High Wire

by Lloyd Jones, Euan Macleod (Illustrations)

High Wire brings together Booker finalist writer Lloyd Jones and artist Euan Macleod. It is the first of a series of picture books written and made for grownups and designed to showcase leading New Zealand writers and artists working together in a collaborative and dynamic way. In High Wire the narrators playfully set out across the Tasman, literally on a high wire. Macleod’s striking drawings explore notions of home, and depict homeward thoughts and dreams. High Wire also enters a metaphysical place where art is made, a place where any ambitious art-making enterprise requires its participants to hold their nerve and not look down. It’s a beautifully considered small book which richly rewards the reader and stretches the notion of what the book can do.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published May 14, 2020

About the author

Lloyd Jones was born in 1955 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, a place which has become a frequent setting and subject for his subsequent works of fiction. He studied at Victoria University, and has worked as a journalist and consultant as well as a writer. His recent novels are: Biografi (1993); Choo Woo (1998); Here At The End of the World We Learn to Dance (2002); Paint Your Wife (2004);and Mister Pip (2007). He is also the author of a collection of short stories, Swimming to Australia (1991).

In 2003, he published a children's picture book, Napoleon and the Chicken Farmer, and this was followed by Everything You Need to Know About the World by Simon Eliot (2004), a book for 9-14 year olds. He compiled Into the Field of Play: New Zealand Writers on the Theme of Sport (1992), and also wrote Last Saturday (1994), the book of an exhibition about New Zealand Saturdays, with photographs by Bruce Foster. The Book of Fame (2000), is his semi-fictional account of the 1905 All-Black tour, and was adapted for the stage by Carol Nixon in 2003.

Lloyd Jones won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) and the Kiriyama Prize for his novel, Mister Pip (2007), set in Bougainville in the South Pacific, during the 1990s. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In the same year he undertook a Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency.

Reviews

[Morvling Bookink · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious and just annoying how nothing worked together. Interesting how the drawings became less rudimentary toward the end. Surely there was stuff to say that wasn't just blah blah meaningful spit, right?

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a fucking mission to read.

Maybe this is high literature, idk I'm not an actual critic with a phd or any sort of degree or whatever. It was hard to read; he meanders and picks random things to talk about like it's some stream of consciousness bs and the things he talks about often have no context or points that touch the ground of what he's talking about - there's no foundation, and there's no straight path from one thing to the other; the illustrations are sketchy and ill-defined, though they seem intentionally done that way. The book stretches on and on and on and the artwork can't keep up. This might be what it's like to have a nervous breakdown while tightrope walking (or maybe just a depiction of the type of insane you have to be to do it) but it's not an enjoyable book. Could not be less like a bridge, imo.

[Tony Balfour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this crafted little book. Maybe one to get from the library as its an hour or less to read.