Laurence Fearnley: 8 books

A heart-warming new novel by the author of Edwin and Matilda, runner-up for the Montana Award in 2008. Life is tough for 40-year-old solo mother Maggie, a home help caregiver.  Her three children are all giving her a hard time, especially Bevan, who's in trouble with the police.  But when...

In 1988, Lydia Bradey became the first woman to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. She made the ascent alone and to date she is the only New Zealander to have made an oxygen-free ascent. Her climb was a truly remarkable achievement but also an internationally controversial one. Going...

On board an aircraft as it makes its way slowly from the Antarctic to New Zealand, three people sit quietly, reflecting on their past summer on the ice. Sally, a composer, has been searching for inspiration. She wasn't prepared for the silence of Antarctica. William, a bird scientist,...

I wonder why Edwin's mother left him - why his mother left and mine stayed? I mean, which is the more damaging - the mother who tells you she loves you and leaves, or the mother who calls you stupid and stays? This beautifully written new novel by Laurence Fearnley is about finding love in...

One of the reasons she was attracted to etchings was the deep, rich, black of the oily ink. A good layer of black ink was fathomless, like the sky or the sea at night. It was black as the unconscious mind, full of life but beyond reach. Quinn is a successful artist creating new works for an upcoming...

In this story of male friendship, Fearnley reproduces the cadences and rhythms of rural life and offers insight into a provincial male world seldom explored in recent New Zealand fiction. Best friends Warwick and Dean live in rural Southland. Dean, a farmer, is single and lonely - if only he'd admit...

It was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen and I didn't have the words to describe it. It felt it though. I let out an incredible whoop of joy and skipped into the air, laughing and laughing; there was so much joy inside me. For the first time in all my memory, I could not contain myself....

Funny and moving, this novel subverts notions of 'man vs. wild' while showcasing women's strength and purpose, and the power of friendship and laughter. Loretta is a school librarian, who embarks on compiling The Dangerous Book for Menopausal Women while waiting to collect her son from after-school...