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Home Theatre
Winner of the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Welcome to the Repertory Apartments—where scenes of tenderness and trouble, music and magic, the uncanny and the macabre play out on intimate stages.
A mother and her young son battle an infestation of ants. A bass player is beset by equine hallucinations. A widow seeks a new home with a spare room for guests. A radio factory foreman intercepts queer broadcasts from the future.
And a time-traveller stranded in a distant corner of the multiverse tries to find his way home.
Moving between the early 20th century and the modern day, this genre-bending collection, spanning the fantastical and the keenly real, introduces an ensemble of remarkable characters—and the fateful building that connects them all.
Welcome to the Repertory Apartments—where scenes of tenderness and trouble, music and magic, the uncanny and the macabre play out on intimate stages.
A mother and her young son battle an infestation of ants. A bass player is beset by equine hallucinations. A widow seeks a new home with a spare room for guests. A radio factory foreman intercepts queer broadcasts from the future.
And a time-traveller stranded in a distant corner of the multiverse tries to find his way home.
Moving between the early 20th century and the modern day, this genre-bending collection, spanning the fantastical and the keenly real, introduces an ensemble of remarkable characters—and the fateful building that connects them all.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
240 pages, Paperback
Published May 12, 2022
1 person is currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Lapwood
4 books5 followersAnthony Lapwood's debut story collection Home Theatre won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction in the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. His fiction has featured in numerous publications and been anthologised in Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand, Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories. Anthony is of Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Whakaue and Pākehā descent. He lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 24, 2022
A great short story collection. Well-written. Interesting plots.
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July 18, 2022Focusing largely on the residents of a single apartment block, Anthony Lapwood’s HOME THEATRE is a series of interconnected short stories that bridges grounded domestic drama with outlandish science fiction/magical realist flourishes.
I’m sure there are more famous points of reference for HOME THEATRE’s basic structure, but I was reminded most of a couple of modern Japanese works: Yuko Tsushima’s TERRITORY OF LIGHT, an episodic novel that revolves around a divorced mother’s new apartment, and Yoko Ogawa’s REVENGE, another example of a short story collection that plays ‘pass the parcel’ with unexpected details. The fact that each story builds on the last creates a genuine sense of intimacy, but it also makes the book’s balancing of real/unreal elements feel bolder – for example, someone we know to be a time traveller is mentioned in passing during a short piece about buying furniture.
Large chunks of HOME THEATRE are science fiction, and more importantly, the kind of science fiction that I like: Dick-esque narratives that focus on ordinary people trying to carve out their own piece of an increasingly bizarre world. The absolute highlight here is ‘The Ether of 1939’, where Lapwood crafts a surprisingly touching combination of queer period piece and high-concept science fiction. And it hits even harder because of how it builds on the collection’s previous stories.
Honestly, my main issue with HOME THEATRE isn’t even really a flaw – it’s just that I would have liked more of the unreal stuff. That’s not a knock against the grounded stories here or anything, but the book’s best moments scratch an itch that I’ve had for a long time: smart, warm, inventive science fiction from a Māori writer. I’d love to see Lapwood tackle a full-length work of fantastical fiction.
I’m sure there are more famous points of reference for HOME THEATRE’s basic structure, but I was reminded most of a couple of modern Japanese works: Yuko Tsushima’s TERRITORY OF LIGHT, an episodic novel that revolves around a divorced mother’s new apartment, and Yoko Ogawa’s REVENGE, another example of a short story collection that plays ‘pass the parcel’ with unexpected details. The fact that each story builds on the last creates a genuine sense of intimacy, but it also makes the book’s balancing of real/unreal elements feel bolder – for example, someone we know to be a time traveller is mentioned in passing during a short piece about buying furniture.
Large chunks of HOME THEATRE are science fiction, and more importantly, the kind of science fiction that I like: Dick-esque narratives that focus on ordinary people trying to carve out their own piece of an increasingly bizarre world. The absolute highlight here is ‘The Ether of 1939’, where Lapwood crafts a surprisingly touching combination of queer period piece and high-concept science fiction. And it hits even harder because of how it builds on the collection’s previous stories.
Honestly, my main issue with HOME THEATRE isn’t even really a flaw – it’s just that I would have liked more of the unreal stuff. That’s not a knock against the grounded stories here or anything, but the book’s best moments scratch an itch that I’ve had for a long time: smart, warm, inventive science fiction from a Māori writer. I’d love to see Lapwood tackle a full-length work of fantastical fiction.
September 25, 2022
So many funky lil guys and their funky lil circumstances
January 21, 2024
This is a nifty short story collection which won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
The collection's biggest strengths are its interconnectedness (the stories are threaded together by a single apartment block in Wellington, NZ) and the fact that the author is a dab hand at traversing different literary genres. Whereas many short story authors have a lane they tend to stick to, especially those that write science fiction, Lapwood is not afraid to veer all over the genre highway.
While my preference was for the stories more grounded in reality, unlike the other reviewers of this book (but that's just me), I was never less than enthralled, not knowing where a story was going to lead me.
Lapwood is a talented writer, and I'm looking forward to his debut novel arriving.
The collection's biggest strengths are its interconnectedness (the stories are threaded together by a single apartment block in Wellington, NZ) and the fact that the author is a dab hand at traversing different literary genres. Whereas many short story authors have a lane they tend to stick to, especially those that write science fiction, Lapwood is not afraid to veer all over the genre highway.
While my preference was for the stories more grounded in reality, unlike the other reviewers of this book (but that's just me), I was never less than enthralled, not knowing where a story was going to lead me.
Lapwood is a talented writer, and I'm looking forward to his debut novel arriving.
March 25, 2023
3.75*
A very well written enjoyable collection of loosely interconnected stories based around an apartment building. Definitely at its strongest with the more fantastical or sci-fi stories, both the opening story and the later The Ether of 1939 are superb examples of the sci-fi genre in the style of Greg Egan or Philip K Dick.
Throughout, Lapwood's writing consistently captures each of the diverse characters in a sympathetically sad and melancholic way. The author has a great skill for quickly drawing believable characters with whom we can relate and root for, which for me was the strongest aspect of this well crafted collection. Many of the stories neatly dove-tailed into the overall concept, but one or two ran out of steam and didn't quite deliver the same bite or satisfaction that the initial set up promised, but overall a very impressive and thoughtful read.
A very well written enjoyable collection of loosely interconnected stories based around an apartment building. Definitely at its strongest with the more fantastical or sci-fi stories, both the opening story and the later The Ether of 1939 are superb examples of the sci-fi genre in the style of Greg Egan or Philip K Dick.
Throughout, Lapwood's writing consistently captures each of the diverse characters in a sympathetically sad and melancholic way. The author has a great skill for quickly drawing believable characters with whom we can relate and root for, which for me was the strongest aspect of this well crafted collection. Many of the stories neatly dove-tailed into the overall concept, but one or two ran out of steam and didn't quite deliver the same bite or satisfaction that the initial set up promised, but overall a very impressive and thoughtful read.
December 25, 2022
This is a collection of short stories and all of the characters have a connection to a particular apartment building in Wellington, NZ. There is a time travel/sci-fi element, wish there’d been more. I loved the concept and was left wanting more of these characters when I finished.
July 24, 2023
Started out ok and then got confusing. Perhaps I was reading it the wrong way.
March 30, 2023
Quirky and fun short stories all set in an apartment building in Wellington.
December 12, 2025
I’m not very good with books of short stories, even though some of these were linked. Maybe the book was a bit artsy for my uncultured fandom of fiction. I should have loved it; a time traveller stuck on the same day, bright blue hallucinations of horses invading reality, swarming ants in a kitchen, the already mentioned time traveller turning up in 1939 having being picked up by an experimental radio…that all sounds awesome. But those aspect of the stories seemed like they weren’t (or actually weren’t) the point. So it all got a bit lost on me
June 7, 2023
A great collection of short stories circulating around characters that live in an apartment building.
The strange, funny, and slightly saucy stories feel fragmented to start off with, but tend to intertwine with each other towards the end. The writing style shows its flexibility on how it can write for a number of different characters and their perspectives and imaginings as they experience wildly fantastical subjects.
It makes for a very enjoyable read.
The strange, funny, and slightly saucy stories feel fragmented to start off with, but tend to intertwine with each other towards the end. The writing style shows its flexibility on how it can write for a number of different characters and their perspectives and imaginings as they experience wildly fantastical subjects.
It makes for a very enjoyable read.
February 13, 2024
Upgraded from 3.5 stars.
The technique of tying the stories together as a set is surprisingly effective, so that by using the same set of individuals across all his stories, the author can lift the standard of any of the stories in the collection which might not work quite as effectively - to coin a phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. As a whole, while this collection showcases the writer's ability, it's not necessarily a great piece of writing when viewed just on its own merits.
The technique of tying the stories together as a set is surprisingly effective, so that by using the same set of individuals across all his stories, the author can lift the standard of any of the stories in the collection which might not work quite as effectively - to coin a phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. As a whole, while this collection showcases the writer's ability, it's not necessarily a great piece of writing when viewed just on its own merits.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews