ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias celebrates the best things in New Zealand writing this year
BEST BOOK
The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw. No surprise, because it was pretty much the only book that anyone talked about, the book that inspired three of the best, most thoughtful reviews of the year (Rachael King at the Academy of New Zealand Literature, Philip Matthews at ReadingRoom, Kiran Dass at Metro), the book, above all, that did more than any other to raise literature to art – Charlotte Grimshaw's The Mirror Book was a family memoir that brought sessions with an analyst to the page as she sought to Find Out What Was Troubling Her and expressed it through a dazzling intellectual framework and sense of urgency. Also, the writing – at the level of sentences, of craft – was simply better prose than any other author achieved in 2021. A book like this (revelatory, intimate) creates its own public momentum. Credit, then, to the book's principal sinners, her parents Kay and Karl Stead, who refused all invitations to attack the book and its author, and only expressed admiration for her work, thus avoiding any kind of tawdry descent into that most dreadul of spectacles – a literary feud.
BEST LITERARY FEUD
Narrative Muse. ReadingRoom broke the story of the year in New Zealand literature when we revealed the Ministry for Culture and Heritage's decision to throw $500,000 – half a million dollars! In New Zealand literature! – at a start-up no-one had ever heard of, Narrative Muse, to fund its mission to "help Aotearoa audiences access books". To what? Narrative Muse is one of those matchmaker apps that algorithmically places people with things they like, in this case New Zealand books; and yet it had zero background in New Zealand books, manifestly knew nothing about New Zealand books, and had failed to connect with anyone associated with New Zealand books. Also, it linked books to that pestilence known as Amazon. But good luck to Narrative Muse. You don't get if you don't ask, and all arts funding is a lottery. The villain of the piece is the Ministry, which doesn't seem to have the faintest idea of New Zealand literature, and went about its funding without consulting the experts in the field, Creative New Zealand. Worse, the Ministry got all uppity when challenged, in a regal how-dare-anyone-question-our-stupidity manner. A pox on them.
BEST OTHER KINDS OF BOOKS
A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Alison Wong and Paula Morris was the best anthology. The selection of fiction, essays, poetry and other kinds of writing by Asian New Zealanders ticked a diversity box in a meaningful manner; there was so much good writing in A Clear Dawn, and it presented a new perspective on New Zealand literature. As an agent of change, it may have a similar impact as Black Marks on the White Page, the 2017 anthology of Māori and Pasifika writing edited by Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti. Rangikura by Tayi Tibble was the best book of poetry. The Wellington writer's second book was greeted with several wildly over-the-top "reviews" which read as love letters to the author, but seldom addressed the work. The work was a stunning collection of poems that dealt with Māori creation mythology set at the end of the climate-threatened world, with a quiet middle section that read like a New Zealand version of Mary Gaitskill's celebrated novella, This is Pleasure. New Zealand Bird Paintings by Ray Ching was the best art book. I only just received this large-format thing of wonder published by Potton & Burton, in the weekend; if I'd got it any earlier, I would definitely have included it in the year's top 10 illustrated books. It exhibits the great master's sketches and paintings of seabirds, water birds, birds of town and bush – including the extinct huia, in two paintings, from 1969 and 2011. This is his life's work. This is genius.
BEST PUBLISHER
Bridget Williams. Every publisher made quality books this year, even the market-leaders in commercial junk, Allen & Unwin, with excellent memoir writing by Wendyl Nissen and Michelle Langstone; Penguin Random House had The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw, Otago University Press had James Courage Diaries, Oratia Media had - oho! - Cover Story (my book of record covers), Huia had Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka, HarperCollins had the Simon Bridges book on life in New Zealand (and - oho! - my crime book Missing Persons), and Victoria University Press, henceforth to be known as Te Herenga Waka University Press, had the year's three best novels (She's A Killer, Greta and Valdin, Loop Tracks). But Bridget Williams Books stood out, with an outstanding non-fiction range, examining race, economics, politics, and history, by such as Vincent O'Malley (Voices from the New Zealand Wars), Max Rashbrooke (Too Much Money), and the remarkable Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland by Lucy Mackintosh. Bridget Williams herself was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's 2021 Aotearoa Book Industry Awards. It recognised her long, magnificent contribution in the past; her commitment to quality publishing remains clear and present.
BEST LITERARY FESTIVAL
Auckland Writers Festival. Covid and lockdown cancelled a whole bunch of festivals – I was due to appear at events in Nelson, Tauranga, and Lake Tekapo, all wiped out. Good timing allowed Rachael King to stage her final, typically creative programme at the WORD festival in Christchurch, and Claire Mabey to put on another one of her typically passive, woke programmes at Verb in Wellington. Earlier in the year, Anne O'Brien was able to stage the Auckland Writers Festival, and it was a smash hit. Although the pandemic prevented big-name authors arriving from overseas, she staged a great coup by starring a big name author living quietly and peacefully in New Zealand: good old Neil Gaiman, who may still be signing copies of his books at the Aotea Centre. The festival also made good use of New Zealand talent and that gave the AWF a charming, down-home appeal.
BEST LAUNCH
Isobar Precinct by Angelique Kasmara. Covid and lockdown cancelled a whole bunch of launches…I went to two launches for Tayi Tibble's book Rangikura, at Unity in Wellington (packed, exciting) and the upstairs loft at Time Out in Auckland (packed, crazy), but the launch for Angelique Kasmara's novel Isobar Precinct had the edge – it was packed, exciting, crazy, and it had really great food, in the shape of 100 cartons of Indonesian vegetarian meals. Yum! It was held at the Parisian Tie Factory premises beneath K Road and above Myers Park, and attracted writers such as Paula Morris, Amy McDaid, Rosetta Allan, and Colleen Maria Lenihan, who form a new kind of Auckland mafia of New Zealand literature. But the star of the launch was the author, who read a section of her novel in front of a slideshow of images and text. It will be reviewed in ReadingRoom next year.
BEST INTERVIEW
Tusiata Avia interviewed by Simone Kaho, Tagata Pasifika. All of Joanna Wane's author interviews at Canvas are a delight, I loved Noelle McCarthy's profile of Patricia Grace at ReadingRoom, and Mark Broatch got in early and well with his Listener cover story on Charlotte Grimshaw, but the encounter that had the most power and resonance was Simone Kaho's interview with Tusiata Avia just after she won the Ockham poetry award for The Savage Coloniser Book. It was a truly Pasifika interview, right from the first question: "Would you like to share your gnafa?" Having earned the author's trust, Simone asked Tusiata about the time she was racially profiled at Unity Books in Wellington. It was one hell of a story. "Well, it’s the crime of being brown in a bookshop, right?", said the author, who described popping into Unity on Willis St, leaving to catch the bus, and then being followed onto the bus (!) by "the manager of the shop and a number of other shop assistants… [who] asked me to get off of the bus and go into the shop. I was really enraged, because this was the second in six weeks that they’d done that." There was this exchange between Tusiata and Simone at the end of the story. Tusiata: "I just know this happens all of the time. All of the time." Simone: "All of the time." Tusiata: "Yeah, all of the time."
BEST REVIEW
"What a Human Muddle", Stephen Stratford, Landfall. I was absolutely convinced that no one would write a better review of anything than the three equally brilliant reviews of The Mirror Book by Rachael King, Kiran Dass and Philip Matthews, although I thought Phillida Bunkle's ReadingRoom review of the Margaret Wilson biography was a psychological masterpiece, Toby Manhire's Spinoff review of the awful biography of Jacinda Ardern was, as per everything he composes, very funny ("The drive from Greymouth to Christchurch is described with relish. 'The motorcade headed inland on State Highway 73.' Motorcade is not the word many would use to describe Ardern’s 2017 campaign van and accompanying DPS car"), and Theo Macdonald's cartoon-strip reviews for Metro were at once eccentric and ingenious. But then along came – with an awful poignancy – an absolute masterclass of reviewing, with Stephen Stratford's lengthy review in Landfall of Philip Temple's second volume of his biography of Maurice Shadbolt. Stephen died of a heart attack in November. His review appeared only a few weeks later. It was so funny, so informed, so engaged, so admirably present: he refers to Caroline Ireland threatening to go round with an axe if Shadbolt ever gave his ex-lover Bridget Armstrong any more trouble, and adds, "She would have, too." Much of the review is gossip of the highest quality. Highlight: he refers to Shadbolt being convinced that Michael King wrote an anonymous snipe at him in the pages of Metro, and adds, "He didn't – I did."
BEST SHORT STORY
"Attention", Catherine Chidgey, Metro. Yes, Chidgey, again. She was awarded this prize at ReadingRoom last year, too, with her short story "Leverage" in Landfall. Like that 2020 story, "Attention" was narrated by a Kiwi male; Chidgey is very good at this voice, but then she is very good at all manner of literary techniques as one of our best novelists. The narrator remembers when he was a child actor and got hired to play a missing child in a reconstruction for TV news. He's now a drifting, childless loser – a man who has gone missing in his own life. It's just so damned readable, and credible, and, unlike a lot of short stories that were submitted to ReadingRoom this year (including some which I published), stuff actually happens. There's almost a kind of generic New Zealand short story these days – nothing much happens, and a woman is complaining about something. The best stories at ReadingRoom avoided this trope, in "XXX" by Emma Sidnam (killer opening line: "On a map, I mark an X for the houses of all the people I’ve slept with"), "The black belt" by Rajorshi Chakraborti, "A question of morals" by Jackie Lee Morrison, "Patea pools" and "The children of Church Street" both by Airana Ngarewa, and Carol Aru's "Beatrice's visit", my favourite story of the year, because it was simple and sad and talked of something few writers who complain about things ever seem to worry about – the lack of money.
BEST ESSAY
No award.
BEST TITLE
"All the girls who used to read Dolly have trauma now" by Lily Holloway, Stasis.
BEST PHOTO
Mark Crysell, Twitter. The last kind of rooster who you'd ever think would have an appreciation or even a passing knowledge of grammar is someone who works in TV. But Sunday reporter Mark Crysell has always been in possession of a rare intelligence, and his powers of observation resulted in a tweeted photo that went viral. "After many years of less," he wrote, "adding fuel to the fewer, there's been a major grammatical breakthrough at a brave New World supermarket." Bravo, Mark Crysell; and bravo, brave New World.
Tomorrow: Charlotte Grimshaw assesses Greta and Valdin, named novel of the year by ReadingRoom.
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