Angelic sequel

Wellington author Elizabeth Knox’s latest – a sequel to her 1998 prize-winner The Vintner’s Luck entitled The Angel’s Cut – has been “published to strong praise” writes the Courier Mail’s Kathleen Noonan. The Vintner’s Luck, which was published in seven countries, won numerous prizes and was long-listed for the 1999 Orange Prize. Knox’s success has come from anchoring her audacious imagination in earthly reality; she bowerbirds things from the everyday. In The Angel’s Cut, young smart Flora is burnt horribly at a fancy-dress party when her boyfriend mischievously touches a cigarette to the grass skirt she is wearing. “That happened here in New Zealand,” Knox says. Now she is writing a science fiction horror book, set in a small town near Nelson in contemporary New Zealand. Then she has a young adult fiction to complete, before turning her attention in 2011 to the final in her Xas trilogy, The Angel’s Reserve. “I know it’s taking a long time but the living I do in between each book, and lessons I learn, I apply to Xas in learning how to be human. And there’s been a lot of learning this year.” Niki Caro’s film adaption of The Vintner’s Luck is currently in cinemas.