Greta and Valdin

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Hysterical, smart, and gay. I loved these characters so much. Greta & Valdin is an engrossing and charming read peppered with humour and insight. I can’t wait to read more from Rebecca K Reilly." —Emily Austin, author of Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead Literature is a hard game. It’s hard to write, it’s hard to get published. What keeps you going as a writer? It's easy for a book to be funny, but hard for it to be funny and passionate and stylish and insightful. Greta & Valdin nails it. It introduces the reader delightfully to its world, which resembles an international convention of fabulous cranks; it trusts us to see the beauty in them, and it rewards our trust. They should invent a lesbian Wes Anderson so that she can film it." —Isaac Fellman, author of Dead Collections

It is no exaggeration to say that Greta and Valdin is, at its core, a story about one of the most realistically depicted families many will find in literature. That isn’t to say every real family is like the Vladisavljevics, but the dynamics and relationships are written in a natural flowing manner that immediately welcomes the reader with open arms. Helping the siblings navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the tendency of their love interests to flee, is the Vladisavljevic family: Maori-Russian-Catalonian, and as passionate as they are eccentric. Reilly makes modern romance exciting and compelling in a way that reminded me of Sally Rooney. . . . Greta and Valdin is an amusing and vivacious romantic drama led by two hilarious and engaging queer main characters, and I don't think you could ask for much more from a novel in 2021.'—Josie Shapiro, ReadClose Greta & Valdin is hilarious, touching and hotly sublime. The kind of novel that simultaneously makes me wish I were funnier and absolves me from the need to try—I’ll never be as funny as Rebecca K Reilly (and that’s OK).” —Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea Rebecca K Reilly’s debut novel, Greta & Valdin, originally published in the author’s native New Zealand, is being brought to the UK by Hutchinson Heinemann.

The publisher says: “Reilly’s exploration of love, family, queerness, migration, karaoke, the generational reverberations of colonialism and the disturbing realisation that your parents have a past will have readers falling in love with Greta, Valdin, and all of the Vladisavljevics.”

Speaking of, “ An Open Letter to the Internet“ is a personal essay that contributed most to Hobart editor Elizabeth Ellen’s infamy. She describes a tension many writers fall into, the mode of ‘essayist’ overshadowing their fiction and/or poetry aspirations. Often the best essay writers fall into the form; despite Ellen’s efforts to evade non-fiction she is spurred on by the necessity to comment, providing a view she can’t see anyone else doing. In her Open Letter, she scrutinised allegationsagainst novelist Tao Lin by an ex-girlfriend he dated in her teens, when he was in his early twenties; Ellen refusedto accept the all-too-common mode of online degradation, and wrote, “[i]f this is anyone’s idea of gaining female empowerment, count me out. If celebrating the ruining of another person’s life is cause for celebration, I don’t want any part of it.” Tumblr girlies will remember the discourse” that accompanied this trend, writes Ash Davida Jane. Her Pantograph Punch piece last year, “ Golden Age of Online Poetry“, serves as a reminder of pointless “debates about the distinction between mythology and religion, and the ethics of writing about deities that don’t belong to you.” Needless to say, a demand of all poetry to virtuously toe the line, whether about Vishnu or asexuality, doesn’t help foster creativity. Siblings Greta and Valdin have, perhaps, too much in common. They're flatmates, beholden to the same near-unpronounceable surname, and both make questionable choices when it comes to love. Just like Greta, I “know someone who has an art exhibition coming up,” dislike the employees at Unity Books, and frequent Xi’an Food BarNo one's ever said anything like that to me before. Matthew said my essay about Death in Venice was objectively fine. Holly said I have blue eyes, but I don't. The date said I had some strong opinions about kebabs. I wonder if people are having beautiful things said to them all the time, and I've just gone wrong somewhere. Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who left the country because he thought he was making Valdin sad. Greta is in love with fellow English tutor Holly, who only seems to be using her for admin support. But perhaps all is not lost. Valdin is coming to realize that he might not be so unlovable, and Greta, that she might be worth more than the papers she can mark. From the moment I first read Pip Adam I found her work incredibly exciting. I love that she doesn’t seem to care about flirting with the reader. I’m a writer who definitely flirts with the reader. Pip is too cool to do that. I want to be that cool but I never will be. I can’t wait to read her new novel this year.

It’s very easy for young people to fall into this idealistic trap, being influenced by social justice rules in shallow ways fuelling misplaced rage. I’ve done it, you’ve probably done it—perception is reality—and it’s hard and confusing to figure out exactly what you think or believe, or how to behave, how to react to such situations or run away. Most stories open with a clear beginning and close with a distinct ending which usually ties together as many narrative threads and plot points as the author chooses. Any events that took place before the events of the novel are related through varying states of exposition. From the first sentence, Greta and Valdin feels not like a beginning but a continuation, as life truly is. The first chapter isn’t a beginning; it’s just a day in two lives. Likewise, the last chapter isn’t the end; it’s just when the narrators cease to relay the story. An absolute delight. . . a gloriously picaresque celebration of messy, complicated love." —Emma Hughes, author of It’s Complicated Reilly makes modern romance exciting and compelling in a way that reminded me of Sally Rooney. . . . Greta and Valdinis an amusing and vivacious romantic drama led by two hilarious and engaging queer main characters, and I don't think you could ask for much more from a novel in 2021.'—Josie Shapiro, ReadClose

Greta and Valdin follows the titular siblings, Greta and Valdin Vladisavljevic (yes I did misspell that many times even with the book open beside me) as they navigate social and personal issues which are all too relatable for the audience in a world deeply familiar to New Zealand readers.