“The Nick Cave of New Zealand literature”

Chad Taylor’s growing international reputation continues to buzz, this time in The Australian. In Electric drug-addled number crunchers negotiate the power cuts of Auckland’s sweltering summer of 1998, “This is a rare and refreshing book. Taylor composes a tricky, teasing plot out of the blackness, revealing a gloomy city where sexy ice queens reveal spines tattooed with tiny equations … Electric plugs itself into Auckland and hums away like the powerlines should be doing, and it makes the city very cool […] maybe the Auckland tourist authorities should sign him up now they’ve lost their big draw, the America’s Cup. this Auckland is much more fun, even without the boats.”