Darkly brilliant

Award-winning NZ author Carl Shuker has released his second novel to immediate acclaim. Set in NZ, The Lazy Boys is a harrowing account of a group of friends spiralling out of control during their first year at university. Shuker’s US publisher Shoemaker & Hoard describes the book as “a punch in the stomach, a sustained cry; as harsh as Less Than Zero, as brutal as A Clockwork Orange.” Shuker discusses his novel’s difficult gestation in NZ’s Herald on Sunday: “I wrote this book during a very dark time in my life, and when it was finished, I was a very dark person … The novel had been such a trauma to finish that when I did so, I still remember counting the hours of peace.” A graduate of Bill Manhire’s creative writing course at Victoria University, Shuker won NZ’s 2006 Glen Schaeffer Prize in Modern Letters for his debut novel, The Method Actors.