the police at her home and the discovery of his body.
Eloise works in media, support staff to the beautiful people who read the news. The big story at the time she has her existential crisis is the prospect of a prime ministerial dumping because his polls are poor. There’s also an Julian Assange-type internet hacker who has ruffled international feathers and is wanted by the United States. None of this seems connected to Eloise and the misery which drives her to see a psychiatrist – until she starts asking the questions she was too shocked to ask at the time of Arthur’s death. He was an author who pillaged the lives of others for material, and he was poking around in old personal histories that others would rather keep private
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/07/29/st...
June 30, 2015
Really enjoyed the latest book from Charlotte Grimshaw.
Some wonderful characters and also great use of the city of Auckland as both a character and a setting for the novel.
Some of the characters in the novel have been seen before in both "The Night Book" and "Soon", such as the Hallrights and the Lamptons, but I really enjoyed the main character Eloise Hay, as she battles to make sense of her life and the events around her.
There was lots of humour in the book as Eloise asks the obvious questions and also deals with the people closest to her, sister, mother and ex-partner. Eloise's visits to her psychoanalyst are great as a source of both humour and worry.
Go and get a copy, its a great read.
Some wonderful characters and also great use of the city of Auckland as both a character and a setting for the novel.
Some of the characters in the novel have been seen before in both "The Night Book" and "Soon", such as the Hallrights and the Lamptons, but I really enjoyed the main character Eloise Hay, as she battles to make sense of her life and the events around her.
There was lots of humour in the book as Eloise asks the obvious questions and also deals with the people closest to her, sister, mother and ex-partner. Eloise's visits to her psychoanalyst are great as a source of both humour and worry.
Go and get a copy, its a great read.
August 19, 2015
I liked the set-up of the story, the mystery, the politics, the writing style, the settings, and the way the author draws on real-life people for her characters (particularly Kim Dotcom in this novel).
However the story didn't really go anywhere much, and – SPOILER ALERT – there wasn't a satisfactory resolution of the mystery. I could have been OK with that if the protagonist had significantly grown/learnt/developed/come to some realisation, but I didn't really get much of a sense of that.
However the story didn't really go anywhere much, and – SPOILER ALERT – there wasn't a satisfactory resolution of the mystery. I could have been OK with that if the protagonist had significantly grown/learnt/developed/come to some realisation, but I didn't really get much of a sense of that.
January 13, 2016
It took me a while to get through this book even though it has an intriguing story line. It is written from the viewpoint of the main character, Eloise Hay, who is encountering the turmoil of a sudden marriage break-up. Too much alcohol and hallucinations muddy up the plot for me. It is well written for what the author seemed to be trying to do, I just prefer my stories (like the art I like) with clean straight lines.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 28, 2015
Somewhat disappointing return, seemed contrived and muddled at times. The story rambles along through plot lines that wear a bit thin at times. However, the caricatures can be fun, often cleverly crafted. It's just that the story isn't very compelling
September 6, 2015
A light and easy read. The characters are well conceived and there are clever touches of humour. The storyline is not compelling and at times unrealistic but a positive denouement. I liked the depiction of a very New Zealand landscape.
August 15, 2015
Clever, witty and satisfying. Charlotte Grimshaw at her best.
April 13, 2016
Really enjoyed this book.
Excellent characters and a good extension of the "The Night Book" and "Soon"
Excellent characters and a good extension of the "The Night Book" and "Soon"
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews