RaveThe Guardian (UK)This complexity is not so much confounding as enticing: each character is bound within a perspective that limits what they can know about the story as a whole, and the plot reveals are masterful ... In so many ways, Auē is quite different from its 1980s literary predecessors, more hopeful and tender ... Novelists must understand all of the above, without doubt, but the form asks us to go beyond. In bringing to the page characters who maim, but also characters who love fiercely, Manawatu has had to enter the aching heart of this story and bring her characters back from dark places. Auē has done well because it is expertly crafted, but also because it has something indefinable: enthralling, puzzling, gripping and familiar, yet otherworldly. I do see us in it, but I also see more.
