Why Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar recommends Ingrid Horrocks’s women-led stories in ‘All Her Lives’

Poet-memoirist Ingrid Horrocks makes her debut as an author of prose fiction with All Her Lives: Nine Stories. It is the first book by a New Zealand-based author that I read. The stories are set in various timelines, ranging from the 1700s to the present era. Beneath the title of each story is the year or the era in which that story is set, giving the goings-on in that story context. Some of the stories are interlinked with each other – or, rather, a character from one story traipses into another story; yet each story is a whole, the characters becoming intrinsic parts of the stories.

Except for four stories which are set in Europe (with one set partly in the US), the rest of the stories are set in New Zealand. The characters are mostly White. One important side character is a non-White male from East Africa, in a story whose timeline says “Now”. Horrocks outlines the characters’ backgrounds and how they came to be in New Zealand, and even if they are out of it, what connects them to New Zealand. Despite being set in New Zealand, the concerns in the stories are universal, and the stories are engaging.

Women are the lead...

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