In praise of: Paddy Richardson

Stephanie Jones reviews the new Paddy Richardson novel Through the Lonesome Dark very positively (which is a relief for me, the book’s editor, as Stephanie is one of the few regular reviewers I take seriously):

From a porcelain-smooth introductory passage about the West Coast town of Blackball that could serve as a model of exposition to students of creative writing – this, class, is how you set a stage – to scenes of trench life in World War I, Dunedin writer Paddy Richardson masterfully entwines the intimate and the global [...]

I doubt there is any genre or era to which Richardson could not apply her virtuosity: her knack for inhabiting the minds of others, especially women in duress, is uncanny and hypnotic.

Through the Lonesome Dark has been on the NZ bestseller list since its launch, and my reckons are that when it starts to circulate around the book clubs it will find a whole new readership that will carry on and on and on.

So here are Crosby Stills Nash and Young in 1974 with “Carry On”: