Loop Tracks

Charlie at 16 is pregnant. Circumstances blow up the normal life awaiting her. Loop Tracks follows simple twists of fate around history and women’s lives, in an utterly compelling novel.

‘A world full of human damage and human courage’ -Bill Manhire, Emeritus Professor, Victoria University of Wellington

It’s 1978. Charlie is sixteen and pregnant and the only legal abortion clinic in Auckland has been forced to close. She has to fly to Sydney, but the plane is delayed on the tarmac.

It’s 2019. Charlie’s quiet life in Wellington with her neurodivergent grandson is shattered by the arrival of his first girlfriend and the father he has never met.

As the Covid-19 pandemic takes hold and the country goes into lockdown, Charlie must counsel her grandson through his new relationships and confront the choices she made decades earlier.

Told in a dry and playful tone, Loop Tracks is utterly compelling. Ingrid Horrocks says- ‘It’s about abortion and euthanasia, conspiracy theories and intergenerational guilt, but mainly it’s about the love between a grandmother and her grown-up grandson.’

Loop Tracks is a major New Zealand novel, written in real time as the Covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand general election and euthanasia referendum in 2020 unfolded.