Obligate Carnivore by Stephanie Johnson

In Obligate Carnivore and Other Stories, Stephanie Johnson consolidates her position as one of Aotearoa’s most astute and energetically wry observers of contemporary life. This collection of twenty-seven stories spans roughly two decades of her writing, showcasing her ability to move seamlessly between satire, emotional tenderness, social critique and sheer oddity. Taken together, the stories map the anxieties, contradictions and impulses of our times (love, ageing, addiction, climate change, greed, travel) without ever descending into overt or politically charged message-making.

Johnson’s characters are predictably unpredictable. They might be ageing academics, ambitious travellers, stage actors, climate-anxious activists or ordinary people suddenly struggling with extraordinary impulses. What holds them together is Johnson’s forensic attention to their flaws, their defences and their secret longings. Whether they are in Australia or New Zealand, urban or rural, wealthy or quietly struggling, they feel vividly human, in part because Johnson refuses to patronise them or indulge cliché. Her dry irony gives way to flashes of compassion, reminding us that no one is entirely fooled by their own pretensions, and no one is entirely beyond redemption.

The tone of the collection is a strength, blending comedy and gravity in equal measure, with ease. Some stories provoke laughter at the absurdity of human ambition or vanity while others unsettle with their precision in revealing how easily idealism can unravel. There is a recurring sense of moral and emotional manipulation that begins as a whimsical or trailing anecdote may shift into something quietly sinister or deeply poignant. Johnson’s writing is alert to the small moments that expose the broader currents beneath them.

Stylistically, the collection bears all the hallmarks of a writer in full command: compact scenes, sharp dialogue, an eye for telling detail. Johnson’s prose doesn’t shout, but it quietly accumulates power. Her stories reward multiple reads, as hidden echoes and thematic links begin to crystallise. These are particularly noticeable around the themes of vulnerability and survival in an age of acceleration and anxiety.

Obligate Carnivore and Other Stories confirms Stephanie Johnson as a writer who is both of her time and beyond it. While rooted in the vernacular and preoccupations of our era, her work also attends to the deeper question of what it means to live a life of complexity and contradiction. For readers who relish clean, incisive storytelling that combines elegance with edge, this collection offers a rich and rewarding glimpse into a writer operating at the height of her powers.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

Quentin Wilson Publishing