Peter Wells is the author of numerous award-winning books such as his memoir Long Loop Home. He is also an acclaimed film writer and director. In 2006 Peter was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature and film. He co-founded the Auckland Writers Festival with Stephanie Johnson in 1999.
Read a review of Peter Wells' latest book, Lucky Bastard, from the New Zealand Listener
BOOKS
Long Loop Home
Peter Wells was born in 1950, in Auckland New Zealand, to sporting parents, with the complication of a brother who shared his sexuality. In his own words, he took a wrong turning: at eleven he decided the family could not 'afford' two homosexual sons. The problems this led to complicated his youth but possibly gave him the creative fuel that illuminated his later books and films. Through the difficulties and strains explored in this 'mosaic of a memoir' come other voices: Peter's resourceful, energetic mother; his returned serviceman father, coping with an ambiguous situation about which he understood little; and his ever-inventive, dynamic brother. The book shows the way morality imploded on this family, and their transcendence over the 'inadequate ideas' of time and place. There are insightful pieces written about New Zealand, about relationships and the effects of the violent death of a family friend. More a tender evocation of a world, a place, a time, Long Loop Home comes from an author at his peak, turning back to direct a glance towards what formed him and his world.
Iridescence
Can you keep a secret? Remittance men were sent away from Britain to live in a colony on a small and regular sum - a remittance. Usually behind them was some disgrace or scandal, a secret that each man carried, often to the grave. Scandal and secrets are at the heart of Iridescence, a novel that spans two decades of the Victorian age. It follows the intrigues and sexual shenanigans of the theatre world in a brilliantly amoral London to the small and dusty town of Napier in New Zealand. Can you keep a secret? Samuel Barton, a remittance man, is blown into Napier in 1871, after an undisclosed scandal. He is damaged goods, but he carries with him an earring made up of fabulous jewels. With this earring he will buy his freedom. As we follow the story of the jewel, so Samuel Barton's secret life is revealed, piece by piece. We are taken into the very heart of a brilliant coterie of Londoners, for whom make-believe and secrets are their very soul. But what happens when life on the stage is taken into the streets? The world of make-believe explodes. Can you keep a secret? Samuel Barton could. To his grave.
Lucky Bastard
How do you make sense of the past when it suddenly explodes into the present? In post-war Japan, Eric Keeling must investigate an alleged war crime, but do his actions constitute a further crime? In New Zealand, half a century later, this is the question that confronts his two children. They have grown up with a difficult father, who was traumatised by his past as a prisoner of war. Was he a war hero, or guilty of an unscrupulous act of revenge? As their father loses his hold on reality, they must sift through the facts and fictions of what really happened, and in the process they discover a new sense of family. Taking unexpected turns, Lucky Bastard is a powerful novel in three acts. The work of a prize-winning writer, it is vividly portrayed, moving and thought-provoking.