An interesting commentary on family dynamics and how friendship and fraternity can help people to overcome life's struggles. It provided an insight into the daily challenges faced by indigenous communities in their native lands and was a compelling read.

An impressive debut from the author.

A truly unique book that had me gripped and wondering how it would end!

Would absolutely recommend!

In the glossary at the end of Becky Manawatu’s searing debut, the Māori word ‘auē’ is defined as an ‘interjection showing distress’, or as a verb: ‘to cry, wail, howl’. As a title, it couldn’t be more perfect: Auē is indeed a howl of a novel, a long and remarkably sustained note of anguish punctuated by intense moments of love. A story about violence, friendship, family and the power of words, it is a song of despair but also of hope, a plea to find and nurture even the smallest shafts of light in an increasingly darkened world.

Narrated by four voices across the first and third persons, Auē weaves together past and present strands of narrative into a rich but surprisingly lucid novel whose back-and-forth structure does much to drive the plot. From the very opening pages, in which our youngest narrator, eleven-year-old Ārama (or Ari), and his soon-to-be best friend Beth try to rescue a baby rabbit being torn apart by a pair of weka, Manawatu writes with compelling urgency, each scene described in language that is immediate, vivid and often distressing. The rabbit’s mutilated body and the children’s visceral reactions set the tone for a novel that would contain a shocking amount of violence were it not for Manawatu’s sensitive handling of her subject, poetic prose and ability to flip the coin so deftly. Ari and Beth’s encounter with the rabbit is brief, bloody and frightening. Yet it also marks the beginning of a deep and lasting friendship that will come to be one of the novel’s strongest rays of light.

[...]

Though [the violence] can occasionally feel unrelenting, with the reader perhaps wondering if certain acts of cruelty were entirely necessary, Manawatu’s control of what could be an unwieldy narrative gives the sense that she knows what she is doing. By contrasting violence with the relentless hope that Ari in particular embodies, she has written a book about the human spirit, about hidden wells of strength and the sustaining power of love. Auē is an assured debut, a haunting work of fiction, and a masterclass in beautiful storytelling from a novelist who hopefully has much more to share with us.

[excerpted from the full review available on my blog]

Auē - verb: to cry, wail, howl; interjection showing distress

What an unusual and heartfelt story. Not your average gangland tale. Taukiri wants to escape the gang violence that dogged his mother's every step, that killed his father and tore his family apart. He leaves his little brother Ārama with his Aunty Kat and her abusive husband Stu. Ari is a sweet, quiet eight year old boy, but he's braver than he looks. Together with his neighbour Beth, brave and wild, and her Dad and her dog, he might just manage this cruel situation they find themselves in.

I loved the different perspectives and timelines, from Jade who's lived her whole life surrounded by gang members and drugs, to Toko who's spent his life fishing with his father, Ari who's been left with nothing but his books and his boxes of plasters to keep the hurt at bay, Taukiri who's seen everything taken from him including his love of the sea, who needs to find himself again without losing his little brother. Each chapter adds a piece to the puzzle. I did find myself lost with some of the relationships between characters at times, which was it's only downfall.

The chapters with the children, Ari and Beth, reminded me so much of Bridge To Terabithia. Beth is fearless and she pushes Ari past his comfort zone, but that's just what he needs to survive uncle Stu while he waits for Taukiri to return to him.

A unique perspective on New Zealand life, Maori culture, gang violence and the widespread devastation it can cause. A really enjoyable little read (there is a glossary of Maori words at the end but it might be worth having a look at it before you start. It all makes sense in context but the glossary does help)

Auē by Becky Manawatu is a powerful and emotional book about violence, grief and family. Often bleak but always powerful , the book largely follows the stories of two brothers Ari and Taukiri with a third narrative that tells the story of their parents. By using the two generations the author is able to show how the cycle of violence, both gang related and domestic can seem almost impossible to escape from. For me the most impactful part of the story was Auri's narration, his innocence as he tries to understand what is happening really pulls at the reader's heartstrings. At first I found the sections set in the past confusing but as I read more I appreciated the depth they added to the story. I also loved learning more about Maori culture and traditions and was fascinated by what I learned while reading .There are some truly brutal and graphic descriptions of violence that some readers may find distressing. I would describe this book as bleak but beautiful and I know that it will stay with me for quite sometime to come.
I read an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher , all opinions are my own.

Wow. That was breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Auē is the story of two Māori brothers, Taukiri and Ari, who are learning to cope in a tough adult world after they’ve been through some really hard times. There are some tough topics in the book, but they are dealt with with such realism and honesty that I couldn’t help but feel empathy and pain with the characters. I particularly loved the friendship between Ari and Beth.

A recommended read for me. I will definitely seek out more Māori literature in the future.

This one set in New Zealand about gang culture and the lives it effects is pretty grim reading.
It’s mainly the story or two brothers who are separated after their parents die and is told from both their perspectives.

We also have a different timeline that goes back in time and has a huge cast of characters and that was my main issue with the book. It was pretty confusing and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who and what was going on. I was on much safer ground when I was reading from the brothers perspective.

There is also a lot to Māori language used in the book. Not just words but whole sentences and this lead to the difficulty of connecting with the story as I didn’t understand it. There is a glossary at the back but that’s hardly ideal.

There is a lot of violence in this book and the tone is very grim. There really are flashes of beautiful writing here, descriptive, at times surreal and at times very touching.

I enjoyed this one to a degree and it shows huge potential but, the story as presented was too confusing and I felt too long also.

A brave attempt for a debut but maybe some tighter editing would have lifted this one up further.
Just my humble opinion though as this one seems to be universally well received.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC through Netgalley.

Raw, passionate and emotive, Aue brings to the fore a part of kiwi culture generally hidden. The stories of two recently orphaned Māori lads, Taukiri (Tauk) and Arama (Ari) propels us into a cross generational tale of trauma, loss, abuse and drugs.

* Is it hard hitting? Yes.
* Is it brutal? Yes.
* Is it worth it? Yes.
* Will the characters melt your heart? Unequivocally Yes!

If you only read one book this year, make it this one.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

📚Book review📚
Aue by Becky Manawatu
E-ARC from @netgalley
Released on August 11th
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book has some horrific and some very moving content. It is really beautifully written with much wonderful imagery - one of my favourites is that of bodies as nets with words jumping and trapped inside like fish.
I suspect that over time this is a story that I will value increasingly because it has really dug in and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Aue is rich in Māori culture and mythology and I felt that I would have understood it sooner and got into it earlier if I had been more familiar with that cultural context: this is entirely not the fault of the book, but mine.
When the weaving together of the characters’ journeys became apparent I was totally hooked. The characters were engaging and strong. How they dealt with and responded to pain was a constant thread. If domestic and drug/gang- related violence is something you wish to avoid reading about then this is not for you. There is a lot of brutality in this story and it is conveyed in such an almost matter of fact way that adds to the ‘normality’ of that experience.
The novel opens with Ari being relocated to live with his Aunty Kat; left behind by older brother, Tauk. Ari is newly orphaned and hurting. He has this habit that repeats throughout the story when wherever he is hurting he sticks a plaster. I found this one of the most moving representations of emotional hurt needing attention. Similar imagery of hard feelings, foul words and anger as trapped wasps was just so powerful.
Aue is a fantastic novel. It is gritty and gets under your skin. It is beautiful and seeps into your heart. I very much recommend this to you all!

5★
“Only the other boys my age could do dumb sh*t fearlessly. They knew there was a bottom to their fall. That if they really messed up, someone would probably notice and stop them. The bottomlessness to my life was dizzying. The choices were as overwhelming as that terrible sea was.

Taukiri, ‘Tauk’, older brother of Arama, ‘Ari’, is a lost and overwhelmed seventeen-year-old who has taken Ari to live with Aunty Kat and Uncle Stu.

First, though, the word “Auē- to cry, wail, howl; interjection showing distress“. I heard the author say it, and it sounds sort of like OH-way, which I liken to Oh Woe, as in Woe is me, or Alas! Actually, it sounds a lot like the Yiddish Oy vey! It seems to be used in those circumstances and is an excellent title for this book.

Ari is not pleased about being dropped off and deserted in Kaikoura

“Taukiri said that – ‘Home now, buddy’ – but he wouldn’t look at me. He looked around me, at the toaster, at a dead fly on the windowsill, at the door handle. He said something dumb, ‘You’ll love it, there are cows.’

You’re an orphan. I’m leaving. But cows.

He carried boxes into my new bedroom and pretended not to notice I hadn’t said a word since he’d packed up our house in Cheviot and driven me here. To Kaikōura. To Aunty Kat. To a place we sometimes visited but never stopped the night.”

Taukiri reckons he’s taking his old car and his guitar and going busking, so his little brother can’t come. Pity.

“Uncle Stu slammed the phone down, came back to the table and sat. His chair squeaked and the table shook. Every time Uncle Stu moved or spoke, he made noises that made my heart lurch around like a scared frog stuck in hot mashed spuds.”

Uncle Stu’s simmering temper underscores everything in this home. Ari and Aunty Kat can relax really only when Uncle Stu is milking in the dairy. But, like all of us, there are reason’s Uncle Stu is the way he is. The ghost tells us:

“Toko introduced Kat to Stu. The farm boy, who always came to school with blue rings around his eyes and looked at Toko’s lunch with envy. Looked at Toko’s life with envy.”

Ari learns quickly to keep quiet, and when he’s upset, he mends himself with plasters (sticking plasters, band-aids).

“I turned off my light, then had to find my way to the bed. I hit my shin on the corner and reached under the mattress for my emergency box of plasters. I plastered my shin and some bruises on my knees and elbows. They weren’t bleeding, but still – they felt better plastered.”

I once had an elderly neighbour who remarked (as I was bandaging a minor ‘wound’ at the request of a crying child) that band-aids are today’s “Mother’s kiss”. I remember when we used to ask our mothers to “kiss it and make it better”. In Ari’s case, I think my neighbour was right.

The story is of a few generations and a few groups, and fortunately for me, chapters are titled with the name of the character whose story is being told. In between, there are italicised sections several pages long, and I knew it was a ghost narrating, but I wasn’t sure who it was or exactly what happened.

There is a lot of language, by which I mean “te reo”, which translates literally as “the language”, referring to Maori words. There is a great glossary at the end, which I enjoyed but which isn’t necessary to understand the story.

There is also the other kind of ‘language’ amongst the gangs and druggies and people you really don’t want to mess with. There is drug use, graphic violence, and the absolute degradation of some women.

“But the one-mores were piling up. One more beating, one more toke, one more drink, one more shot. It was something of a dying.”
. . .

“Fury then remorse and forgiveness. And she hoped [he] knew how far his fury should go to create a perfect equation of those things. An equilibrium they could measure love by. A trinity. Love, as she’d learned it. No questions asked.”

The characters are wonderful (and awful): Kat, Jade, Aroha, Sav, Beth and Toko, Taukiri, Ari, Tom, Stu, Coon. I can’t remember them all. The author balances the caring against the brutality well. I imagine it’s this balancing act that reminds me a bit of Hanya Yanagihara’s outstanding A Little Life.

For me, the main story is Ari’s. His friendship with Beth, who is his age and an adventurous kid, makes for bright, often funny spots. He wishes he could live with her and Tom, her father who is kind to him. (Of course, Uncle Stu hates them.)

I think the author does a good job of showing what happens to people who feel dispossessed and overlooked, whether it’s one small boy or an entire part of society. The fact that they are mostly First Nations people makes it even more poignant to me.

The Maoris of old were respected, feared warriors. Colonisation and so-called civilisation have a lot to answer for.

At the end of the book, the author says that it was written in memory or her young cousin who lived with her family for a couple of years, so I did a bit of a google and found some of his story here.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/new...

This is the latest addition to my favourite books, and I suspect Ari and Tauk and the others will pop into my thoughts often.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribe Publishing for the copy for review.

This wasn't an easy read as part of this book are quite brutal an other are quite disturbing. But it was worth as the author is a great storyteller and this is a story heartbreaking and poignant, a punch in the gut that i loved as I loved the possibility of hope and redemption.
There's not a lot of story about Maori and this is a great story that remained with me.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Unfortunately, this one didn’t seem to be for me. I appreciated the themes and the discussion about intergenerational trauma, drug abuse and gangs in NZ. However, the story itself was just very hard to follow for me for a few reasons.

First, the choice to divide the story line into 3 POVs was a good choice, however, it was never mentioned that one of the POVs was occurring in the past and made me feel very uninterested in it as I couldn’t piece together how it fitted with the rest of the narrative nor did I figure out it was in the past for quite a bit.

Second, the use of Māori language was just too much for me. I did not see the added value to throw in whole sentences that I had to go and check in the glossary and that just took me out of the story every time. Made me feel very detached from the characters and the narrative.

Third, although violence and abuse was to be expected, some of it was just too much for me personally. The addition of animal abuse and cruelty didn’t add to the situation, story or characterisation. I found the character responsible for animal abuse, despicable from previous acts and adding animal cruelty towards the end just felt gratuitous.

My favourite part must have been Ari’s POV. A child dealing with abandonment, abuse, pain and grief, Ari was very well fleshed out and made sense in the story line. He was the only one that I managed to feel for and be interested in his development and fate. However that’s only a third of the book that I did enjoy and couldn’t bring myself to give any more than 2 stars for the book overall even if Ari’s part was amazing!

Overall, very hard topics, dealt in a very raw manner. Not quite sure that choice was the best one for the narrative but as I seem to be in the minority of those who didn’t enjoy the book, maybe this is due to personal preference. Wouldn’t recommend just based on the amount of graphic abuse and violence.

This was a really powerful read that contains some hard hitting issues that are handled sensitively and empathetically. It was well written with a compelling storyline and well developed charcaters that I am still thinking about after finishing the book. I also loved the writing style which gave the reader multiple points of view including that of children so as a reader I really felt that I got to know the characters and their circumstances.
This book had everything from family breakdowns and drama to gangs and gang violence but the thing that intrigued me the most was the Maori cyulture throughout the book. It is a culture I have also be interested by, but I have never read any fiction that features this culture and so it was such a compelling read for that as well as everything else.
This was a heartwrenching read in so many ways and it is definitely worth a read. I really liked it.

4+
Possible spoilers

Beautiful and heartbreaking.

It's filled with love and sorrow.
Broke my heart into so many pieces, then put it back together again with warmth or humour, before shattering again.

It will be a while before I forget this one.

Amazing and unexpected.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Aue by Becky Manawatu is a powerful and often brutal book very much in the style of Alan Duff's "Once Were Warriors". While Diff's book is set in the mean streets of South Auckland most of Aue is in small town South Island but with similar themes domestic violence,gangs ,poverty ,drugs and excessive drinking.

The book begins with recently orphaned Taukiri dropping his young brother Arama off at his Aunt and Uncle's smallholding and making a quick exit as he tries to put the death and violence that he's known in his young life behind him. From there as the brothers struggle with their new lives other characters appear and it took a while,and a bit of head scratching,to realise that the story of the boy's parents was being told in flashback as well. With so many names and timelines jumping back and forth I struggled for a while but once it became clear who was who I really got into the story,and what a story it is.
There's not much joy in this book,most of the characters appear to be damaged people leading chaotic lives with predictably bad ends. As with Alan Duff's books there's often a feeling of being physically battered yourself as the fists fly and the boots go in and it's often a hard read. There is a very clever device used by the author that I'm not keen on as a rule but works very well here and ties in with the Maori culture theme that runs throughout the book.. Those cultural references might confuse British readers, as might the Maori language phrases though there is a glossary at the back of the book.......which I found after I'd finished it and would have saved me a fair bit of Googling had I known it was there.

Overall a great read,it won't brighten your day but it's a superb piece of writing.. While the multiple storylines do get confusing as new characters and situations suddenly appear part way through, once you've worked out what's going on and the connections between the characters it's a gripping story..

Auē is a novel about cycles of violence and family, as two brothers are separated and must fight history to be reunited. Set in New Zealand, the book follows brothers Taukiri and Ārama, as Taukiri leaves his eight-year-old brother with his aunt, trying to escape the violence that surrounds him. Meanwhile, Ari has to adjust to living with his aunt and her abusive husband, making friends with his neighbour Beth, a girl with a dog and big ideas about leaving their rural area. Ari believes Taukiri will return for him, and maybe that will be enough.

The book moves between different perspectives: the first person narration of Ārama and Taukiri, and a third person narrative of an earlier time and their parents' generation. Doing this allows Manawatu to explore ongoing cycles of violence, both within gang culture and otherwise, and the impact of this violence upon family relationships. The most memorable part of the novel is probably Ari's narration, as a child who is growing to understand the complex world in which he lives, but also doesn't know the truth about his brother and the deaths that have led to this point. Ari and Beth's friendship, built out of unlikely circumstance, is a touching chance for sanctuary with elements that still bring the story back to violence (like Beth's obsession with Django Unchained). The other narratives were perhaps harder to get into at first, especially the story of the older generation which immediately throws in a handful of characters without you being sure of who they are, but after a while things come together.

Combining gang violence, Māori culture, and broken families, Auē is a powerful book, infused with a lot of sadness, that searches for hope and sanctuary. Having both child and adult perspectives and telling multiple stories at once works well, though I did lose track occasionally as to who was who. It's not just another book about gangs and violence, but one that explores family in its complexities.