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Loop Tracks
It’s 1978: the Auckland abortion clinic has been forced to close and sixteen-year-old Charlie has to fly to Sydney, but the plane is delayed on the tarmac. It’s 2019: Charlie’s tightly contained Wellington life with her grandson Tommy is interrupted by the unexpected intrusions of Tommy’s first girlfriend, Jenna, and the father he has never known, Jim. The year turns, and everything changes again.
Loop Tracks is a major New Zealand novel, written in real time against the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic and the New Zealand General Election and euthanasia referendum.
Loop Tracks is a major New Zealand novel, written in real time against the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic and the New Zealand General Election and euthanasia referendum.
332 pages, Paperback
Published June 10, 2021
About the author
Sue Orr
7 books18 followersSue Orr is the author of two short story collections. Etiquette for a Dinner Party (2008) won the Lilian Ida Smith Award and From Under the Overcoat (2011) was shortlisted for the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and won the People's Choice Award. Her fiction has been published in New Zealand and international anthologies and translated into Spanish. In 2011 she was the Sargeson Buddle Findlay Fellow.
She has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology and Massey University and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University, Wellington. She lives in Auckland with her family.
She has taught creative writing at Manukau Institute of Technology and Massey University and is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University, Wellington. She lives in Auckland with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
February 22, 2022
Well well well, New Zealand fiction, and pandemic literature truly is alive and well. Loop Tracks is a fantastic novel in a lot of different ways. Although it’s blurb suggests it is a political novel, in my reading this story is more politically adjacent. Orr’s novel is at its heart about choices and connection. Against two stark political backdrops (1978 abortion debate, and the 2020 pandemic and general election referenda) Orr explore the impact that the loss or restriction of choice has on individual human experience. Through this we are invited to consider the significant impact our choices, and lack of choices have on our lives and our connections with people in them. The concepts of autonomy and the greater good are weighty ones. Orr’s complex character grapple with them in authentic, flawed ways. It’s a story that in these strange times will resonate in some way with all of us. I was very impressed by this.
April 15, 2022
Novels that have recurring themes and motifs are great when you spot the trails running through the narrative. In some ways they are even better when you don’t spot all of these at once. When you only notice later, as you ponder what you read or think about a review.
Loop Tracks is on one of those novels. For Kiwis loop tracks are things we walk, where the native bush can sometimes be deceptive and disorientating, where we need marked trails to bring us back to where we started. There are plenty of looping stories in here, and we end fittingly with a couple selecting a loop track for their walk in the Wellington bush. The novel also references that seventies toy, the Spirograph, with the bigger and smaller circles drawing patterns of ever-increasing intricacy on the paper. Taken a step further, the whole book is full of threads that constantly loop back on themselves.
Charlie is our central character. We start with her at fifteen and sixteen, ending with her in her late fifties. It is around her life that we circle. The whole book hinges on a mistake at fifteen. A few minutes in the back seat of a red Vauxhall and the lifelong consequences.
In 1978, when our story begins, Charlie is the fifteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant. Politicians have forced the closure of abortion clinics in the country and the only safe way to get a termination is by travelling to Sydney. Charlie waits in the plane at Auckland airport, alongside two others on the flight for the same reason. The flight is delayed. Mechanical problems keep them waiting on the tarmac until at last, Charlie gets off the plane and decides upon a different course.
Her pregnancy will be a work of concealment. She has already been sent to a different doctor, as her mother seeks to hide from the shame that is bound to follow. More the mother’s shame than Charlie’s. The scene is exquisitely rendered at a point when there is a subtle shift of narrator away from the first person:
Soon Charlie is sent away to a distant ‘friend’ in Napier, only to return six months later as if nothing had happened. We are gradually led to a powerful scene at the hospital where the girl who has just given birth never gets to see the child. Another family takes him away and is relieved at the thought that the young mother will never know their names, or that of the boy they call James.
Fast forward to contemporary times. Middle-aged Charlie is living in Wellington with her eighteen-year-old grandson Tom. Her lost son’s son. Tom has started at university and is about to go on a first date. Raised alone by his grandmother, he has been protected from past facts and the difficulties of anxiety and lack of empathy that plague someone on the Asperger’s spectrum. Not everyone gets Tom, but that lack of empathy is yet another of the big plot loops.
As the story drives forwards we assemble the facts from the past. How Charlie’s eighteen-year-old son Jim, not far from becoming the father of Tom, invaded his mother’s life once more. Somehow since she last almost saw him, he has turned bad. Now he terrorises his mother and uses her house to make and sell drugs. Eventually, after Charlie finds him having sex with a schoolgirl he has plied with drugs, she turns him over to the police and her life is free from him once more. Right up to the day that he turns up and dumps his four-year old son, Tom, on her. It is a duty she willingly accepts.
I could go on and on, following the twists, the looping themes, but that would spoil all that the book has to offer. Rarely do I read of book of fiction that confronts so many questions and issues. Without deploying too many spoilers, the burning question that lingers, once you know that Tom’s young mother committed suicide soon after his birth and that Jim’s schoolgirl victim was found dead from an overdose, is what a difference staying on the flight to Sydney could have made. Two young women might not have died, but Charlie would not have been able to raise Tom. As New Zealand wrestles with the arrival of COVID and a referendum on drugs and euthanasia approaches, the protagonists are wrapped in layers of meaning and significance.
This is a stunning novel. At times both humorous and bleak, there are so many loops to find. Some are obvious, others take days and weeks to reveal themselves. A novel that keeps on giving.
Loop Tracks is on one of those novels. For Kiwis loop tracks are things we walk, where the native bush can sometimes be deceptive and disorientating, where we need marked trails to bring us back to where we started. There are plenty of looping stories in here, and we end fittingly with a couple selecting a loop track for their walk in the Wellington bush. The novel also references that seventies toy, the Spirograph, with the bigger and smaller circles drawing patterns of ever-increasing intricacy on the paper. Taken a step further, the whole book is full of threads that constantly loop back on themselves.
Charlie is our central character. We start with her at fifteen and sixteen, ending with her in her late fifties. It is around her life that we circle. The whole book hinges on a mistake at fifteen. A few minutes in the back seat of a red Vauxhall and the lifelong consequences.
In 1978, when our story begins, Charlie is the fifteen-year-old girl who gets pregnant. Politicians have forced the closure of abortion clinics in the country and the only safe way to get a termination is by travelling to Sydney. Charlie waits in the plane at Auckland airport, alongside two others on the flight for the same reason. The flight is delayed. Mechanical problems keep them waiting on the tarmac until at last, Charlie gets off the plane and decides upon a different course.
Her pregnancy will be a work of concealment. She has already been sent to a different doctor, as her mother seeks to hide from the shame that is bound to follow. More the mother’s shame than Charlie’s. The scene is exquisitely rendered at a point when there is a subtle shift of narrator away from the first person:
I’m expecting more from this moment, to be honest. I’m waiting for a rush of some sort, a surging epiphany on behalf of the girl. Something along the lines of ‘Ashen faced she crumples. Tears fill her eyes. She understands, now, what she’s done.’ But there is none of that. There’s not even ‘The girls sits quietly still as , slowly, the truth envelops her. The reality of what’s happening.’ I come at her from all angles, just I I did minutes earlier in the car. Zilch. There’s plenty of ongoing concern about the state of her nail polish but really, she knows her stuff. She’s sure of her facts and the fact is you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex. So. The surging epiphany turns out to be mine, not hers.
Soon Charlie is sent away to a distant ‘friend’ in Napier, only to return six months later as if nothing had happened. We are gradually led to a powerful scene at the hospital where the girl who has just given birth never gets to see the child. Another family takes him away and is relieved at the thought that the young mother will never know their names, or that of the boy they call James.
Fast forward to contemporary times. Middle-aged Charlie is living in Wellington with her eighteen-year-old grandson Tom. Her lost son’s son. Tom has started at university and is about to go on a first date. Raised alone by his grandmother, he has been protected from past facts and the difficulties of anxiety and lack of empathy that plague someone on the Asperger’s spectrum. Not everyone gets Tom, but that lack of empathy is yet another of the big plot loops.
As the story drives forwards we assemble the facts from the past. How Charlie’s eighteen-year-old son Jim, not far from becoming the father of Tom, invaded his mother’s life once more. Somehow since she last almost saw him, he has turned bad. Now he terrorises his mother and uses her house to make and sell drugs. Eventually, after Charlie finds him having sex with a schoolgirl he has plied with drugs, she turns him over to the police and her life is free from him once more. Right up to the day that he turns up and dumps his four-year old son, Tom, on her. It is a duty she willingly accepts.
I could go on and on, following the twists, the looping themes, but that would spoil all that the book has to offer. Rarely do I read of book of fiction that confronts so many questions and issues. Without deploying too many spoilers, the burning question that lingers, once you know that Tom’s young mother committed suicide soon after his birth and that Jim’s schoolgirl victim was found dead from an overdose, is what a difference staying on the flight to Sydney could have made. Two young women might not have died, but Charlie would not have been able to raise Tom. As New Zealand wrestles with the arrival of COVID and a referendum on drugs and euthanasia approaches, the protagonists are wrapped in layers of meaning and significance.
This is a stunning novel. At times both humorous and bleak, there are so many loops to find. Some are obvious, others take days and weeks to reveal themselves. A novel that keeps on giving.
December 28, 2022
4.5
2022 has been an excellent year for NZ books. These, in particular, have been stand-outs for me: Grand: Becoming My Mother's Daughter and The Axeman's Carnival. I am delighted to add Loop Tracks to this list. Although published in mid-2021 the novel didn't really cross my radar until it was nominated in this year's Ockhams, even then I have let it languish on the shelf for far too long.
It really is extremely good and particularly the opening section, which introduces 16-year-old Charlie and her "plight". Orr has created something special here with this character, and while the rest of the novel is also compelling - I don't know if it ever surpasses that 1978 world Orr masterfully depicts in the opening scenes.
While I understand how the different parts of the novel work with each other, in my mind the second half is a very different novel. It's our very own "pandemic fiction", by which I mean "NZ 2020" the highlights reel. Bubble buddies and 1 pm updates, lockdown rules, the revolving door of the National Party leadership, Billy Te Kahika and the election. It turns out Orr does a stellar job of recreating the sociopolitical vibe of that year. It was a fairly cathartic reading experience all in all.
A niggle remains, a vague feeling of being robbed of a story. Plenty of interesting characters get only a small role...the other women on that plane, for example, Charlie's parents ....Jim. Any of them could have had larger parts in this story. I would have swapped them for Jenna and Tommy honestly but then that's an entirely different novel and this one while A game of two halves is still mostly a great NZ read.
2022 has been an excellent year for NZ books. These, in particular, have been stand-outs for me: Grand: Becoming My Mother's Daughter and The Axeman's Carnival. I am delighted to add Loop Tracks to this list. Although published in mid-2021 the novel didn't really cross my radar until it was nominated in this year's Ockhams, even then I have let it languish on the shelf for far too long.
It really is extremely good and particularly the opening section, which introduces 16-year-old Charlie and her "plight". Orr has created something special here with this character, and while the rest of the novel is also compelling - I don't know if it ever surpasses that 1978 world Orr masterfully depicts in the opening scenes.
While I understand how the different parts of the novel work with each other, in my mind the second half is a very different novel. It's our very own "pandemic fiction", by which I mean "NZ 2020" the highlights reel. Bubble buddies and 1 pm updates, lockdown rules, the revolving door of the National Party leadership, Billy Te Kahika and the election. It turns out Orr does a stellar job of recreating the sociopolitical vibe of that year. It was a fairly cathartic reading experience all in all.
A niggle remains, a vague feeling of being robbed of a story. Plenty of interesting characters get only a small role...the other women on that plane, for example, Charlie's parents ....Jim. Any of them could have had larger parts in this story. I would have swapped them for Jenna and Tommy honestly but then that's an entirely different novel and this one while A game of two halves is still mostly a great NZ read.
January 29, 2022
Beautiful prose encompassing the all too real struggle with some difficult subjects - abortion, euthanasia, adoption, drug use, the autonomy of people on the (assumed) autism spectrum.
Whilst the ebb and flow of the story kept me turning the pages, I was waiting for more. For something to happen. Life happens in Loop Tracks, which is great, but I think my personal reading tastes lean more towards action and excitement. So this is definitely a case of 'It's not you, it's me.' It has been longlisted for the NZ Ockham Book Awards.
As I said, the prose is beautiful. And there are some sentences which floored me. The dip back into history was especially uncomfortable. Those poor girls - fictional and real. I am, and will always be, pro choice when it comes to a woman's body and her pregnancy. This book reinforces that view.
Whilst the ebb and flow of the story kept me turning the pages, I was waiting for more. For something to happen. Life happens in Loop Tracks, which is great, but I think my personal reading tastes lean more towards action and excitement. So this is definitely a case of 'It's not you, it's me.' It has been longlisted for the NZ Ockham Book Awards.
As I said, the prose is beautiful. And there are some sentences which floored me. The dip back into history was especially uncomfortable. Those poor girls - fictional and real. I am, and will always be, pro choice when it comes to a woman's body and her pregnancy. This book reinforces that view.
March 10, 2022
Damn I be giving five stars out like no ones business but this was dope as fuck! Set in Wellington really turned it up a level. The interwoven nature of this really got me like all sooooo interconnected and another pick up can’t put down kinda spec. Loved it cover to cover, don’t understand how it covered so many ideologies political climates and historical jumped to present and back to a minute ago like pow pow pow. Love. It. Read it
August 23, 2022
This is a beautifully written, richly layered, multi-faceted topical novel, set in New Zealand. It opens with Charlie, pregnant in May 1978, when NZ was in a 'no abortion' hiatus. Orr's writing captures the naievete of a girl caught in the loop of the expectations of her teenage crowd, and then facing the loop of social ostracism as her belly swells. The baby, in keeping with protocols of that era, is adopted out and the novel shifts to 2020 where Charlie is a teacher living in Wellington(there are occasional jumps backwards in time). She is living with Tommy, who is a first year uni student and her grandson, and when he begins dating Jenna the steady loop track they've been on begins to be disrupted. I love the way in which Orr paces the unpacking of the plot - it's so resonant with the way in which people's lives unfold to their friends and colleagues - it's never in a tsunami of details and feelings, but in little spurts and gushes, as pressure is applied by situations. In this way, the reader is gently lead to consider if they've been treading a rut into a loop track within our own lives, to question whether the right to privacy trumps the right to protect those we care about. We're also asked to consider the ethics around euthanasia, to join in the novel's debate about government control during a pandemic versus the right to make our own choices, to ask whether it is still rape if the girl is so innocent that she doesn't protest the act ( a definite yes from me!), and finally, we have to evaluate how much of an impact adoption has on the lives of those involved. Overall, a very satisfying book and one I'd highly recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2021
I started this book thinking I was reading a story about the past, but it turned out to be very much one about the present. I also thought it was a book set in Auckland, but it's very much a book set in and about Wellington. It's hard to describe this book. It's about abortion, sex, family, choices, youth, conspiracy theories, a changing world, and I guess... connection, which is a subject that has become highlighted after a couple of years of separations and restrictions. It captures a lot of the feelings that have come from the past couple of years, particularly around assessing ones own life, and what the future means. Incredibly topical for a middle-aged woman living in Wellington such as myself.
I enjoyed it, even if I did find the protagonist irritating at times and was frustrated by her choices. Well worth the read.
I enjoyed it, even if I did find the protagonist irritating at times and was frustrated by her choices. Well worth the read.
August 18, 2021
Disappointing. It had lots of positive reviews but for me it was a bit pedestrian.
April 24, 2022
Gritty, gripping and uncomfortably relatable in true NZ contemporary fiction style. Highly recommend
August 19, 2022
Strong 3.5 stars. A lot going on - abortion, addiction, conspiracy theories, suicide, euthanasia referendum - but the story is layered and so it works.
June 26, 2022
Sue Orr is a New Zealand author, I don't read many books from New Zealand authors but I really enjoyed Loop Tracks. It was very cool reading about places within New Zealand - especially Wellington - and thinking, I've been there! I learnt a bit about New Zealand history, I had no idea that for a period during 1978 the abortion clinic in Auckland had closed due to protesters and as a result women were sent to Sydney to have their abortions done. The second part of the book is set in 2020 alongside the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the general election, as well as the two referendums, the legalization of cannabis and euthanasia. Loop tracks also delves into the debate of abortion and if men should have the right to make decisions regarding what women can do with their bodies. This is very topical as just as I finished Loop Tracks the Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs Wade in the US which means that abortion is no longer a right in the constitution and now it is up to each state as to whether abortion is legal. A heart-breaking time to be a woman, especially in the U.S, and Loop Tracks is a start reminder that it was only 2 years ago that abortion was decimalized in New Zealand and how this very delicate topic is an ongoing debate not only in the U.S but in New Zealand as well.
Loop Tracks, which opens in 1978 with 16-year-old Charlie on a Pan Am flight that will take her to Australia for an abortion. As Charlie tells us, May 1978 is not an ideal time for an unwanted pregnancy. New Zealand’s only abortion clinic, the Auckland Medical Aid Clinic, shut its doors the previous December, after the passing into law of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act. Women now had to be assessed by two certifying consultants, who would only approve the procedure if they were convinced there’d be physical or psychological harm from continuing with the pregnancy. Foetal abnormality was not a ground on its own. Nor was rape.
The Auckland clinic did open again but not until August 1979. For 20 months in between, only women who had the means and time to travel to Australia could legally procure an abortion. A satirical song, written by the late Dr Erich Geiringer (and sung by him on the radio) ended with this verse: It’s a good old Kiwi custom, if you’ve missed your period, for the poor a knitting needle, for the rich a trip abroad. The 1978 Pan Am flight was real and remained stuck on the tarmac with everyone on board, for hours. During that wait, fictional Charlie convinces herself that the man of whom she did not know the name of will love her and the baby so decides to get off the plane, forfeiting her opportunity to have an abortion. After never hearing news of the boy, her friends tell her to stop looking for him as she is starting to appear desperate. Charlies parents force her to live in Napier during her pregnancy to save face and then adopt the child out.
When we meet her again in 2019, Charlie is cautious and restrained, her home not quite a safe space. She’s been made to share it, first with her son, Jim, who tracks down his birth mother (Charlie) when he’s eighteen. And then with Tommy, her grandson, whom Jim leaves with her when the boy is four years old. Jim’s brief time with Charlie is fraught. Jim is a drug dealer, and hid and dealt drugs from Charlies home in Wellington (on a hill near Aro Valley), and raped young women, one of which turned up dead a couple of weeks after Jim had brought her home. Charlie finally musters the courage to involve the police, resulting in Charlie not seeing Jim for years until he shows up to drop off Tommy. Charlie cannot know if adoption has damaged Jim or if he was born broken.
Tommy is a second chance of sorts, but not without his own challenges. He’s probably on the autism spectrum, academically bright but socially awkward. Charlie constantly goes through the process of getting Tommy to consider the social exchanges he has had throughout the day and attempting to understand how the other would have felt in those interactions. In 2019, he is 18 and on the brink of both independence and his first relationship, with Jenna. Jenna has questions, about Tommy, his father, and Charlie. She is gentle but relentless. She’s forced to make room for Jenna and also, once again, Jim. On a night out, Charlie returns home early, as does Jenna who is obviously upset after Jim made a pass at her. Jenna regrets encouraging Tommy to find his father and understands why Charlie tried to keep him away.
Jenna and Charlie go away down south to spend the summer with Jennas family, and Charlie is upset when she learns that they had returned and Tommy did not visit. As the pandemic begins in 2020, they have to make the decision as to who was going to be in their bubble. Tommy wants to head down south with Jenna and spend the lockdown with her family but Jenna convinces Tommy that Charlie needs him and so all three of them end up spending the lockdown together, with Jenna visiting her sister Suzie in town as she lives by herself. Tommy-a stickler for the rules-learns that Jenna is not meant to be visiting her sister but instead of Jenna staying at the house full time like Tommy hoped, she moved out to stay with her sister during the lockdown.
During the lockdown, Tommy becomes obsessed with the data arising out of the pandemic, case numbers, number of deaths etc. He also begins deeply researching the two referenda taking place later in 2020. The cannabis referendum he knows is an obvious yes but is more conflicted regarding euthanasia. Tommy believes that the law will put disabled people at a disadvantage as they will feel as though they are too much of a burden as be asked to die despite not wanting to. Joining groups that are against the euthanasia bill passing results in Tommy also becoming against abortions as these groups are generally against both euthanasia and abortions. Charlie is very upset by this, pointing out that men should not have the right to tell woman what to do with their bodies and ends up sharing her story with him.
During the lockdown, Charlie also develops a relationship with the man next door who had come home from New York due to the pandemic. Tommy also goes on long walks with Charlie suspects is him visiting Jenna. After the lockdown is over, Charlie sees Jenna again for the first time in 6 weeks and she has lost a lot of weight over the short period of time. Charlie learns that Jim had been visiting Suzie and Jenna during the lockdown and gotten them involved in the drug scene. Suzie is now dating Charlie but Jenna has managed to escape. Jenna is heartbroken to learn of Tommys new stance on abortion and leaves him.
Loop tracks ends with Jacinda Ardern and Labor winning the 2020 election, and Tommy changing his view on abortion rights.
Loop Tracks, which opens in 1978 with 16-year-old Charlie on a Pan Am flight that will take her to Australia for an abortion. As Charlie tells us, May 1978 is not an ideal time for an unwanted pregnancy. New Zealand’s only abortion clinic, the Auckland Medical Aid Clinic, shut its doors the previous December, after the passing into law of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act. Women now had to be assessed by two certifying consultants, who would only approve the procedure if they were convinced there’d be physical or psychological harm from continuing with the pregnancy. Foetal abnormality was not a ground on its own. Nor was rape.
The Auckland clinic did open again but not until August 1979. For 20 months in between, only women who had the means and time to travel to Australia could legally procure an abortion. A satirical song, written by the late Dr Erich Geiringer (and sung by him on the radio) ended with this verse: It’s a good old Kiwi custom, if you’ve missed your period, for the poor a knitting needle, for the rich a trip abroad. The 1978 Pan Am flight was real and remained stuck on the tarmac with everyone on board, for hours. During that wait, fictional Charlie convinces herself that the man of whom she did not know the name of will love her and the baby so decides to get off the plane, forfeiting her opportunity to have an abortion. After never hearing news of the boy, her friends tell her to stop looking for him as she is starting to appear desperate. Charlies parents force her to live in Napier during her pregnancy to save face and then adopt the child out.
When we meet her again in 2019, Charlie is cautious and restrained, her home not quite a safe space. She’s been made to share it, first with her son, Jim, who tracks down his birth mother (Charlie) when he’s eighteen. And then with Tommy, her grandson, whom Jim leaves with her when the boy is four years old. Jim’s brief time with Charlie is fraught. Jim is a drug dealer, and hid and dealt drugs from Charlies home in Wellington (on a hill near Aro Valley), and raped young women, one of which turned up dead a couple of weeks after Jim had brought her home. Charlie finally musters the courage to involve the police, resulting in Charlie not seeing Jim for years until he shows up to drop off Tommy. Charlie cannot know if adoption has damaged Jim or if he was born broken.
Tommy is a second chance of sorts, but not without his own challenges. He’s probably on the autism spectrum, academically bright but socially awkward. Charlie constantly goes through the process of getting Tommy to consider the social exchanges he has had throughout the day and attempting to understand how the other would have felt in those interactions. In 2019, he is 18 and on the brink of both independence and his first relationship, with Jenna. Jenna has questions, about Tommy, his father, and Charlie. She is gentle but relentless. She’s forced to make room for Jenna and also, once again, Jim. On a night out, Charlie returns home early, as does Jenna who is obviously upset after Jim made a pass at her. Jenna regrets encouraging Tommy to find his father and understands why Charlie tried to keep him away.
Jenna and Charlie go away down south to spend the summer with Jennas family, and Charlie is upset when she learns that they had returned and Tommy did not visit. As the pandemic begins in 2020, they have to make the decision as to who was going to be in their bubble. Tommy wants to head down south with Jenna and spend the lockdown with her family but Jenna convinces Tommy that Charlie needs him and so all three of them end up spending the lockdown together, with Jenna visiting her sister Suzie in town as she lives by herself. Tommy-a stickler for the rules-learns that Jenna is not meant to be visiting her sister but instead of Jenna staying at the house full time like Tommy hoped, she moved out to stay with her sister during the lockdown.
During the lockdown, Tommy becomes obsessed with the data arising out of the pandemic, case numbers, number of deaths etc. He also begins deeply researching the two referenda taking place later in 2020. The cannabis referendum he knows is an obvious yes but is more conflicted regarding euthanasia. Tommy believes that the law will put disabled people at a disadvantage as they will feel as though they are too much of a burden as be asked to die despite not wanting to. Joining groups that are against the euthanasia bill passing results in Tommy also becoming against abortions as these groups are generally against both euthanasia and abortions. Charlie is very upset by this, pointing out that men should not have the right to tell woman what to do with their bodies and ends up sharing her story with him.
During the lockdown, Charlie also develops a relationship with the man next door who had come home from New York due to the pandemic. Tommy also goes on long walks with Charlie suspects is him visiting Jenna. After the lockdown is over, Charlie sees Jenna again for the first time in 6 weeks and she has lost a lot of weight over the short period of time. Charlie learns that Jim had been visiting Suzie and Jenna during the lockdown and gotten them involved in the drug scene. Suzie is now dating Charlie but Jenna has managed to escape. Jenna is heartbroken to learn of Tommys new stance on abortion and leaves him.
Loop tracks ends with Jacinda Ardern and Labor winning the 2020 election, and Tommy changing his view on abortion rights.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2024
autism or not tommy is an insufferable little **** but apart from his ass i LOVED this book
April 23, 2022
There's only so many times you can see a book around before you have to read it. There was outrage among some in the NZ lit establishment when this wasn't shortlisted (or even longlisted?) for the Ockham prize.
Loop Tracks follows one woman's life as it evolves from her decision not to have an abortion as a 15-year-old. As her family becomes increasingly dysfunctional she starts to weigh the joy of her grandson against the misery associated with her son. Patterns re-emerge across generations, from female oppression in macro to anxiety and depression in micro.
Orr writes with a cheeky glint in her eye, delighting in wordplay, mischief and general silliness. I think this balanced the heavier content pretty well. I got a good sense of the narrator's character and think we'd get on pretty well (she likes wine, so).
Cleverly pieced together and well-paced on the whole. I wonder whether she could've been a bit more daring in her variation of narrative perspective and time?
A cross-section of NZ history from the late 70s to lockdown 2020, spanning several inflection points in national consciousness: abortion laws in the 70s to euthanasia and cannabis in 2020.
The last third of the book was set in and around covid lockdowns. I imagine this will be fun to look back on in a few years with an archival eye but it seemed a bit soon to be rehashing it all, even with Orr's creative touch. We're all so full of takes on covid it's hard to write anything fresh.
Loved the local Wellington references, and still can't believe she's married to the Reserve Bank CE!
Loop Tracks follows one woman's life as it evolves from her decision not to have an abortion as a 15-year-old. As her family becomes increasingly dysfunctional she starts to weigh the joy of her grandson against the misery associated with her son. Patterns re-emerge across generations, from female oppression in macro to anxiety and depression in micro.
Orr writes with a cheeky glint in her eye, delighting in wordplay, mischief and general silliness. I think this balanced the heavier content pretty well. I got a good sense of the narrator's character and think we'd get on pretty well (she likes wine, so).
Cleverly pieced together and well-paced on the whole. I wonder whether she could've been a bit more daring in her variation of narrative perspective and time?
A cross-section of NZ history from the late 70s to lockdown 2020, spanning several inflection points in national consciousness: abortion laws in the 70s to euthanasia and cannabis in 2020.
The last third of the book was set in and around covid lockdowns. I imagine this will be fun to look back on in a few years with an archival eye but it seemed a bit soon to be rehashing it all, even with Orr's creative touch. We're all so full of takes on covid it's hard to write anything fresh.
Loved the local Wellington references, and still can't believe she's married to the Reserve Bank CE!
August 27, 2021
Did not finish, read to nearly halfway. I was excited for the story but put off by the clunky writing.
"Young men claim the pavement, move in front of us and around us as though we're not there. We step to the side in a haze of apple vape and tobacco smoke. The boys chink their beers in good cheer and pass a joint between them. They're the same age as Tommy, more or less. I marvel at their ease at being in the world, at the way their elliptical conversations dance so elegantly on an invisible score."
"my own plate of food has no semblance of structure. The risotto has cooled; the parmesan congealed like second-hand chewing gum. I poke at it, test its resilience. It has plenty."
"Young men claim the pavement, move in front of us and around us as though we're not there. We step to the side in a haze of apple vape and tobacco smoke. The boys chink their beers in good cheer and pass a joint between them. They're the same age as Tommy, more or less. I marvel at their ease at being in the world, at the way their elliptical conversations dance so elegantly on an invisible score."
"my own plate of food has no semblance of structure. The risotto has cooled; the parmesan congealed like second-hand chewing gum. I poke at it, test its resilience. It has plenty."
September 9, 2021
I’d heard the writer interviewed by Kim Hill and had read a few reviews so my appetite was well and truly whetted for this boook. It didn’t disappoint at all: empathetic character development, interesting politics of abortion in the past and present, and the all too familiar background of a COVID lockdown in the contemporary timeframe.
The ending was less definitive than I’d have liked, but I can appreciate the choice to just leave the characters to keep on keeping on.
The ending was less definitive than I’d have liked, but I can appreciate the choice to just leave the characters to keep on keeping on.
January 18, 2022
Nice to read something set in a familiar place. A pleasant well-written read but I didn't really buy the set-up to why the protagonist was so secretive about her past life and which influenced her relationships.
August 21, 2021
Compelling feminist read. Partly set in times of Covid lockdown 2020 it was a good one to read in Aotearoa’s second level 4 lockdown.
July 23, 2023
Wow!
Sue Orr has packed an enormous punch in this book. She grapples with grunty issues in an open ended kind of way that leaves the reader circling around and around to the opening chapter of 15 year old Charlie sitting on plane waiting to go to Sydney for an abortion she cannot get at home in 1978 New Zealand.
Her writing is incredibly evocative and beautiful, yet stripped back and so utterly real. I feel a little bit in awe of her, I’m surprised this didn’t win an Ockham. True story though New Zealand literature in the last wee while seems to have exploded, it is mirroring a similar music explosion that began in 1977/79…..This book is an absolute banger.
New Zealand is a small country so predictably she caught me a many of her loops. From the having an older sister needing to go Sydney circa 1978 I have a son who is on the ASD spectrum, I had completely forgotten about Spirographs (although we definitely had one), I enjoy the drama of politics, Wellington and the Aro Valley fill my heart with a sense of joy and belonging, I love a bush loop track anytime and the trauma associated with adoption a key interest for me.
This story took me back to a time where vague confronting memories sit for me and much like Charlie there’s glimpses but nothing I can substantiate. It comes on the heals of three other NZ woman author’s I have recently read Kate Camp and Helen Lehndorf and Sue McCauley writing of their past unsatisfactory relationships and invisibility due previous and current dominant narratives. Frankly it’s liberating to read such honest and vulnerability and it’s feeling to me like my generation are pulling off a plaster that has been hiding a festering wound. They are speaking their truths through story telling both fiction and memoir. To read these stunning pieces of work at time when there is increasing uncertainty for marginalised communities it is having an affect on how I’m choosing to show up for me in this present moment. I’m all for it tbh - it’s giving rise to personal healing which ultimately will create collective healing for us all.
Thank you Sue Orr for this incredible cathartic contribution to a growing collection of books enriching New Zealand woman.
Much gratitude.
Sue Orr has packed an enormous punch in this book. She grapples with grunty issues in an open ended kind of way that leaves the reader circling around and around to the opening chapter of 15 year old Charlie sitting on plane waiting to go to Sydney for an abortion she cannot get at home in 1978 New Zealand.
Her writing is incredibly evocative and beautiful, yet stripped back and so utterly real. I feel a little bit in awe of her, I’m surprised this didn’t win an Ockham. True story though New Zealand literature in the last wee while seems to have exploded, it is mirroring a similar music explosion that began in 1977/79…..This book is an absolute banger.
New Zealand is a small country so predictably she caught me a many of her loops. From the having an older sister needing to go Sydney circa 1978 I have a son who is on the ASD spectrum, I had completely forgotten about Spirographs (although we definitely had one), I enjoy the drama of politics, Wellington and the Aro Valley fill my heart with a sense of joy and belonging, I love a bush loop track anytime and the trauma associated with adoption a key interest for me.
This story took me back to a time where vague confronting memories sit for me and much like Charlie there’s glimpses but nothing I can substantiate. It comes on the heals of three other NZ woman author’s I have recently read Kate Camp and Helen Lehndorf and Sue McCauley writing of their past unsatisfactory relationships and invisibility due previous and current dominant narratives. Frankly it’s liberating to read such honest and vulnerability and it’s feeling to me like my generation are pulling off a plaster that has been hiding a festering wound. They are speaking their truths through story telling both fiction and memoir. To read these stunning pieces of work at time when there is increasing uncertainty for marginalised communities it is having an affect on how I’m choosing to show up for me in this present moment. I’m all for it tbh - it’s giving rise to personal healing which ultimately will create collective healing for us all.
Thank you Sue Orr for this incredible cathartic contribution to a growing collection of books enriching New Zealand woman.
Much gratitude.
February 13, 2023
Wow. A beautifully written novel set in New Zealand. So much to think about throughout including abortion, adoption, euthanasia drug use and the thoughts and feelings of someone on the spectrum (this is assumed)
November 25, 2024
this book surprised me- i usually hate books with multiple timelines but this was just so so good it made me love them. i also realised how long its been since ive read a proper good, hearty, well planned NOVEL. ya know? idk if this makes sense but this was beautiful. fuck u tommy btw u suck
March 21, 2022
Great read from a great NZ author!
October 18, 2024
Definitely weighty. Charlie is so vivid I'm sure she's a neighbor of mine. I like her. Key relationships in the book deal with buried family history, shame, identity and new people - these all shaped by current events and sometimes insidious political ideas. Layered is the word. Slice of life but layered, and sooo Wellington.
And beautifully done! Words and wit and I was ELATED when she took up smoking.
And beautifully done! Words and wit and I was ELATED when she took up smoking.
September 3, 2022
What a fantastic book from a wonderful NZ author. This novel was carefully and kindly crafted, directly addressing some really really tough subject matter in a thoughtful and nuanced way. And god it made me homesick. Thank you sue 🧡 what a legend.
August 8, 2022
This book will stay with me for a long time and there are so many discussion points. Orr’s writing is superb. So clearly, vividly readable. Charlie is an intriguing central character, flawed and likeable. The loop tracks are physical and metaphorical, as explained by Charlie’s grandson, Tommy, using a Spirograph. Told in two time frames, 1978 with pregnant schoolgirl, Charlie attempting to go to Sydney for an abortion and in modern Covid lockdown time. Many issues are covered and the peripheral characters are vital to Charlie and Tommy’s development.
October 14, 2021
Loop Tracks by Sue Orr (Aotearoa Author) is relevant and very well delivered. The story centres on a woman who seeks an abortion in 1978 and then fast forwards to the current time, two generations later. Politics, COVID-19, misinformation, euthanasia and the weed reforms are all discussed in this book, albeit through a very white, feminist and privileged gaze. I would have loved if Tommy’s euthanasia research had included Māori as one of the “vulnerable” groups, that would have been a cherry on top for me. However, I really enjoyed the story and how cleverly Orr weaved in such timely and important topics that all New Zealanders have faced and are currently facing. I loved the commitment to women’s voices and the importance of them. Reading about lockdown was also a really bitter sweet experience given our current situation. Although, we will never experience that “first lockdown” again - which was so well described. I totally recommend this one and look forward to hearing everyone’s views on it.
This copy is from @booketybookbooks and the copy that @vupbooks sent me was won in a giveaway by @inabottle_jeanie
This copy is from @booketybookbooks and the copy that @vupbooks sent me was won in a giveaway by @inabottle_jeanie
March 12, 2023
I was very much aware, to my shame, that I had read very, VERY few books by New Zealand authors. The number was further reduced when I found a particular favourite NZ novel was in fact written by a UK author. For some unfathomable reason I just assumed that NZ novels just wouldn't stand up to the wonderful books being written around the world. And possibly that's because NZ authors don't get much publicity in our own country, unless they win the Booker Prize. So it was with more of a feeling of obligation that I dove in and started a concerted effort to catch on the essential and recent NZ novels. The the first novel in that project, Auē, was one of the best reads I had last year in an especially stand out year of reading. Greta and Valdin was equally superb, and now Loop Tracks is definitely maintaining a very high standard.
This was a very enjoyable read. A kitchen sink drama that put in in mind of a number of '80s and '90s Booker shortlisted novels from the UK. I got totally immersed in the lives of the characters, who were all wonderfully three dimensional, to the point where I wanted to step into the world and their conversations. Like the best of Louise Erdrich's novels, Sue Orr beautifully creates very believable characters who you want to spend time with. The one thing I found lacking was that the story needed to be stronger, it just sort of faded away at the point I needed to bring it all together.
Beautiful prose that I really wanted give five stars to, but it just lacked the bite to raise it to the next level, but a novel I greatly enjoyed being immersed in.
This was a very enjoyable read. A kitchen sink drama that put in in mind of a number of '80s and '90s Booker shortlisted novels from the UK. I got totally immersed in the lives of the characters, who were all wonderfully three dimensional, to the point where I wanted to step into the world and their conversations. Like the best of Louise Erdrich's novels, Sue Orr beautifully creates very believable characters who you want to spend time with. The one thing I found lacking was that the story needed to be stronger, it just sort of faded away at the point I needed to bring it all together.
Beautiful prose that I really wanted give five stars to, but it just lacked the bite to raise it to the next level, but a novel I greatly enjoyed being immersed in.
May 13, 2022
Looping back and forth between 1978 and now, looping between generations, looping between the right to abortion and not, looping around the Spirograph board Sue Orr has written a stunning story of family, lost and found, difficult decisions, good and bad outcomes. And above all love.
Abortion. The right to it is an issue that has been with us since forever, and now the right to deny abortion is rearing its ugly horrible unjust head again. In 1978 in New Zealand, for what was actually quite a short period of time, an abortion became well nigh on impossible to obtain, resulting in an rights activists setting up Sisters Overseas Service which helped women go to Australia and get abortions there. This novel opens with 16 year old Charlie, alone, travelling to Sydney for a weekend abortion, planning to be back at school on Monday. But things don't go to plan, and Charlie ends up having the baby whom she calls James, forced to give it up for adoption, chapter closed, get on with life, never to be talked about again.
Now it is 36 years later, Charlie is a schoolteacher living in the Aro Valley in Wellington. She has living with her her 18 year old grandson Tom, dumped on Charlie some years previously by son Jim who has become a most unpleasant man. Charlie's mission in life now is to protect Tommy from his father, from everything unpleasant out there in the world, to make up for her decision making in 1978, but of course then she would never have had her beloved Tommy. And then Tommy finds a girlfriend - Jenna, and Charlie has one more person to protect Tommy from. And then Jim reappears, and then covid comes along.
Abortion. The right to it is an issue that has been with us since forever, and now the right to deny abortion is rearing its ugly horrible unjust head again. In 1978 in New Zealand, for what was actually quite a short period of time, an abortion became well nigh on impossible to obtain, resulting in an rights activists setting up Sisters Overseas Service which helped women go to Australia and get abortions there. This novel opens with 16 year old Charlie, alone, travelling to Sydney for a weekend abortion, planning to be back at school on Monday. But things don't go to plan, and Charlie ends up having the baby whom she calls James, forced to give it up for adoption, chapter closed, get on with life, never to be talked about again.
Now it is 36 years later, Charlie is a schoolteacher living in the Aro Valley in Wellington. She has living with her her 18 year old grandson Tom, dumped on Charlie some years previously by son Jim who has become a most unpleasant man. Charlie's mission in life now is to protect Tommy from his father, from everything unpleasant out there in the world, to make up for her decision making in 1978, but of course then she would never have had her beloved Tommy. And then Tommy finds a girlfriend - Jenna, and Charlie has one more person to protect Tommy from. And then Jim reappears, and then covid comes along.
September 15, 2021
Loved everything about this book - the characters, especially Tom, the Wellington setting, and the addressing of issues both political and family-related. Realistic and absorbing.
November 27, 2021
This was going to be a 5 star book until a major plot point hinged on the idea that autistic people don’t have feelings or empathy, and it took me completely out of the story
February 14, 2022
A very evocative and quite page-turny read. Boy those 70s in NZ were grim.
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