Telling Stories

Award winning. Side-splitting.

Eric Dombey is wild, wacky and out of control; a prankster and practical joker with no respect for authority. But he isn’t real. He’s the creation of Steven Spalding, a mild-mannered civil servant who uses his fictional creation to take revenge on the world. But as Eric’s hilarious misadventures edge closer to Steven’s tragic real life, their paths become inextricably crossed –- with uproarious and disturbing results.

This book will make you reconsider the whole concept of fiction and reality…

Winner of the Reed Fiction Award in association with North and South

REVIEWS

Clever and unpredictable … stimulating and entertaining.
Owen Marshall

An absolutely splendid and entertaining book.
Kevin Ireland, Quote Unquote

Cunningly plotted … fiendishly twisted.
David Eggleton, NZ Listener

Witty, irreverent, satirical, outrageous …
Ian Dixon, The Christchurch Press

An exciting new voice in our literature.
Howard Warner, New Zealand Books

Geoff Palmer in Telling Stories plays realism off against post-modernism, as inept Steven Spalding is depicted transforming his increasingly dangerous misadventures into stories concerning the confident Eric Dombey, with the two finally becoming inextricably crossed, producing a book that can be read as both an implicit attack on post-modern moral relativism and a post-modern undermining of narrative certainty.”
The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, edited by Terry Sturm