2025: NZ Book Awards

This year’s Book Awards brings together four quietly powerful novels that reflect a focus on subtlety and social resonance. Delirious by Damien Wilkins, The Mires by Tina Makereti, Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn, and At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley each offer explorations of human experience anchored in the quiet burn of real life rather than the sensationalism you might expect from an awards shortlist.

“That year. That year. People always said, that year. [Delirious]

One aspect that unites these books is the focus on characters often overlooked in fictional narratives: in particular middle-aged women, older men and women, those in long marriages and those dealing with disabilities and health concerns. In Delirious, Wilkins paints a tender portrait of a couple navigating ageing and the impact of the past, while Fearnley’s At the Grand Glacier Hotel quietly allows its protagonist to heal in a calming, isolated part of the natural environment. These protagonists and narratives are not rushing toward revelation; they are steeped in time, place, and recalibration.

Why we were drawn to each other was somehow simple but also mysterious. We were easy in each other’s company but beneath that? I felt seen, I suppose, but something more. [At The Grand Glacier Hotel]

Tina Makereti’s The Mires adds a visceral exploration of colonialism, racism, and intergenerational trauma, folding climate anxieties and Māori mythology into its swampy, haunting setting. Kirsty Gunn’s Pretty Ugly is a short story collection where emotional and aesthetic contradictions expose the raw beauty and ugliness of humanity.

These are not twisty thrillers nor alternative genres, they are all tales of lived realities and the complexities of the human condition. They’re novels that trust the intelligence and patience of their readers.

It is a shortlist that omits some expected authors and titles, but the result of the judges’ choices is a collection that embraces subtly, realism and meaningful settings rather than rushing to create and resolve plot drivers.

All these stories are about truth; how to find the truth and how driven we are by pretense and how much of our lives are lived not so much as what they truly are but as what we want them to appear to be. [Pretty Ugly]

● What an interesting shortlist – these novels/short stories are restrained to the point of being almost subdued, but each has a richness and warmth that means as a reader we are drawn in and carried along beside the characters as they make discoveries and decisions that at times appear to be inconsequential, but are in fact often monumental. 

Pretty Ugly was often too clever for me, but I think it’s this cleverness that will possibly get it the win. My favourite read was At The Grand Glacier Hotel. I felt enveloped and cocooned by this novel and loved the gentle journey that the protagonist went through. – Suzy

Sometimes it’s animals, sometimes it’s less animated things, like trees or mud. The worst is people. You don’t ever want to feel what’s going on inside another person, not if you can help it. It’s so confusing, so dense with thought and word and feeling, all scrambled together. [The Mires]

● This collection of books has reminded me to slow down and relish all parts of a story. Often books are written in a propulsive way that make me want to read quickly to discover the next revelation, but these four books made me ease up and enjoy the journey of reading rather than just anticipating the resolution. Which is what the characters were doing, taking considered steps through interesting parts of their lives and not trying to rush the future.

It took some further thinking and an illuminating literary dissection with Suzy before I appreciated all the books fully but I have come to highly value them all and think they will affect my future reading. To be honest I don’t mind who wins. I mostly loved At The Grand Glacier Hotel and The Mires and will choose the latter as my pick for win. – Rachel