{"id":337051,"date":"2026-03-19T07:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337051\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:33:08","slug":"thats-why-i-love-new-zealand-books-breton-dukes-on-his-literary-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337051\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018That\u2019s why I love New Zealand books\u2019: Breton Dukes on his literary heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional<\/a>, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Breton Dukes, author of the novel Party Boy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The book I wish I\u2019d written<\/p>\n

The My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It\u2019s so engrossing, so banal, so intellectually deep. He goes from flopping used nappies into rubbish bins, to writing penetrating essays on philosophy and art. His prose is at once beautiful and clich\u00e9d. He writes so accurately about being a father and a husband and a writer. I\u2019ve never felt so seen by any book or series of books.<\/p>\n

Everyone should read<\/p>\n

All of Damien Wilkins\u2019s novels. He writes with this hyper-controlled power. Beautiful sentences and transitions. A great executor of a story within a story. On the surface his work is ordinary and low on plot, but when you read deeply you are rewarded with this incredible sense of risk. Max Gate is a stone cold classic. And when he\u2019s not writing about Hardy he writes about us, Kiwis, the people of Aotearoa. With insight, with humour, with great heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ThreeFrom left to right: Breton Dukes\u2019 own novel, Party Boy; one of the Wilkins novels he thinks we all need to read; and one of the books he wishes he\u2019d written himself.
\nThe book I want to be buried with<\/p>\n

A book of the pictures my kids drew. Images of our dog, images of dragons, images of me and my wife. Images of demons and ice creams.<\/p>\n

Utopia or dystopia<\/p>\n

We are in a dystopian world \u2013 that\u2019s how I see it. So all current fiction, or all good current fiction, has the whiff of the end of the world.<\/p>\n

Fiction or non-fiction<\/p>\n

Fiction, though I like listening to history podcasts. But reading, almost totally fiction. There\u2019s just something so much more exciting about the freedom fiction affords.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a crime against language to<\/p>\n

Clich\u00e9 is painful for me. Except when Knausgaard uses it. The writer\u2019s job is to deliver writing that is fresh, tightly coiled and punchy. I find most genre fiction features stale sentences, stuff we\u2019ve heard before. I stop reading if there are flat sentences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV<\/p>\n

Party Boy by me! Be tricky to pull off the flashbacks, but with a big juicy budget\u2026 and let\u2019s go with Martin Henderson as Marco. <\/p>\n

The book that made me cry<\/p>\n

Delirious by Damien Wilkins. The bit where Pete and Mary send their son to the camp, even though they know he doesn\u2019t want to go. At the time of reading my own son was having similar struggles with doing school athletics. I broke down reading Delirious many times. It\u2019s a book that entered my brain and my heart. Only great writers \u2013 Munro, Tolstoy \u2013 can connect like that.<\/p>\n

The book that made me laugh<\/p>\n

As above. When the cops toot their horn and Pete flies off the handle because of their lack of empathy. We think, of course, of course the cop toots. Of course the parents of the dead child feel aggrieved. It\u2019s the humanity \u2013 that\u2019s where all the best humour resides, when something is so convincingly human, when something is so close to terror and pain.<\/p>\n

The book I never admit I\u2019ve read<\/p>\n

I remember being embarrassed when a woman I was dating noted all the Ian Rankin books in my bookcase. I was living in Japan. Lonely doesn\u2019t get close to describing my life there. The predictability of the Rebus books were a comfort.<\/p>\n

Greatest New Zealand book<\/p>\n

A Mistake, Carl Shuker; Delirious, Damien Wilkins; All This by Chance, Vincent O\u2019Sullivan. These three men have shifted my inner writing landscape.<\/p>\n

\"ThreeDukes\u2019 dudes: his three greatest Aotearoa books.
\nGreatest New Zealand writer<\/p>\n

Vincent O\u2019Sullivan. His story \u2018The Boy, The Bridge, The River\u2019 is an absolute classic. I was lucky to get to know Vincent for the few years before he died. He was so gentlemanly and supportive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I usually took him date scones, but one time I brought a piece of carrot cake from a caf\u00e9 for him. It hadn\u2019t been mixed well and you could taste the raising agent. Instead of just leaving it uneaten or making a comment, he hid the remains of his slice behind his teacup so I wouldn\u2019t be offended. Me! A beginner writer, lucky enough to be in the company of an absolute powerhouse. We never hugged when we parted. We shook hands, he\u2019d say some words of encouragement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The way he wrote about affairs, his humour, his ability to move through time and jump from one point-of-view to another\u2026 The other writers I admire are Wilkins, Shuker, Lawrence Patchett, Pip Adam\u2026 there are heaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Best thing about reading<\/p>\n

Feeling seen by the writer. Reading about where you live. That\u2019s why I love New Zealand books.<\/p>\n

Best food memory from a book<\/p>\n

From \u2018Cathedral\u2019 by Ray Carver. They sit down to this big meal with the blind man.\u00a0\u201cWe dug in. We ate everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow\u2026\u201d Probably my favourite Carver story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His one about the birthday cake also features some supreme stuff where the bereaved couple eat warm rolls from the baker. Food is highly underrated as a device around which to build character, plot, drama.<\/p>\n

Party Boy by Breton Dukes ($38, Te Herenga Waka University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books. <\/a>Breton Dukes is also appearing in the Auckland Writers Festival<\/a> with David Szalay and Michael Pedersen.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69,2507],"class_list":["post-337051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-the-spinoff-books-confessional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}