The New Ships

Peter Collie is adrift after his wife's death. In Wellington, in the months after the attack on the Twin Towers, he tries to understand how his life has turned out by going back over it: unsettling events on a houseboat in Amsterdam in the seventies, his return home and the start of his life with Moira, a painter in her spare time who kept things hidden too, and a family trip to Europe years later. He has elderly parents to care for and a strained bond with the boy he raised, and a discovery he never expected makes him rethink every role he has played in the family. Moving between New Zealand, London, Europe and the Indian subcontinent, the novel turns on choices to act or not to act.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, Netherlands, United Kingdom, 1970s–2000s

First published

2018

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9781776561889 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)