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Milk Island
A freelance farming journalist travels south with the Press Gallery on a behind-the-scenes tour of New Zealand's reconstructed South Island.
A new inmate inside Christchurch Men's dairying prison wails a tale of blood and milk to the interactive avatar of comedian Billy T James.
A private agri-prison operator juggles two escapees and a political hit, with far too much of her money and pride riding on a prison fight.
A rogue Twitter account wanders the wilderness of Milk Island, reporting on environmental collapse under accusations of domestic terrorism.
As the 2023 New Zealand election approaches, four cruel and unusual stories expose the inner workings at the heart of Milk Island (former South Island) where a fifth-term Government's legacy project is going very well or very poorly, depending on who you ask. On Milk Island, patriotism and prosperity trumps all else and life matters very little unless you're Milky Moo, the nation's favourite cow.
Milk Island is the absurd and unhelpful first novel by Wellington-based writer Rhydian Thomas. It is 100% pure fiction.
A new inmate inside Christchurch Men's dairying prison wails a tale of blood and milk to the interactive avatar of comedian Billy T James.
A private agri-prison operator juggles two escapees and a political hit, with far too much of her money and pride riding on a prison fight.
A rogue Twitter account wanders the wilderness of Milk Island, reporting on environmental collapse under accusations of domestic terrorism.
As the 2023 New Zealand election approaches, four cruel and unusual stories expose the inner workings at the heart of Milk Island (former South Island) where a fifth-term Government's legacy project is going very well or very poorly, depending on who you ask. On Milk Island, patriotism and prosperity trumps all else and life matters very little unless you're Milky Moo, the nation's favourite cow.
Milk Island is the absurd and unhelpful first novel by Wellington-based writer Rhydian Thomas. It is 100% pure fiction.
- GenresFiction
252 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2017
2 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 11, 2025
Imagine a New Zealand version of Black Mirror focussing on the dairy industry… This was an enjoyable but very bizarre read, crammed full of NZ references from top to bottom. I did laugh a lot but the last 10 pages are a bit much.
December 9, 2017
A look at a future that could have been - a future that many worried was inevitable - through the lens of absurd satire, largely, but with moments of seriousness and subtlety. Sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's as unnerving as ordinary news stories should be, but aren't.
Thomas is very apt at mixing the real with caricature. As with all near-future sci-fi, there's the occasional anachronistic stumble - the Google Glass and WhaleOil references were a bit passé rather than timely - but Thomas largely hits the mark. The exaggerations illuminate the real. And dirty politics didn't go away, so maybe my boredom with it here is just another symptom of Millenial malaise.
The grand vision of Thomas's dystopian prison system seems a little exaggerated at first (the entire city of Christchurch is a prison), but the day to day life of the prisoners inside is a little more down to earth. The boredom, the rape, and the secret fight clubs are drawn straight from headlines. It isn't hard to imagine hard labour being implemented in reality (especially not in a world whereSensible Federated Sentencing are a major political force); it's harder to imagine Destiny's Church running a "Scare Them Straight" youth prison, but I have no doubt that Tamaki would love the opportunity.
But the icing on the cake? The piece that takes Thomas's dairying prison out of reality and in to the Darkest Timeline? Each prisoner has to spend a couple of hours a day talking to their "Mate", an interactive avatar based on a famous Kiwi bloke. A couple of hours a day talking to Billy T? Not bad. Rhys Darby? A little annoying, but it could be worse. And then a newcomer, still in shock from his incarceration and awful treatment at the hands of his cellmates, discovers that he has to spend hours a day talking - and worse, listening - to none other than the Mad Butcher. The horror, the horror.
The most unrealistic thing inside the prison cells is the empty beds.
As you've probably gathered from the synopsis, Milk Island is told in four separate parts. Part 1, Witness, and Part 3, Cathy Industries, are told in traditional prose, while part 2 is a monologue and part 4, @hutrunner, is ostensibly told in transcriptions of text, audio, video and "mixed" files, as well as of interviews. I wasn't expecting to find the subject or structure of part 2 as compelling as the rest, but it ended up being my favourite. The punctuation-light monologues flowed surprisingly well where the other segments occasionally dragged.
The idea behind Part 4 was promising but I didn't think it was executed too well. The interviews stand out, but with a couple of exceptions, the text, video, audio, and "mixed" segments largely read exactly the same as one another, as well as part 1 and part 3. "Hutrunner" narrates their video voiceovers in exactly the same way that they write text, so we have purple descriptions of landscapes supposedly drawn from videos where the visuals speak for themselves. Which I guess is not out of the question for amateur journalism, but it doesn't match what we see of hutrunner's reportage in other segments.
All up, though? A worthy read for anyone who worried about a 4th term conservative government - and maybe for anyone who's disappointed that things didn't go that way.
My favourite joke in the entire book is probably just overthinking on my part:
Thomas is very apt at mixing the real with caricature. As with all near-future sci-fi, there's the occasional anachronistic stumble - the Google Glass and WhaleOil references were a bit passé rather than timely - but Thomas largely hits the mark. The exaggerations illuminate the real. And dirty politics didn't go away, so maybe my boredom with it here is just another symptom of Millenial malaise.
The grand vision of Thomas's dystopian prison system seems a little exaggerated at first (the entire city of Christchurch is a prison), but the day to day life of the prisoners inside is a little more down to earth. The boredom, the rape, and the secret fight clubs are drawn straight from headlines. It isn't hard to imagine hard labour being implemented in reality (especially not in a world where
But the icing on the cake? The piece that takes Thomas's dairying prison out of reality and in to the Darkest Timeline? Each prisoner has to spend a couple of hours a day talking to their "Mate", an interactive avatar based on a famous Kiwi bloke. A couple of hours a day talking to Billy T? Not bad. Rhys Darby? A little annoying, but it could be worse. And then a newcomer, still in shock from his incarceration and awful treatment at the hands of his cellmates, discovers that he has to spend hours a day talking - and worse, listening - to none other than the Mad Butcher. The horror, the horror.
The most unrealistic thing inside the prison cells is the empty beds.
As you've probably gathered from the synopsis, Milk Island is told in four separate parts. Part 1, Witness, and Part 3, Cathy Industries, are told in traditional prose, while part 2 is a monologue and part 4, @hutrunner, is ostensibly told in transcriptions of text, audio, video and "mixed" files, as well as of interviews. I wasn't expecting to find the subject or structure of part 2 as compelling as the rest, but it ended up being my favourite. The punctuation-light monologues flowed surprisingly well where the other segments occasionally dragged.
The idea behind Part 4 was promising but I didn't think it was executed too well. The interviews stand out, but with a couple of exceptions, the text, video, audio, and "mixed" segments largely read exactly the same as one another, as well as part 1 and part 3. "Hutrunner" narrates their video voiceovers in exactly the same way that they write text, so we have purple descriptions of landscapes supposedly drawn from videos where the visuals speak for themselves. Which I guess is not out of the question for amateur journalism, but it doesn't match what we see of hutrunner's reportage in other segments.
All up, though? A worthy read for anyone who worried about a 4th term conservative government - and maybe for anyone who's disappointed that things didn't go that way.
My favourite joke in the entire book is probably just overthinking on my part:
December 29, 2022
Jesus Christ. Weird lib cynicism. Utterly intolerable. I thought on just a sentence-by-sentence level the writing was terrible. Over use of ellipses and spaces before and after em-dashs. Struggled to get through this. I always thought I'd really like this book but no.
Update: I remember I bought this book from the second-hand bookshop the writer used to work at, which the guy on the counter couldn't contain himself from telling me. Last few pages are falling out of it, but I guess that's what you get, sigh.
Update: I remember I bought this book from the second-hand bookshop the writer used to work at, which the guy on the counter couldn't contain himself from telling me. Last few pages are falling out of it, but I guess that's what you get, sigh.
October 2, 2024
Nope. I waded through section 1 and found section 2 barely comprehensible (the stream of consciousness written from the perspective of an inmate - without grammar). I gave up before sections 3 and 4. I like the concept but not the execution. I like weird. But I like it to be readable - this felt a bit forced and deliberately "clever". Suspect others will get more from this than me ... However, I should acknowledge that the cover design and art is one of the best.
October 7, 2018
Cynical, angry, a product of the future state of mid-2017. Anti- but also lovingly kiwi with it's pop-culture references and political mashups - that is, until the end. Like Pip Adam's New Animals crossed with Howard Jacobson's Pussy crossed with Simply Red's discography.
March 30, 2021
Always feel bad when I don't like something written by someone I know cos I want to support them and also want them to be good.
The middle was pretty good, but unfortunately the beginning and end did nothing good for me. Too many sneering references and sententious bouts of loquacity.
The middle was pretty good, but unfortunately the beginning and end did nothing good for me. Too many sneering references and sententious bouts of loquacity.
June 18, 2024
I guess dystopia is harder to read when it’s set in your country but this was grotesque. Four perspectives (or three?) of slimy and despicable people. I didn’t doubt for a second that this sort of world could exist
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews