Set in Christchurch in 2012, two years after the first earthquake, Kate De Goldi’s Eddy, Eddy is a wise and haunting coming-of-age novel populated by authentically flawed characters that command undivided attention. It’s also cleverly haunted by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with a dead dog named Marley, a countdown to Christmas, and Dickens’ three ghosts replaced by women who come into the young protagonist’s life as he struggles with grief and identity.
Two years on from the earthquake that shattered his city and life, orphan Eddy lives with his uncle Brain in the suburbs of Christchurch, where he works in a supermarket and minds pets of all varieties – from dogs to frogs. Through his pet-minding work, Eddy makes connections with people as well as animals, not least with older women who seem drawn to him, and he also meets Boo.
Nuanced and courageous, subtle and intense, with a very powerful, heartachingly surprising denouement, Eddy, Eddy is a brilliantly bittersweet treasure of the kind you’ll most likely want to re-read. In fact, after reading it in one swift sitting, I feel the need to go right back in.
A coming of age story, a love story, an earthquake story and a story of finding your way back from grief.
Eddy Smallbone (orphan) is grappling with identity, love, loss and religion. It's two years since he blew up his school life and the earthquakes felled his city.
Home life is maddening. His pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling – in unexpected form.
As Eddy navigates his way through the Christchurch suburbs to Christmas, juggling competing responsibilities and an increasingly noisy interior world, he moves closer and closer to an overdue personal reckoning.
Eddy, Eddy is a richly layered novel, written with humour and pathos: a love story, peopled with flawed and comical characters, both human and animal; and a story of grief, the way its punch may leave you floundering - and how others can help you find your way back.
'Intense, funny, shocking and exuberant, Eddy, Eddy is a brilliant, rich and effervescent novel about the myriad ways - sometimes right and sometimes dazzlingly wrong - that we find to save ourselves, when, like Eddy, the plates shift underneath our feet and the chasm opens.' Ursula Dubosarsky
'Lock your doors, put your phones on silent, and enjoy losing all track of time when you're introduced to Eddy and his complicated, endearing, off-beat world.' Emma Neale
'Eddy Eddy is sublime: so subtle & beautiful.' Carole Beu, Women's Bookshop, NZ
Praise for The 10pm Question:
'I don't know if you are really allowed, or able, to say this about many books, but I think this one is perfect' The Guardian
‘A perfectly crafted novel, funny, compassionate, rich in characters. Hot damn (it also has great swear words), it’s good.’ The Daily Telegraph
‘A highly original, poignant and funny story that should appeal to adults as well as teens.’ Daily Mail
Author
About Kate De Goldi
Kate de Goldi lives in New Zealand. She has won a number of accolades for her fiction, including the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award and the Esther Glen Medal. Her book Clubs, illustrated by Jacqui Colley, won Book of the Year in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards in 2005. The 10pm Question was a number one bestseller in New Zealand, a White Ravens 2009 selection as an Outstanding New International Book for Children and Young Adults, and the winner of the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2001, Kate was made a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate.
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