What do you think?
Rate this book
Isobar Precinct
A chain of events sparked by a murder in a cemetery sends tattoo artist Lestari Cassidy into the orbit of an unpredictable drug.
Its connection to several deaths amongst the local transient community, along with the uncovering of illegal clinical trials in the 1980s, sends her a clear message: stay away.
Then tragedy strikes close to home and she needs to do something, and fast.
An audacious and inventive debut novel set in the streets of Auckland.
Its connection to several deaths amongst the local transient community, along with the uncovering of illegal clinical trials in the 1980s, sends her a clear message: stay away.
Then tragedy strikes close to home and she needs to do something, and fast.
An audacious and inventive debut novel set in the streets of Auckland.
294 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
About the author
Angelique Kasmara
1 book5 followersAngelique Kasmara has a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. She was a finalist for the Michael Gifkins Prize and won the Sir James Wallace Prize in 2016. Some of her fiction appears in Newsroom, Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices.
Angelique lives in Tāmaki Makaurau where she works as a communications manager, writer, translator and reviewer.
Angelique lives in Tāmaki Makaurau where she works as a communications manager, writer, translator and reviewer.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 6, 2022
Recently, I stumbled across a Tweet about the Ngaio Marsh Prize longlist, on which sits 'Isobar Precinct'. Next thing I know, I'm contacting the author to ask whether I can source this book in the UK. I was able to order a paperback from a New Zealand-based bookseller… then realised I really couldn't wait, so I bought the ebook directly from publisher, The Cuba Press. And boy, am I glad I did!
I was utterly engrossed from the first page. Angelique Kasmara's writing style is so engaging. Her characters immediately feel familiar, despite their diversity. I was totally transported and revelled in the local cuisine, soaking up the atmosphere from each page. 'Isobar Precinct' is a compulsively readable fever dream. It's a climate change klaxon via quantum mechanics,mental illness and the nature of delusion.
What an incredible debut. It's a TRIP! I found the premise completely fresh and thrilling, and I would love to see this book gain the global readership it so richly deserves. This author is definitely one to watch!
I was utterly engrossed from the first page. Angelique Kasmara's writing style is so engaging. Her characters immediately feel familiar, despite their diversity. I was totally transported and revelled in the local cuisine, soaking up the atmosphere from each page. 'Isobar Precinct' is a compulsively readable fever dream. It's a climate change klaxon via quantum mechanics,mental illness and the nature of delusion.
What an incredible debut. It's a TRIP! I found the premise completely fresh and thrilling, and I would love to see this book gain the global readership it so richly deserves. This author is definitely one to watch!
November 13, 2021
Isobar Precint by Angelique Kasmara (NZ author) has an interesting plot.
Lestari works as a tattoo artist on Karangahape Road. After witnessing a murder in Symonds Street Cemetery she begins to uncover information about a mysterious drug trial that targets the most vulnerable people in Auckland City (people at the Mission, people said to have mental health issues, rough sleepers). It also gives her clues about her father who left in her teens.
I thought that this was quite believable. It’s not hard to think that the most vulnerable are being used in drug trials or that the trials mean that people become vulnerable. It made me wonder about mental illness/rough sleepers and drug therapies in terms of what came first - the chicken or the egg.
Although the plot was interesting because of the time travel and drug trial - the story wasn’t always compelling. I sometimes found myself confused about what was going on and about who the characters were.
Despite this I enjoyed the familiarity of Auckland and it’s people. I also really liked the focus on hindsight and the pros and cons of making small changes to the past. The way that making a small change in the past translates into changes in the future fascinated me (the butterfly effect). The thinking required to fathom all this is 🤯 and in this way the book reminded me of various sci fi sensations.
Also - you all know how much I love a Kiwi book 😍
Ngā mihi @thecubapress for sending me this to review.
.
.
.
.
.
#isobarprecinct #cubapress #nzlit #nzfiction #nzauthors #womenreading #bookstagram #catsofinstagram
Lestari works as a tattoo artist on Karangahape Road. After witnessing a murder in Symonds Street Cemetery she begins to uncover information about a mysterious drug trial that targets the most vulnerable people in Auckland City (people at the Mission, people said to have mental health issues, rough sleepers). It also gives her clues about her father who left in her teens.
I thought that this was quite believable. It’s not hard to think that the most vulnerable are being used in drug trials or that the trials mean that people become vulnerable. It made me wonder about mental illness/rough sleepers and drug therapies in terms of what came first - the chicken or the egg.
Although the plot was interesting because of the time travel and drug trial - the story wasn’t always compelling. I sometimes found myself confused about what was going on and about who the characters were.
Despite this I enjoyed the familiarity of Auckland and it’s people. I also really liked the focus on hindsight and the pros and cons of making small changes to the past. The way that making a small change in the past translates into changes in the future fascinated me (the butterfly effect). The thinking required to fathom all this is 🤯 and in this way the book reminded me of various sci fi sensations.
Also - you all know how much I love a Kiwi book 😍
Ngā mihi @thecubapress for sending me this to review.
.
.
.
.
.
#isobarprecinct #cubapress #nzlit #nzfiction #nzauthors #womenreading #bookstagram #catsofinstagram
February 18, 2022
Lestari Cassidy and her two friends have witnessed a murder. Or have they? The video they captured on a cell phone agrees with what they reported to the police—a man’s throat is slit; blood sprays out, soaking the shrubbery—but the police find no trace of blood or any other evidence of a crime at the location in the inner-city cemetery where the event, whatever it was, occurred.
Other strange things are happening around Lestari. People appear and disappear, and some seem to be in the throes of reactions to bad drugs, spewing purple vomit. Her tattoo parlour is subject to targeted, repeated break-ins, as if someone has a vendetta against her and her partner. She finds a picture of herself from high school, sporting a tattoo that she didn’t acquire until years later. And then she has a chance encounter with her father, who had disappeared from her life when she was fifteen. She learns that he believed that terrible things would happen if he ever saw her again. And he was right.
Her father, a former golden surfer boy, has struggled for decades with mental illness, not helped by his participation in a clinical trial of a psychoactive drug expected to help depression. The drug trial went off the rails when all but one of the original participants died. That would have been the end of it if the sole surviver, Lestari’s father, hadn’t demonstrated some very unexpected side effects. Since then, the covert trials have continued, using society’s most vulnerable—vagrants, runaways, the mentally ill—as its test subjects.
Isobar Precinct, a speculative fiction novel by New Zealand author Angelique Kasmara, gets off to an excellent start with a high-stakes opening chapter, and moves briskly along through a convoluted plot that takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through some of the grittier parts of downtown Auckland. I was engrossed.
Lestari is a great character: warm, caring, active, with a distinct voice, and an unusual profession. (Unusual to me, anyway. I don’t recall ever before reading a book with a tattoo artist as the main character.) Her instincts are to help; when trouble happens she runs towards it rather than away. She picks up waifs and strays: a homeless Samoan boy, an old vagrant, even the young man she catches breaking into her work premises tugs at her sense of responsibility.
Other characters are equally well-drawn. Her alcoholic immigrant mother earns more sympathy than censure. (A lawyer in her native Indonesia, she had to take minimum wage grunt work in New Zealand to support her daughter and deteriorating husband. That might drive me to drink, too.) Even minor characters appearing only briefly—an old woman getting her first tattoo, a prostitute at the Sex Worker’s Collective, etc.—feel like real people. (The only one that felt like a cliché was the monomaniacal evil scientist running the drug trials.)
And like real people, they are all wracked by regrets and the wish to go back and have a second chance at a few things. In Lestari’s case, she desperately wants to replay a missed chance to connect with her father on the day he disappeared. With the lines blurring between her reality, alternate realities, and drug-induced distortions, it’s that desire to do things over that leads her into trouble. Like the rebellious ouroboros tattoo on her right calf, her life doubles back on itself as the plot becomes increasingly tangled.
This is a striking and beautifully written book, and quite impressive for a debut novel. The fundamental humanity of the people involved leavens the grim grittiness of their daily lives, and the ending is optimistic. Hopepunk, not grimdark.
This review was first published on This Need to Read.
Other strange things are happening around Lestari. People appear and disappear, and some seem to be in the throes of reactions to bad drugs, spewing purple vomit. Her tattoo parlour is subject to targeted, repeated break-ins, as if someone has a vendetta against her and her partner. She finds a picture of herself from high school, sporting a tattoo that she didn’t acquire until years later. And then she has a chance encounter with her father, who had disappeared from her life when she was fifteen. She learns that he believed that terrible things would happen if he ever saw her again. And he was right.
Her father, a former golden surfer boy, has struggled for decades with mental illness, not helped by his participation in a clinical trial of a psychoactive drug expected to help depression. The drug trial went off the rails when all but one of the original participants died. That would have been the end of it if the sole surviver, Lestari’s father, hadn’t demonstrated some very unexpected side effects. Since then, the covert trials have continued, using society’s most vulnerable—vagrants, runaways, the mentally ill—as its test subjects.
Isobar Precinct, a speculative fiction novel by New Zealand author Angelique Kasmara, gets off to an excellent start with a high-stakes opening chapter, and moves briskly along through a convoluted plot that takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through some of the grittier parts of downtown Auckland. I was engrossed.
Lestari is a great character: warm, caring, active, with a distinct voice, and an unusual profession. (Unusual to me, anyway. I don’t recall ever before reading a book with a tattoo artist as the main character.) Her instincts are to help; when trouble happens she runs towards it rather than away. She picks up waifs and strays: a homeless Samoan boy, an old vagrant, even the young man she catches breaking into her work premises tugs at her sense of responsibility.
Other characters are equally well-drawn. Her alcoholic immigrant mother earns more sympathy than censure. (A lawyer in her native Indonesia, she had to take minimum wage grunt work in New Zealand to support her daughter and deteriorating husband. That might drive me to drink, too.) Even minor characters appearing only briefly—an old woman getting her first tattoo, a prostitute at the Sex Worker’s Collective, etc.—feel like real people. (The only one that felt like a cliché was the monomaniacal evil scientist running the drug trials.)
And like real people, they are all wracked by regrets and the wish to go back and have a second chance at a few things. In Lestari’s case, she desperately wants to replay a missed chance to connect with her father on the day he disappeared. With the lines blurring between her reality, alternate realities, and drug-induced distortions, it’s that desire to do things over that leads her into trouble. Like the rebellious ouroboros tattoo on her right calf, her life doubles back on itself as the plot becomes increasingly tangled.
This is a striking and beautifully written book, and quite impressive for a debut novel. The fundamental humanity of the people involved leavens the grim grittiness of their daily lives, and the ending is optimistic. Hopepunk, not grimdark.
This review was first published on This Need to Read.
February 15, 2022
Adept writing. I loved so many descriptions in this book. Reading flowed so well for quite a while. Only I was confused and lost track of some passages. Still, a good read.
December 16, 2021
This has been listed as a must-read 2021 for the right reason. Isobar Precinct pushes boundaries. The setting provides a grittier, more visceral version of Auckland as our characters navigate between the past and present, the real and the unreal. No spoilers. The author has crafted this book superbly and it is a beautiful journey to read.
November 3, 2021
Love, family, lost hopes, mental health and the impossibility of regret are wrapped up and thrown around in a Cronenburg-like multiple reality story where murky clues get a novel length working over by the narrator. Her hands are full protecting the other characters she either loves unconditionally or tries to love in the shit storm of life. And there's some very funny lines in it too.
October 31, 2021
What an extraordinary story. Characters functioning in alternate realms. Loved the rogue tattoos.
August 18, 2024
This novel started out really well with a cast of interesting characters including tattoo artists, rough sleepers and a runaway teenage boy - and an apparent murder. The setting is a gritty central Auckland, around Karangahape Road and Grafton.
I liked the writing: the pace, fluidity, descriptions, dialogue, original metaphors.
It's an ambitious novel with a great premise involving a clandestine drug trial and time travel, and it kept me reading, although I did get lost here and there as to what was happening and who was who, and found myself turning back to check on things I'd read, which interrupted the flow.
Still, I'm interested to see what this writer does next.
I liked the writing: the pace, fluidity, descriptions, dialogue, original metaphors.
It's an ambitious novel with a great premise involving a clandestine drug trial and time travel, and it kept me reading, although I did get lost here and there as to what was happening and who was who, and found myself turning back to check on things I'd read, which interrupted the flow.
Still, I'm interested to see what this writer does next.
May 29, 2026
I found this scrolling through my library’s available audiobook offerings by New Zealand authors. The blurb and handful of Goodreads reviews were intriguing and sounded right up my street!
This is a bit of a slippery genre-bending book, and you know I love that. It starts off as a crime story with a literary bent, but before too long, we end up in speculative territory with even a little bit of magic realism sprinkled in. There is a lot more going on in this story than first meets the eye, it’s for some big ideas under the hood: love, desire, loss, regret, fragility, time, and reality.
Our protagonist is Lestari, a thirty-something tattoo artist living in Auckland. She, Jasper, an unhoused teenager she’s befriended, and her business partner, Frank, witness a murder where nothing quite adds up. Tom, her friend and married love interest, is a slightly dodgy police officer and gets assigned to the case. Sharing more details with her than he should, she finds herself pulled into a mystery with links to her own past.
Lestari is a fully fleshed and complicated character; cool and measured in a way that makes her an effective anchor in a wild and bending plot. I personally didn’t fully connect to her, but I think that’s because I had a hard time not morally judging her interest in a married father of two… these are all messy people who are dealing with a lot. I enjoyed how tattoos were used as a motif in the plot, as well as how the appeal of their permanence was important to the character.
All the characters in this book have instability in their lives, and this explains how they are able to so readily accept everything that happens. Lestari and Frank’s tattoo studios is routinely being robbed, their previous boss is very likely involved in organised crime, her mother is an alcoholic (a refugee with a law degree that never found work in New Zealand), her father had serious mental health issues and disappeared when she was 15, Jasper is unhoused, Tom self medicates on the job and never got over the murder of his friend etc etc this also makes them vulnerable to exploitation under the guise of offered help.
I am sure that the Auckland setting, which is incredibly specific down to names of streets, is significant but as a reader in the UK, that side of the novel is lost on me. I feel a bit sad about that, as I’ve read reviews by Kiwis who were able to make more of it!
This is an impressively well crafted and confident novel, especially as a debut. On reflection, I found it to be exceptionally well paced, and I never felt any friction. As I’ve said, there is a lot going on with Big Ideas, but it didn’t feel overwhelming because each new piece is slotted in when Lestari, and the reader, are ready to absorb it. The use of language is also highly evocative, and stays just shy of being “too flowery” for me.
I am going for a 3.75 rating (rounded up to 4 stars) because while I think it is a successful ambitious novel that characters and setting didn’t entirely resonate with me. I will look out for more from this author, but I’m not sure of this is a book that is going to stick with me personally.
Some of this may be because I read it in the audio format, which doesn’t give me the room to ruminate on the tricker metaphysical themes at play as I probably would have done if it’s read it in print. Also, in all honesty I think I was dazzled and distracted by the narrator’s Kiwi accent! There is a surprisingly amount of dialogue where Lestari is saying “Yis” and it delighted me each time.
This book did remind me of A Users Guide to Make-Believe in its general character vibe and a fairly similar premise (technology ostensibility there to help people is built on a lot of exploitation and damages people’s lives). Isobar Precinct is definitely a more literary and well-crafted novel; I just found A User’s Guide (which I’d say is more like a Black Mirror episode) more accessible, however, that is possibly because it is set in the UK, and it was easier for me to relate to!
For Law of Fives, this gets me my second NZ author and a debut novel.
REVIEW SUMMARY
I LIKED
- Well-paced and beautifully written.
- Complex and realistic characters.
- Some big ideas mixed in with social commentary – it gets metaphysical!
- New Zealand setting, and narrator (“Yis”)
I DIDN’T LIKE
- I’m just a square that doesn’t like drugs… or love interests who are married with children (I understand the choice for this character, though).
This is a bit of a slippery genre-bending book, and you know I love that. It starts off as a crime story with a literary bent, but before too long, we end up in speculative territory with even a little bit of magic realism sprinkled in. There is a lot more going on in this story than first meets the eye, it’s for some big ideas under the hood: love, desire, loss, regret, fragility, time, and reality.
Our protagonist is Lestari, a thirty-something tattoo artist living in Auckland. She, Jasper, an unhoused teenager she’s befriended, and her business partner, Frank, witness a murder where nothing quite adds up. Tom, her friend and married love interest, is a slightly dodgy police officer and gets assigned to the case. Sharing more details with her than he should, she finds herself pulled into a mystery with links to her own past.
Lestari is a fully fleshed and complicated character; cool and measured in a way that makes her an effective anchor in a wild and bending plot. I personally didn’t fully connect to her, but I think that’s because I had a hard time not morally judging her interest in a married father of two… these are all messy people who are dealing with a lot. I enjoyed how tattoos were used as a motif in the plot, as well as how the appeal of their permanence was important to the character.
All the characters in this book have instability in their lives, and this explains how they are able to so readily accept everything that happens. Lestari and Frank’s tattoo studios is routinely being robbed, their previous boss is very likely involved in organised crime, her mother is an alcoholic (a refugee with a law degree that never found work in New Zealand), her father had serious mental health issues and disappeared when she was 15, Jasper is unhoused, Tom self medicates on the job and never got over the murder of his friend etc etc this also makes them vulnerable to exploitation under the guise of offered help.
I am sure that the Auckland setting, which is incredibly specific down to names of streets, is significant but as a reader in the UK, that side of the novel is lost on me. I feel a bit sad about that, as I’ve read reviews by Kiwis who were able to make more of it!
This is an impressively well crafted and confident novel, especially as a debut. On reflection, I found it to be exceptionally well paced, and I never felt any friction. As I’ve said, there is a lot going on with Big Ideas, but it didn’t feel overwhelming because each new piece is slotted in when Lestari, and the reader, are ready to absorb it. The use of language is also highly evocative, and stays just shy of being “too flowery” for me.
I am going for a 3.75 rating (rounded up to 4 stars) because while I think it is a successful ambitious novel that characters and setting didn’t entirely resonate with me. I will look out for more from this author, but I’m not sure of this is a book that is going to stick with me personally.
Some of this may be because I read it in the audio format, which doesn’t give me the room to ruminate on the tricker metaphysical themes at play as I probably would have done if it’s read it in print. Also, in all honesty I think I was dazzled and distracted by the narrator’s Kiwi accent! There is a surprisingly amount of dialogue where Lestari is saying “Yis” and it delighted me each time.
This book did remind me of A Users Guide to Make-Believe in its general character vibe and a fairly similar premise (technology ostensibility there to help people is built on a lot of exploitation and damages people’s lives). Isobar Precinct is definitely a more literary and well-crafted novel; I just found A User’s Guide (which I’d say is more like a Black Mirror episode) more accessible, however, that is possibly because it is set in the UK, and it was easier for me to relate to!
For Law of Fives, this gets me my second NZ author and a debut novel.
REVIEW SUMMARY
I LIKED
- Well-paced and beautifully written.
- Complex and realistic characters.
- Some big ideas mixed in with social commentary – it gets metaphysical!
- New Zealand setting, and narrator (“Yis”)
I DIDN’T LIKE
- I’m just a square that doesn’t like drugs… or love interests who are married with children (I understand the choice for this character, though).
April 6, 2025
This was such a fun, refreshing read. I loved the quirky glitches and the blend of crime, sci-fi, and magical realism—it made for a really unique vibe. The representation of different cultures and characters felt genuine, and I especially enjoyed the focus on tattoos, tattooing, and the idea of permanence. Super creative and thoroughly enjoyable.
April 26, 2025
Who or why would you go back in time for, if you could. To save the love of your life, to make sure you married the love of your life. This book leaves me thinking about what I would say to my deceased husband if I could go back and have one last conversation with him...
April 11, 2022
3.5 stars, liked it was set somewhere familiar, interesting story idea
September 6, 2022
What a whacky story! I kept reading in the hope that it would improve but sadly not to be.
October 10, 2023
Why did it take me so long to find this book? It delighted me. Vivid descriptions, plenty of action, funny and sad and inventive. I hope this author is writing another!
Read
July 29, 2024didn't really understand what was going on
December 3, 2024
Audiobook.
February 20, 2023
An excellent well thought of and descriptive story of the world of the transient community in the 80s.
You will not see tattoos in the same light again.
As well as great descriptive story, it flows magnificently to a satisfying end.
Plenty of unique ideas and thoughts throughout the book to keep the mind wanting more.
I certainly hope there will be sequels or even a just a followup story in the works, cause this reader is addicted.
You will not see tattoos in the same light again.
As well as great descriptive story, it flows magnificently to a satisfying end.
Plenty of unique ideas and thoughts throughout the book to keep the mind wanting more.
I certainly hope there will be sequels or even a just a followup story in the works, cause this reader is addicted.
May 20, 2022
I really liked this book. Maybe because it is so firmly set in Auckland, with descriptions of K Road, Symonds Street Cemetery, Nelson Street and all the places around there. It's a good speculative fiction sort-of-multiverse story - I don't want to write too much about it but it's really good!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews