Misconduct

2008

Named a Finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2009 Best First Book Award

Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize, South East Asia and the Pacific region.

Burn it, she decided. Drive it behind the disused factory near the polluted creek at the industrial park, and set it alight.

Simone’'s obsession with her former lover is dangerously out of control, so when the approach of her fortieth birthday brings on a compulsion to wreak havoc in his new life, a house-sitting opportunity at a remote beach provides a welcome escape.

She began to be seduced by the idea of a lovely, distant solitude. And actually she had good incentive to leave.

With only the responsibility of somebody else’s perpetually cheerful dog, Simone values her isolation –– but her elderly neighbours have other ideas and begin to pull her into their eccentric lives.

Is it possible she'’s got away with it, or will the things she'’s done come back to haunt her?

Misconduct is a moving novel about the possibility of reinvention, the sweet and sour taste of revenge, and a woman’'s search for friendship and love.

Praise for Misconduct

Named one the NZ Listener's Books of the Year

'Misconduct’'s darker edges move the narrative beyond a Helen Fielding-like examination of women’'s lot in a post feminist world into more meaningful psychological portraits of its characters, not least the rural New Zealand community that is the novel’'s greatest strength. . . . Her eye is sharper than Fielding’'s, her writing edgier, her sensibility welcomingly wry rather than witty; which all makes Misconduct a commendable first novel, one able to reach out to both the career-girl looking for an entertaining read and her more scholarly sister in search of something more profound.' —NZ Listener

Bridget van der Zijpp was born in Ruawai, Northland. After a career in commercial radio in Auckland, she moved to Wellington and began writing fiction.