Anthony McCarten — Spinners

Vintage 1998 Paperback, 264pp. Everyone in Opunake finds it funny when quiet factory worker Delia Chapman makes the absurdly American claim that she was invited on board a spacecraft and 'interviewed' by aliens. Good humour turns to dismay, however, when tests reveal the virgin teenager to be pregnant! And it doesn't help matters when two of her workmates announce that they are pregnant too, and cite fathers with an intergalactic address.As Delia begins to believe that every child arrives with instructions to save the world, and Phillip, the new Opunake librarian, discovers that we are all awaiting some kind of saviour, a world of space-age expectations arrives in Opunake, changing it forever.A bewitching love story and an exploration of the transitional times we live in, Spinners fuses philosophy and satire, mystery and universal myths of redemption to give us a tender and often hilarious vision of the perplexing cosmos we call 'our street'. Finally you may conclude, with Delia, that this is no world to bring an alien into. (ISBN: 9781869413552). Good.