Poor old LeafSalon, limping along. Blessings, as David Howard would say, to all our loyal readers who in the face of deafening silence from Sydney keep sending emails and ringing the alarm bells when the forum goes down. It's back up, and we love all three of you.

We do keep an ear to the Tasman however, and I felt I must just pass a fleeting comment on the Montanas. I sneaked about a little to see what everyone else had to say first – had to scroll down for half an hour to find what Bookman Beatty said about them – he’s posted about 900 articles since then and the results only came out yesterday. What the hell’s the man on? I remember that kind of feverish intensity from the glory days of Leaf. I give him another six months, tops, before he peaks and spends the rest of his days eating muffins and staring dully into the middle distance in self-imposed exile like me.

I can’t imagine how I had time to work actually – the madness of NZ Book Month, where I was slaving over a hot keyboard till midnight most nights seems like another life entirely. Now I find it hard to squeeze the Sydney Biennale in to my hectic schedule of muffin-making and emailing foolish fripperies to friends. Sigh. What am I doing with my life? Bugger all right now, but I’m almost certain that perhaps something is bound to happen soon. Only today, I found myself rather sluggishly contemplating a Job Seek ad for an Online Content Provider for Pacific Magazines – writing and editing content for such quality, enlightening weeklies as New Idea, Famous, That’s Life! and Who. Curses! Must Get Life Back on Track. This is what happens when you move to Sydney, you see – heed Metro magazine and stay put is my advice. Relentless, sparkling winter sunshine isn’t everything.

Anyway – back to the subject: well done Charlotte Grimshaw for getting the gong. I still haven’t read Opportunity – am ashamed to admit I was put off by … the cover! Don’t judge, I know. (Rather hearteningly, it was produced by Griffin Press in Australia.) The blurred photomontage doesn’t do it justice, and that hideous, distressed Courier typeface is so 90s. Why, why? This is a big-name writer, who surely deserves better. It’s just not a beautiful thing, and I like beautiful things. I don’t want form over function, heaven forbid, but in this day and age ... hopefully it'll get a second run and they can do another cover. Now, back to the bit between the covers – my friend Dee has just finished Opportunity, and raved about it, bullied me into promising to read it. But for those of you who have read, here’s an interesting snippet from one of Charlotte’s blogs on NZ Book Month back in early September 2007:

‘Fiona Kidman told me that she’d read one of the stories in my collection Opportunity and wished one character had taken revenge on the other … What I should have told her, I thought afterwards, is that I have actually written a sequel to the title story, Opportunity – the one about revenge … Some day I hope to publish Opportunity II, Beyond Revenge. Or, The Revenge Continues. Or, What Goes Around Comes Around, Again. But seriously, the story of Reid is not finished, nor are some of my other Opportunity stories. I don’t feel like leaving the characters behind.’ So clever Charlotte’s left herself a whopping opening there. Opportunity may not in fact knock just once. Wince.

One of the other two books I was very, very happy to see on the winning list was The Blue, which won Best First Book (it also won the Readers Choice prize, which is naturally the most important). Lyn Freeman, convenor of judges, hit the nail on the head when she said of the book ‘We only rarely find a first-time novelist who can write with such precision, maturity and real emotional insight.’ So much so that it also appeared on the Fiction shortlist as well, which rather confused everyone, since at the time as I recall there was no mention of any best first books and it was the fervent hope of many of Mary’s fans here on LeafSalon that The Blue might score big time. It has, in my opinion, the beautiful tender storyline, the fresh writing style, the solid historical research and the big reveal that add up to a truly great read. It’s stayed with me for a long time too – I think of it even now. We saw whales at the mouth of the Sydney Harbour a few weeks back and it was the first thing I thought of. Yet again, on ya Mary.

My other favourite book on the winners list was in the Reference and Anthology section: Gregory O’Brien’s A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal (Learning Media Ltd). The nicest man in NZ books (and art) has put together a feast of NZ design, literature and biographical intrigue in this coffee/bedside table wonder. Take a wander through these pages, and if you are a person of a certain age, Sweet Porridge and The Donkey’s Egg will just be the beginning of your memory jolts. And those clever NZ Book Month people have scored Greg to give the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture at the opening of NZ Book Month at Te Papa on Sunday, 31st August. I’d love to be there for that – I’d pop it in the diary now if I were you.

Across the ditch here in Australia, the big winner that everyone’s dining out on is The Lost Dog, by Michelle de Kretser. It’s just pulled the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal, the country's most venerable lit award. Susan Wyndham, of The Sydney Morning Herald (oh, the pages and pages of it’s luxurious book section! Now that is worth moving over here for) said last weekend ‘I'll never forget the emotion on de Kretser's face in May when she learned she had not only won the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction but also the Best Book Award (and a hefty $50,000). On my European travels last month I was pleased to read A.S. Byatt's review of The Lost Dog in The Financial Times, in which she described the book as "the best novel I've read for a long time".’ So there you go – The Lost Dog has found a home underneath Opportunity, on the top of my book pile. I’ll read them both and get back to you. But don’t hold your breath.