BIRD LIFE
by Anna Smaill (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
Anna Smaill’s second novel is set in a contemporary Tokyo of long commutes, convenience stores and drab lookalike apartment buildings. It’s also a supernatural city, capable of an unsettling strangeness amid the uniform array of salarymen and school kids, reflecting the essential loneliness of some of its inhabitants.
There are two