Author and historian Dr Monty Soutar. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Author and historian Dr Monty Soutar. Photo / Brett Phibbs
The shortlisted finalists for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards were announced last week, and no category was stranger than fiction. Swept out of running for the $64,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize were literary big-hitters Lloyd Jones and Vincent O’Sullivan, both past winners at our national book awards.
One anticipatednovel remained: Catherine Chidgey’s The Axeman’s Carnival, set on an Otago sheep station with a talking magpie for a narrator, embracing both realism and the fabulous in its exploration of rural lives under pressure. But the other three finalists were surprises: historical novels by Cristina Sanders and historian Monty Soutar, and a debut crime novel by screenwriter Michael Bennett.
“There were some terrific books out last year by well-established writers who were not selected,” says Sanders, shortlisted for Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant, based on a true story from the 1860s. Making the Ockhams longlist, she says, was “a bit like the new kids from the dodgy primary schools hanging out with the prefects”.
Cristina Sanders.
Both Soutar and Bennett are Māori writers – not unusual in the Ockhams fiction list. More unusual is that these two writers are Māori men. The last time a Māori man won the fiction award was Alan Duff in 1997, for What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? During that 26-year drought, Māori women have taken the fiction prize four times. Two of the past three winners were Māori women, Becky Manawatu in 2020 and Whiti Hereaka in 2022.
“It says only good things about the health of publishing and writing in Aotearoa,” says Bennett, shortlisted for his thriller Better the Blood, “that male writers are the exception rather than the rule in our national literary awards.” Still, writer Kelly Ana Morey, a judge in the 2022 awards, says she “was pretty excited to see two Māori titles from the more commercial end of the literary spectrum” in the fiction list, “and by blokes as well”.
The word “commercial” is a loaded one in book-awards worlds, not just in New Zealand. Some readers – and writers – perceive book awards as too elitist; others see a commercial novel chosen instead of a high-style literary work and grumble that the awards are not elitist enough. The territorialism works both ways: when Ockhams winners Fiona Kidman and Manawatu went on to scoop best novel prizes at the Ngaio Marsh Crime Awards, there were complaints that literary novels were squeezing out traditional genre writers.
The writers themselves are aware of the tension, even if they reject categorisation.
“A ‘literary’ book to me,” says Sanders, “is one that is greater than the sum of its parts and that hangs well, so I’ve never understood this idea that genre fiction is excluded from this. A good book is a good book.”
Bennett agrees – though one of his friends recently told him “that crime isn’t literature”. The only reasonable response, he says, is “Read more.” Bennett cites In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and The Executioners Song by Norman Mailer as influences, and asks: “How can anyone read S.A. Cosby, The Trees by Percival Everett [shortlisted for the Booker Prize], anything by James Ellroy and most things by Patricia Highsmith and Elmore Leonard, and not come away knowing that you’re in the presence of truly great writing? It’s admirable and apt that good writing is recognised in the Ockhams, regardless of genre.”
Michael Bennett.
All three of these surprise finalists have great stories to tell. “A young Victorian woman 18 months castaway after a traumatic shipwreck fighting for her life through unimaginable hardships somehow came out alive,” says Sanders of Mrs Jewell. “She is a hero and hardly anyone knows of her.”
Bennett’s Better the Blood is largely set in contemporary Auckland, where a Māori female detective contends with a serial killer, as well as the long-term impact of our inheritance of trauma and dispossession. Soutar’s novel Kāwai: For Such a Time As This dives deep into our history: his book is a historical epic set in the complex Māori world of the 18th century, the first of a planned trilogy.
Published last September, Kāwai spent 21 weeks at number one in the New Zealand fiction charts, testimony to its vivid storytelling and appeal to a wide audience. But an accessible style and sales success don’t necessarily translate into selection for award shortlists. “I was surprised,” says Soutar, “given that Kāwai is not written in a style that might be considered high literary fiction.”
“It’s pretty obvious to me that readers are hungry for Māori fiction,” Morey says. Some of Soutar’s readers tell him they “haven’t read a novel for many years”. He suspects that “the reading public have been waiting a long time for a book like this. I certainly have. I just didn’t realise I’d be the one to write it.”
