MAKING THE CUT

First, as always, congratulations to all those authors whose books made the longlists for this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. To write any book is an admirable achievement – to hardly mention having people pay actual money for it. But then to have literati types think you might be worthy of an award? And there are some fine books here. But are they the 40 best books in the country?

This year’s fiction longlist is a not-unpredictable collection. All are novels, compared with Airini Beautrais’ winning short-story collection last year. All veer strongly, Tracey Slaughter’s provocative collection or JP Pomare’s psychological thriller . For me, though, the blindingly glaring omission is Jacqueline Bublitz’s literary thriller . Last year, it was Carl Nixon’s that got the elbow, and Meg Mason’s excellent and bestselling only made the longlist. It’s almost as if anything that’s good but has the smell of commercial success gets marked down.