TWO  VERY DIFFERENT NOVELS BY NEW ZEALAND AUTHORS 

LOLA - 
by Elizabeth Smither - Penguin $30

and
Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar 

by D.J.Connell
Harper Collins $32.99








About the only things these two new novels have in common is that they are both fiction , both written by NZ women writers and I spoke about them both on Afternoons with Jim Mora on Radio NZ National earlier in the week.

Let us  start with Lola. I have always thought of Elizabeth Smither as one of NZ's senior and most respected poets who occasionally writes fiction.
After all she has won the Montana Poetry Prize, the Prime Ministers Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry and has been the Te Mata Poet Laureate. Then if you look inside this latest title and read her impressive publishing history my view would tend to be confirmed. We see that there are 15 poetry anthologies, four novels and five collections of short stories.

However having read this utterly charming and elegant new novel I will in future be desribing Elizabeth Smither as a poet and writer which I feel more accurately describes her abilities with both prose and poetry.

Lola Dearborn marries into the family firm of funeral directors, Dearborn and Zander, and this is her story, from the time she meets her future husband at a dance thorugh until adavanced middle age.
This book is about love and life and death and mourning and  friendship, it is about music and exploration and reflection.It is a quiet, intense, poetic and engaging story and I was sorry when I came to the end.


Julian Corke is a Filthy Liar on the other hand is a mad romp of a yarn featuring mainly the filthy liar himself. Indeed he does lie his way through school and a series of dead-end jobs in Tasmania entertaining us all the way along with his adventures and fantasies as he seeks to become a TV star- had me laughing from the first sentence until the last.
This is a first novel by D.J.Connell, NZ-born and educated, (graduate of Waikato University), who now lives in London. Her second novel, Sherry Cracker Gets Normal will be published in 2011.
Impressively movie rights to Julian Corkle have already been sold to  accliamed film makers Sarah Radclyffe and Marian Mcgowan who have a long list of suvccessful movies to their names inlcuding My Beautful Laundrette.