Monday, June 01, 2015

Nicky Pellegrino reviews Stephanie Johnson's "naughty" new novel

Herald on Sunday , 31 May 2015

The Writers' Festival
By Stephanie Johnson (Vintage) - $38.00

I would imagine this novel has ruffled a few feathers in the literary world. Stephanie Johnson co-founded what is now the hugely successful Auckland Writers Festival so she's had a front-row seat to years of literary dramas and scandals. 

She claims this fictional account of the planning and staging of a festival, and the lives of the people involved, is "entirely imaginary" but do we believe her? Well no, not really. And given that she doesn't seem to like any of its characters very much, there is more than a whiff of wickedness about the whole thing.

Rae, the festival director, is feuding with a colleague and splitting with her husband. Gareth is judging a major book prize but struggling with a conflict of interest as well as a chequered love life. 
Writer Merle has discovered a way to revive her flagging career but can she maintain the lies required? Ardash the celebrated young novelist is adjusting to his new found fame.

This new novel shares characters with Johnson's previous book The Writing Class. She is as insightful and assured a writer as she is naughty so there is plenty of interest to be found in it, even if you don't get all the in-jokes and references (and I'm quite sure I didn't).



Footnote. And here is Nicholas Reid in the Sunday Star Times reviewing the same title which he finds "urbane, funny, perceptive, clearly written by an insider who knows her stuff"

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