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  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781869792190
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Gith



A fascinating novel about small-town communities, which is also a love story and a whodunit

A fascinating novel about small-town communities, which is also a love story and a whodunit.

Ken McUrran runs a service station in a small town. He's an ordinary kiwi bloke who wants an ordinary kiwi life. Trouble is, a young Austrian hitch-hiker disappears. Ken's niece, Gith, has seen which car gave the young woman back-packer a ride.

Trouble is, because of a serious car accident, Gith can't talk properly. Ken is the only person who can understand her, let alone believe her. He sets out to prove to the police - and the world - that she is right. Trouble is, the town is big on gossip and Gith and Ken have a secret of their own.

An unorthodox love story and a page-turning whodunit, written with heart and intelligence, Gith puts our values and our prejudices under the microscope.

  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781869792190
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Chris Else

Chris Else is a contemporary novelist known for his dry wit, psychological insight and stylistic variety. He has been an established figure in New Zealand literary affairs since the early 1970s when he was associated with the avant garde poetry magazine Freed. He has published a number of adult novels and several collections of short stories; his most recent publications are Gith, Black Earth White Bones, On River Road and Beetle in the Box. He has also written plays for stage and radio, and scripts for television. He and his wife, Barbara, run TFS, a Wellington-based literary agency and assessment service, and were instrumental in setting up both the New Zealand Association of Literary Agents and the New Zealand Association of Manuscript Assessors. Chris has twice been National President of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN) and has also been chair of the board of directors of Copyright Licensing Ltd.

His writing, which ranges from whodunits, to fairy-tale, to romance, to observations of small communities, has been described as ‘powerful, well-crafted’ (The Press) and its ‘understatement is irresistible’ (The New Zealand Herald). The New Zealand Listener has described Chris as ‘a meticulous observer of people and places’ and he writes about them with ‘authenticity and conviction’. These qualities were apparent in On River Road, which The Press called ‘crisply told and psychologically astute’. In The New Zealand Herald, Penelope Bieder described Chris’s wit as ‘drier than Tio Pepe’s finest’. In 2003, Chris was the recipient of the Foxton Fellowship, and he held the 2011 Autumn Residency at the Michael King Writers’ Centre.

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Praise for Gith

Wellington author Chris Else has captured the suffocating feel of small town life and conjured up an intriguing mix of whodunit and offbeat love story, but most of all he’s completely nailed the voice of his narrator, Ken McUrran.

Nicky Pellegrino, Herald on Sunday

Novelist Chris Else shows again why he should be better known.

Tina Shaw, Sunday Star Times