Hoods Landing

by Laura Vincent

Rita considered the dead. Shut her eyes. Rolled their names around her brain. Stacked each person in order like folded laundry, warm and crisp from the sun. She wondered how her name would sound amongst them.

In the rural reaches of Auckland, the women of the eclectic Gordon family gather for Christmas. They may push each other’s buttons, but know precisely when to offer tea (or a tipple). Rita, the 50-year-old baby of the family, is planning to tell them she has cancer. Drifting between past and present, she considers the lives of women in their community and reckons with what it all means for her future and her family.

Featuring elderly lesbians, twins who aren’t twins, and several dogs named Roger, Hoods Landing is about shoddy pasts, ambiguous futures and the imperfect bonds that tie family together.

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This is a deeply affecting book . . . Vincent seamlessly and skilfully weaves the aesthetics of film, musical, opera, food and the occult to create a work about love and death like no other I can remember. This compelling work breaks new ground in the literary landscape of Aotearoa.

— Pip Adam, author of kluge

Laura Vincent has the rare gift of making every member of her richly drawn cast feel indispensable. Funny, moving and alive with family lore, Hoods Landing is a novel to savour.

— Catherine Chidgey, author of The Book of Guilt

It’s a tremendous family drama; operatic in scope, intimately detailed, deeply funny, and so real it scratches a familiar itch.

— Sam Brooks for The Spinoff

This book is funny and sad and joyous all at the same time. It is also the next to read for those who are searching for their next Greta & Valdin.

— Jenna Todd for RNZ

Hoods Landing examines what is lost and what remains in the face of collective tragedy. . . A raw, raucous and riveting slice of social realism

— Dominic Amerena, author of I Want Everything

A family portrait for the ages. Vincent’s whip-smart debut entertains and devastates in one sentence, considers mortality and biscuit preference in the next. We are left desperate to enter the Gordon household and meet its intricately rendered family, and grateful for our own not-so-dissimilar homes.

— Gab Torr, author of Hard Place

Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi) is an author whose work spans fiction, poetry, and food writing. She has written the food blog hungryandfrozen.com since 2007, and, in 2013, her debut cookbook was published by Penguin Random House. Laura’s poetry has appeared in anthologies published by Āporo Press, Auckland University Press, and Muswell Press. Born in Waiuku, Laura currently lives in Tāmaki Makaurau.

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