Judging the NZ Book Awards includes the delights of discovery

The list of New Zealand Book Awards finalists reminds books editor GILBERT WONG of hours well spent.

There is a nightmare peculiar to books editors: when the annual Montana New Zealand Book Awards finalists are announced, the list produces no recall at all. Who are these authors? What did they write?

Luckily the blank-slate bad dream does not persist into waking hours. It is satisfying to read the list and recall the particular joy of reading a new work by a New Zealand writer and thinking, this is great, what wonderful writing.

Reading is about discovery and, judging by the books published in the first year of the millennium, the judges have an invidious task, as convener of judges Radio New Zealand chief executive Sharon Crosbie agreed this week.

"I suspect that naming the winners will require a great deal of genteel wrist wrestling and, as the saying goes, some who go in popes will come out cardinals. We have a difficult task ahead."

As a guide to this year's finalists here is what Herald reviewers thought of the finalists for the fiction award.

Belief by Stephanie Johnson (Vintage): "Belief is a wonderful novel, powerful and often deeply disturbing, filled with New World landscapes, ambitious prophets and reluctant explorers. In her often quite claustrophobic worlds, Johnson tells stories of desire, escape, and believing." - Laura Kroetsch.

Fame by Lloyd Jones, (Penguin): "As we plumb the meanings and implications of the national sport, we find Jones has already done it. This book is about the seeds from which a national sport grew and the first experiences for New Zealanders of how celebrity can come from exploits of athleticism." - Gilbert Wong.

The Curative by Charlotte Randall, (Penguin): "I hadn't read Dead Sea Fruit, Randall's acclaimed first novel, so The Curative took me completely by surprise. This is a terrific novel and it's hard to see anything that will come close to it in the Montana Book Awards next year." - Gordon McLauchlan.

Nineteen Widows Under Ash by Damien Wilkins (VUP): "It is remarkable for its carnival of characters who say and do the unexpected, and a masterly control of tone which never falters." - Michele Hewitson.

Room by Laurence Fearnley (VUP): "A flawed first novel, a self-conscious, sometimes stilted work, with a few annoyingly unresolved issues, plus an unloved, unlovable heroine. Yet there is a strong sense of place and landscape, there is colour and there is life." - Penelope Bieder.

The 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Award finalists are:

Fiction

Belief, Stephanie Johnson (Vintage); Nineteen Widows Under Ash, Damien Wilkins (Victoria University Press); Room, Laurence Fearnley (Victoria University Press); The Book of Fame, Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books); The Curative, Charlotte Randall (Penguin Books).

Poetry

Late Song, Lauris Edmond (Auckland University Press); Lucky Table, Vincent O'Sullivan; (Victoria University Press); The Bells of Saint Babel's, Allen Curnow (Auckland University Press).

History and biography

Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance edited by Te Miringa Hohaia, Gregory O'Brien, Lara Strongman (Victoria University Press); Pukaki: A Comet Returns, Paul Tapsell (Reed Publishing); Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame, Michael King (Viking).

Environment

Dancing Leaves: The story of New Zealand's cabbage tree, ti kouka, Philip Simpson (Canterbury University Press); Nature Guide to the New Zealand Forest, John Dawson, Rob Lucas (Godwit); Wellington's Heritage: Plants, gardens and landscape, Winsome Shepherd (Te Papa Press).

Lifestyle

Fresh, Julie Biuso, photography Ian Batchelor (New Holland Publishers); Gone Surfing: The Golden Years of Surfing in New Zealand, 1950-1970, Luke Williamson (Penguin Books); Grandparenting with Love and Laughter, Trish Gribben (Tandem Press).

Illustrative arts

Marti Friedlander Photographs, Ron Brownson (Godwit); Ralph Hotere: Black Light, general editor Ian Wedde (Te Papa Press); West, Stanley Palmer (Godwit).

Montana reviewer of the year

Chris Bourke (Auckland), Graeme Cass (Tauranga), David Eggleton (Dunedin).

Best review page award

Evening Post, Landfall, Viva (New Zealand Herald).

Journalist Bill Ralston and bookseller Murray Gray will judge the Reviewer of the Year and Best Review page awards.

Sharon Crosbie, Chief Executive of Radio New Zealand, is joined on the judging panel by author and lecturer Emeritus Professor Lawrence Jones and bookseller Tilly Lloyd. Seven specialist advisers help the judges.

The books are competing for the Deutz and Montana Medals. The Deutz prize, worth $15,000, goes to the author of the best fiction title. The Montana, worth $10,000, will go to the best non-fiction work. The awards ceremony takes place in Napier on July 31.

* A relative unknown, Australian writer Kate Grenville, this week won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won Britain's most valuable award for female novelists - worth £30,000 ($98,300) - with The Idea of Perfection, a romance set in the Outback. The bookmakers' favourite had been Booker Prize winner The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. Other finalists were Ali Smith for Hotel World, Jane Smiley (Horse Heaven), Jill Dawson (Fred and Edie), and Rosina Lippi for (Homestead).