The New Zealand Book of the Beach

selected and introduced by Graeme Lay

A thematic anthology from the cream of New Zealand’s writers. ‘This book is so redolent of the beach you can smell the lupins. The baches and beaches and the cool front cover are as we all remember them. Fibrolite baches, pohutukawas leaning into the sand, silvery seas, big fish, rips and tides. These stories have heart, soul and that inimitable, unsettling, New Zealand undertow woven into them.… The beach brings out the animal in all of us. We go to the beach to rest, refresh and have fun. Kids snatch their first kisses. Adults strip off their clothes and their inhibitions, swim until their skin wrinkles, lie in the sand until they are crisp, eat and drink too much, and make love (and war) like never before… Graeme Lay’s take on New Zealand at the beach is perceptive. His selection of stories rings true. Satisfying, thoughtful, they make absorbing reading.’  Carroll du Chateau, New Zealand Herald