52 LISTENER MAY 26 2018
BOOKS&CULTURE
I
t was a privilege to read the 50-odd books
that were eligible for the Acorn Founda-
tion prize for fiction this year.
Entering the judging process, I
expected tough negotiation and compro-
mise; I expected to fight my corner, and
when necessary, to yield with good grace.
What surprised me was that, if pressed, we
probably could have picked a winner in
the first minutes of our initial meeting.
In the final Skype conference with the
international judge Alan Taylor, our deci-
sion was likewise unanimous. One novel
bubbled to the top of every list. There was
no pragmatism or compromise in our
decision to award Pip Adam’s The New
Animals the Acorn Prize at the Ockham
New Zealand Book Awards.
The Wellington literary community
is notoriously small and – full disclosure- I’m happy to count Pip Adam as
a friend. But the certainty of the
judging panel was unambiguous.
It’s a decision that will, however,
probably surprise some. On
publication, the novel was met
with bemusement, perplexity
and even distaste by a handful
of reviewers. An article
published in this mag-
azine, for example,
noted the opacity of
the novel’s prose,
“hyper-attention
to quotidian
detail”, even the superfluity of characters
whose names began with “D”. Another
observation levelled as critique was that
Adam’s central characters were difficult to
relate to or, indeed, like.
I don’t think the judges would disagree
on any of these points. However, Adam’s
novel rose to the top of this year’s pool
because of these qualities, not in spite of
them. Her uncompromising style pushes
the reader up against the grain and texture
of experience.
Her novel
captures what
it is like to be
bored, to be
perplexed, and
the way in
which exist-
ence can feel
both glacial
and mercurial- sometimes
all at once. In
other words, it
reveals a novel-
ist who sees literature not
just as entertainment,
but as a way of making
sense of the world.
The New Animals is
fiction that doesn’t
sit still, that shifts and shimmers as you
read. It is in equal measure steely and self-
delighting; it has little mercy.
The commitment that distinguishes the
novel’s style is also visible in the original-
ity of its subject matter and structure. The
book looks with deep seriousness at the
ostensibly trivial worlds of fashion and
hairdressing. It scours the painful places
where inner and outer lives meet. It exam-
ines the juncture between human and
animal experience, and the relationship
between waste and beauty. It is willing to
leap into the surreal in order to capture
the weird violence and strangeness of
being alive in this post-colonial island
nation in the 21st century.
What we, as judges, were lucky enough
to agree on is that these qualities are more
interesting, and in fact more important,
than those of relatability, ease, or escap-
ism. What distinguishes the book – and
won Adam the $50,000 prize – is the
urgency of art. lNovelist and poet Anna Smaill’s The Chimes
was long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
She is a lecturer at Victoria University’s school
of English, film, theatre and media studies.Making
sense of
the world
Anna Smaill, a judge
in this year’s NZ book
awards, on why Pip
Adam’s The New
Animals deserved to
win the big prize.
SIMON YOUNG; VICTORIA BIRKINSHAW
Anna Smaill: Pip Adam (below) captures the
urgency of art.