Delirious I by Damien Wilkins

It’s time. Mary, once a police officer, and her husband Pete, a retired librarian, are preparing to move into a retirement village. They’re not quite falling apart, but they’re keeping an eye on one another. Pete with his racing heart and aching hip, Mary with her sore ankle and knee.

Selling their much-loved home should be a clean, simple step forward. Instead, the past begins to press in. A local detective reaches out with new information about their son Will, who died in an accident forty years ago. Mary finds herself returning to thoughts of her older sister, whose life ended too soon. Pete is troubled by memories of his mother’s decline, and the confusion she never emerged from.

Delirious is a moving and beautifully written novel about growing older, caring for the people we love, and learning to live with the selves we become. It’s also about the unexpected moments where second chances find us.

Witi Ihimaera calls it "a New Zealand novel of grace and humanity." These characters are flawed, fully alive, and deeply compelling. You hold your breath as they take their winding paths. This is a novel to sit with.

About the Author
Damien Wilkins is the author of fourteen books, including Aspiring, which won the Young Adult Fiction Award in 2020. His first novel The Miserables received the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction in 1994. He has been long-listed three times for the Dublin Literary Award, and was honoured with the Whiting Writers’ Award in 1992 and the Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Award in 2013.

Damien is a professor at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, where he is also Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters. He writes and records music under the name the Close Readers.