The end-of-year lists are piling up, and the Herald’s is out. Here’s their selection of notable NZ fiction:

• Catherine Chidgey: The Transformation

• Anne-Marie Jagose: Slow Water

• Nicky Pellegrino: Delicious

• Sue Emms: Parrot Parfait

And non-fiction:

• Anne Salmond: The Cannibal Dog

• Kenneth Sandford: Mark of the Lion

• Four Winds Press’ second and third series of Essays, edited by Lloyd Jones, Margaret Mahy, John Saker, Paula Boock, Bill Manhire, David Burton, and Simon Morris

• Peter Calder: Travels With My Mother

An aside: no sign of Kirsty Gunn’s Featherstone on the recommended fiction list, although her book made it onto the NY Times Notable Books list. Gunn’s novel of small-town life was lauded around the world from the Guardian to Booklist to the San Francisco Chronicle. But Jane Westaway, co-editor of New Zealand Books magazine, slated it in the Herald in March 2002:

Gunn's writing seems self-indulgent and dismissive of the reader, every paragraph haunted by a voice insisting: "Look at me, I'm a Writer". The small town she depicts is certainly not the Wairarapa settlement (plus an e), nor any other known to ordinary man - it's Artsville. And I didn't enjoy my visit.

Ouch.