The Virgin and the Whale
  • Published: 6 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781775533757
  • Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99
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The Virgin and the Whale

a love story

Formats & editions
EBook
6 Sep 2013
Tr. Paperback
6 Sep 2013
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A touching, clever novel about stories, about using them to create your own identity, and about the way they can forge bonds of love.

A touching, clever novel about stories, about using them to create your own identity, and about the way they can forge bonds of love.

It is 1919. Elizabeth Whitman is working as a nurse in the local hospital, waiting for her husband to return from war, though he is missing in action, ‘presumed dead’. She keeps him alive for their four-year-old son, Jack, by telling the story of a man she calls The Balloonist, who went away in a hot-air balloon and has adventures in exotic countries.

When she is asked to nurse a returned soldier whose head injury has reduced him to an animal-like state with no memory, Elizabeth starts telling her stories to him. It is through them that she manages to engage his interest and offer him a new life . . . in more ways than one.
  • Published: 6 September 2013
  • ISBN: 9781775533757
  • Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Carl Nixon

Carl Nixon is an award-winning short story writer, novelist and playwright. He has twice won the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition, and won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition in 2007. His first book, Fish ’n’ Chip Shop Song and other stories went to number one on the New Zealand bestselling fiction list, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.

Nixon completed his first novel while he was the Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2006. Rocking Horse Road saw him identified as ‘a major talent’ by North & South, and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009. It has been published in China, France, and Germany and was on several lists for the best crime novels in Germany in 2012. His second novel, Settlers’ Creek, was also long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award. His novel, The Virgin and the Whale is being developed as a feature film by South Pacific Pictures.

His stage plays have been produced in every professional theatre in New Zealand. They include Mathew, Mark, Luke and Joanne, The Birthday Boy and The Raft. He has adapted for the stage Lloyd Jones’s novel The Book of Fame and JM Coetzee’s Disgrace. He was awarded the 2020 Howard McNaughton Prize at the Adam NZ Play Awards, recognising excellence in an unproduced script.

In 2018 Carl Nixon was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in France where he worked on The Tally Stick.

See more at www.carlnixon.co.nz/

portrait photo of Carl Nixon

Also by Carl Nixon

The Waters
The Tally Stick
Reading the Signs
Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song and Other Stories
Settlers' Creek
Rocking Horse Road
See all

Praise for The Virgin and the Whale

This places him firmly as one of our leading writers . . . complex narrative, beautiful prose and compelling characters makes this book absolutely sing . . . really, really clever.

Sonja da Freiz, http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon

The relationship between the wild amnesiac and the pragmatist Is brilliantly laid out and unwinds to a delightful conclusion: the subtitle, A Love Story, forewarns us of such an outcome. . . . This novel is wonderfullyaccomplished, beautifully told and a delight to engage with.

Michael Larsen, NZ Listener

If I read a better novel this year, I will eat my socks. Although I am fairly certain it won't come to that. It would be hard to top this marvellous tale . . . This is an extraordinary story . . . woven exquisitely together by Nixon. Elegantly crafted, gripping and heart-warming. Five stars.

Peta Stavelli, New Zealand Motorhomes Caravans & Destinations

This story is about battles of wills and ideologies as well as the healing power of love. Yet Nixon's novel is also, and equally, about the healing properties of storytelling itself . . . Above all, those who can listen to a story and hear the surface and subtexts are upheld over those whose minds are not open to the riches and alternative ways of thinking that stories can bring. Nixon brings home to us why literature is rightly placed among the humanities.

Peter Stupples, Otago Daily Times

It is a story which is powerful, yet gentle. It is evocative and poignant. But most of all it is beautifully written and clever and kept me hooked to the last.

Wendy A Mill, Timaru Herald

An intricately woven story within a story within a beautiful love story . . . Clever, succinct and yet poetic. Engaging presentation. A good present for a friend, or to yourself.

Latitude Magazine

I am a big Carl Nixon fan – and The Virgin & the Whale has strengthened this position. It is a story about stories – how we use them to cope with trauma; and stories within stories – overtly playing with storytelling, character, plot and ‘happy’ endings. . . . The Virgin & the Whale is poignant and wise and I highly recommend it.

alysontheblog, https://alysontheblog.wordpress.com/

I was literally hooked from the first eight words... It was just wonderful, storytelling at its most sublime... I’m going to do the unheard of for me and turn around and read it again.

Vanda Symon, Afternoons on Radio New Zealand