Emily Perkins' The Forrests my review

Here it is - within the six minute slip of a time slot on National Radio's Nine to Noon. I had so much more to say, but the guts of it is here and I am grateful for that.

To clarify about the 'will it win the Booker' question at the end of the interview -- okay, I didn't hear that --  I heard: 'could' it -- I mean, who can possibly say if it will? There's more than the book itself to consider, there's the competition, the politics, the sheer Britishness of the award etc -- but yes, I definitely think it could win the Booker. Oh yes I do.

As I say in the interview, it's as good as any other Booker winners I've read lately: Enright, Hollinghurst etc. This book grabs hold of you and is very very hard to dislodge.

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.

From gleeful Perkins to velvety Catton - the joys of the Tea Cosy Challenge

Well, finished Novel about my Wife by Emily Perkins. And 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.

And now - as I pursue my own Tea Cosy Fiction Challenge - I am moving onto Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal. I am excited. It's like grabbing the baton in a relay and hitting the ground running because there is an added purpose to the reading, a kind of race in progress. Although opening something which has 'velvety pleasures', according to its cover, is enough to get the blood going. Or the kettle at least.

Remember, you can join me for the Tea Cosy Fiction Challenge and win one for your tea pot ....

The Blue is a bestseller

My friend Maggie emailed to tell me the news. The Blue is officially a best seller which is simply the best thing I've heard all week (apart from my daughter's school report from her nearly new school.)

It comes in at third on the fiction list with Jenny Pattrick's Landings at first place, Is She Still Alive? by Tessa Duder next, 4th is Two Little Boys by Duncan Sarkies, and A Sandwich Short of a Picnic by Felicity Price, 5th.

For more information follow the link.

Jenny Pattrick's received some sort of gong from the folks of Wanganui City for her book Landings which is set at a time when the Wanganui River was known as the Rhine of Maoriland. People flocked to travel down river on the steamers, over 200 rapids, and stay at the luxury Pipiriki Hotel.

I said in my Listener review, 'Landings is a powerful yarn set in an extraordinary time and place.' Whatever I said it wouldn't have mattered, the NZ public loves a Jenny Pattrick novel and it will stay at no. 1 for sometime yet I'm guessing.

I heard Duncan Sarkies read from Two Little Boys at the Auckland Writers Festival and have since been forcing it on people who want a good laugh. He picked an especially funny piece to read which introduced me to the phrase 'sloppy seconds'.

The book is essentially a road trip which turns to disaster when the two lads run over a Norwegian backpacker and decide to dispose of the body. Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement: “Twisted, surprising and very very very funny.”

I haven't yet read the Duder which sees the children's/YA author writing stories about 'ordinary older' women, or the Price which looks like a sharp piece of chick lit about a dumped woman exacting revenge. The author appears to be a writing dynamo turning out bios and novels like other people turn out blog posts.

It's great to see Emily Perkins' Novel about my Wife entering the international fiction list. Published by Faber in the UK, it doesn't qualify for the NZ list. It has received rave reviews in the UK and elsewhere with words like 'accomplished' and 'brilliant' flashed around. The only trouble is they're calling her one of Britain's most exciting young authors.

My students have been studying Perkins' short story Not Her Real Name in the Massey University creative writing course and they never cease to be amazed by its... audacity. The way it plays with point-of-view using poems, shopping lists etc planted randomly amongst the prose to give rare glimpses into the characters' feelings.

I see my friend Kerre is still selling well in the bestsellers' non-fiction category with her Short Fat Chick to Marathon Runner which is a terrifically honest, funny and inspiring book. God knows if I could ever run a marathon but at least I'd know not to wear a g-string while doing it (a little tip from Kerre).

I used to play doubles tennis with Kerre when we both worked for TVNZ in Wellington, and it was in the middle of one of the games that I flung myself after the ball, landed face first on the concrete and knocked my front teeth out. One of the side-effects of doing the fitness thing I suppose.

So The Blue's in good company - long may it last.