What Sort of Man: Stories

Author: Dukes, Breton
Publication date: 09/04/2020
Imprint: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781776563029

A young father high on Ritalin longs to leap into the tiger enclosure. A teacher who has been stood down for accessing porn on a school computer wants to re-establish contact with his teenage daughter. A carer out on a day trip is desperate to find a working toilet for his adult charge.

What Sort of Man is a potent collection of stories that goes head to head with the crisis of contemporary masculinity, and is as exhilarating as it is harrowing. 

‘These are finely focused stories, done with the confidence of a writer who knows precisely what he wants to show, and how to show it. Their telling, and their method of telling, is confidently his own.’ —Vincent O’Sullivan, Landfall Review Online

‘Life is a series of isolations, now more than ever, and the way that Dukes captures, with photo-perfect detail, the soul of a person in isolation, is not just excellent, but relevant. We’re not at our most alone when we’re not around other people, we’re at our most alone when we can’t even sit with ourselves.’ —Sam Brooks, The Spinoff

‘Brilliantly intense.’ —Emily Perkins

‘Quiet, honed and with a lovely sense of something menacing.’ —David Hill, Nine to Noon

‘What Sort of Man reminds me of Owen Marshall, and in places Vincent O’Sullivan’s Waikato stories, but also Laurence Fearnley’s Southland trilogy and there can be no higher praise.’ —Stephen Stratford