Web Only: What I'm Reading November

Yvonne van Dongen (fellow NZ Life & Leisure contributor and a woman with a pert, well-textured mind) insisted that I read How to Stop a Heart From Beating by Jackie Ballantyne (Random House). Glad I did. It’s a gem of a novel, and one that somehow got lost on the shelves among last year’s crop of loudly trumpeted local titles.

Set on a South Otago dairy farm in the 1960s, it follows the imaginative fancies of nine-year-old Solly McKeen – a girl who shafts her own boredom and solitude by conjuring up histories for the under-cherished souls buried in paupers’ graves near her home. Ballantyne manages to unravel dark family secrets via an unwitting Solly, while maintaining a charmingly buoyant narrative. It’s a lovely evocation of what it is to be curious, lonely and nine.