Home Theatre
Winner of the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Shortlisted in the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.
Available from good bookstores & Te Herenga Waka University Press. Get the ebook on Kindle or from meBooks.
“… unfailingly inventive. Narratives move between the twentieth and twenty-first century, with strong characterisation and genuine voice. The stories are humane and warm at the same time as being cerebral and challenging. Anthony Lapwood writes skilfully in all genres, ranging smoothly from domestic stories to science fiction to love stories to historical fiction, and sometimes all four at once.” — Ockham New Zealand Book Awards judges’ comments, 17 May 2023
“… an intelligent and often surprising collection.” — Brannavan Gnanalingam, Academy of New Zealand Literature, 13 December 2022
“The hint of a hopeful outcome is as welcome as it is surprising.” — Margaret Austin, Regional News, 11 October 2022
“… [a] cleverly constructed and eclectic short story collection.” — Cushla McKinney, Otago Daily Times, 16 July 2022
“… [a] rich cache of character crossovers and palimpsests of time and place, grounded in a gentle sense of humanity.” — Sally Blundell, Landfall Review Online, 1 July 2022
“… smart, warm, inventive science fiction.” — Māori Lit Blog, Instagram, 1 June 2022
“A dark, dreamlike sense pervades Home Theatre, suggesting that all is not as it should be.” — Elizabeth Heritage, Canvas, The NZ Herald, 28 May 2022
“This ingenious collection takes an apartment block as its central location, but that realist setting houses an incredible range of inhabitants and stories. The book operates like one of those magic boxes that keeps opening up to reveal another chamber, each one making the whole into a new shape.” — Emily Perkins, launch speech, 26 May 2022
“… there are some very, very moving stories in this collection… I hope it finds a wide readership.” — Airini Beautrais, Nine to Noon, Radio NZ, 26 May 2022
“… the storytelling and genre-mashing in this debut collection are impressive, reminding us that whether our existence is ordinary or extraordinary, much of life happens when universes collide.” — Rebecca Styles, The NZ Listener, 21 May 2022
“Lapwood establishes himself as one of our best storytellers.” — Nicholas Reid, Reid’s Reader, 11 April 2022
“Around the Fire”
Appears in Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2021).
“… finely crafted layerings of parental abandonment and risky reunion repeated across two generations.” — Sally Blundell, Landfall Review Online, 2022
“… an extremely moving story.” — Anne Else, Nine to Noon, Radio NZ (from 4’11”), 2021
“… a credible story of marital unhappiness.” — Nicholas Reid, Reid’s Reader, 2021
“… childhood gone wrong resolving into dysfunctional adulthood.” — Dan Rabarts, Kete, 2021
“Blue Horse Overdrive”
Appears in Home Theatre (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022), Sport 46 (2018).
“… a bravura finale to an excellent collection.” — Sally Blundell, Landfall Review Online, 1 July 2022
“There is a fruitful ambiguity to this story, where the might of state-of-the-art medical practices (MRI brain scans) are pitted against subjective experience.” — Nicholas Reid, Reid’s Reader, 11 April 2022
“A group of young friends experience a number of startling things in a short amount of time … enthralling to read.” — Tierney Reardon, Bookseller’s New Zealand, 2019
“… a lovely portrayal of people taking care of each other.” — Tracy Farr, Short Story Club on Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan, Radio NZ, 2018
Anthony Lapwood | Writer 