Gilmore's dairy

by Lloyd Jones

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Lloyd Jones was born in 1955 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, a place which has become a frequent setting and subject for his subsequent works of fiction. He studied at Victoria University, and has worked as a journalist and consultant as well as a writer. His recent novels are: Biografi (1993); Choo Woo (1998); Here At The End of the World We Learn to Dance (2002); Paint Your Wife (2004);and Mister Pip (2007). He is also the author of a collection of short stories, Swimming to Australia (1991).

In 2003, he published a children's picture book, Napoleon and the Chicken Farmer, and this was followed by Everything You Need to Know About the World by Simon Eliot (2004), a book for 9-14 year olds. He compiled Into the Field of Play: New Zealand Writers on the Theme of Sport (1992), and also wrote Last Saturday (1994), the book of an exhibition about New Zealand Saturdays, with photographs by Bruce Foster. The Book of Fame (2000), is his semi-fictional account of the 1905 All-Black tour, and was adapted for the stage by Carol Nixon in 2003.

Lloyd Jones won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) and the Kiriyama Prize for his novel, Mister Pip (2007), set in Bougainville in the South Pacific, during the 1990s. He was also shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In the same year he undertook a Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency.

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really surprised, given how much I enjoyed this book, that I hadn't heard of it before. I came across it while re-labelling some dusty, rarely used books in the New Zealand collection. I love Lloyd's Mister Pip so thought I'd like to read his first novel.

The small town portrayed is recognisably Kiwi without being cloying or forced and the story Lloyd tells is subtle yet satirical, humerous yet sad, naive yet knowing, insightful yet not ponderous. It's a hell of a first novel.

I often find books with male narrators oddly alienating, so much so that I tend to unconsciously stick to books written by women. I can't quite explain why that is, just that I often find the male perspective jarring to the point that I can't get absorbed in the character's experiences. I found quite the opposite with Moss Tolley, the lead character. I empathised with him and found this at times rollicking tale of a boy with a small-town view finding his feet in the world absorbing, entertaining and thoughtful.