Emily Perkins wins Montana Medal

Emily Perkins has won the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry with Novel about My Wife [Photo: NZPA]. The Montana NZ Book Award judges say the novel is 'highly assured' and 'sophisticated and urban' and Perkins is 'writing at the height of her powers.' I hope not - I reckon this writer will only get better. Congrats Emily - the book is marvellous. Here's my brief blogged review:

Oh what a joy -a novel that is gleefully dark, deliciously tense, packed with incisive personal and social observations and laugh out loud funny. Sad, too. Powerful. Crafted. Bloody amazing.

Runners-up for Fiction were Kate de Goldi's NZ Post Winner 10 PM Question [to do get high honours in the adult and children book awards is quite a coup] and Bernard Beckett's Acid Song.

I'm guessing, because it wasn't in the article I've just seen on the TVNZ website, that Eleanor Catton must have won the Best First Book of Fiction with The Rehearsal.

There were a host of other winners, too, of course. I was pleased to see Jill Trevelyan's book on Rita Angus winning the bio section. I wonder if it won the Readers Choice Award along with the Booksellers Award - giving it a hat-trick? Or if that went to 10 PM Question? I'll have to keep trawling through the net and the late news I guess.