SINGULARITY LAUNCHED AT UNITY BOOKS, AUCKLAND

There were plenty of literary heavyweights in evidence at the launch of Charlotte Grimshaw’s SINGULARITY at the ever-popular Unity Books in Auckland's High Street Tuesday night, and some very erudite, warm and witty words cast forth during the speeches.

Harriet Allen, Charlotte’s editor at Random House started proceedings by pointing out that two years ago this Friday Opportunity had been launched. She suggested it was rather apt that this is nearly the same day, but not quite, because it’s this sort of oblique similarity and this sort of subtle difference that characterises both books and their links to each other.
She suggested that these ‘almost novels’, ‘almost short-story collections’ are oxymoronic exemplars, they’re disparately cohesive, unified fragments, working together and apart both within each volume and between each volume.
That they focus on the singular in being single stories about single, separate individuals, who are alone and distinctive, but also they focus on connections, the singularity of space-time, an infinitely dense combination of matter, the point where the Big Bang began and the point in a black hole where all matter will flow.
She reminded us that Opportunity was short listed for the highly prestigious Frank O’Connor Short Story Award and won the Montana Medal for Fiction and Poetry in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. It was very widely and favourably reviewed and has continued to sell.
Harriet wondered aloud if Charlotte could possibly do better than that? Then she went on to say that this collection, which is also being published by Jonathan Cape in the UK, is even better. There’s more emotional depth and variety of setting, as though Charlotte’s letting the stories pull further apart while showing just how tightly linked they still are.
Harriet concluded her words by saying what a beautifully written book SINGULARITY is. In fact, she modestly suggested hat Charlotte is so skilled in her choice of each word, that she had left the editor feeling utterly redundant.

Then Steve Braunias entertained us in his own unique manner speaking off the cuff but so brilliantly you’d have sworn he’d just come down the hill from the English Dept of AU!
He talked about Charlotte’s forensic intelligence (and how she brings that to bear upon the page); how she’s combined the novel and the short story to create her own new fictional form.

Unity Books was pleasantly crowded on a balmy Auckland Auckland evening with more than 60 or so folk hanging out, enjoying conversation, drinking wine and, more to the point, talking about and buying books. Unity’s Caro seemed thrilled with the 35 copies of Singularity they sold and has asked Charlotte to go back and sign more stock.
As I wrote last week I reckon Singularity even outshines the Montana-winning, Opportunity.