The Guardian First Book Award heads in an easterly direction

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book Award.

• See video footage
• Petina Gappah: ‘I don’t see myself as an African writer’

Worth £10,000 to the winner, the Guardian First Book Award, as the name suggests, is open to new writers of both fiction and non-fiction. Several popular authors have had their first taste of literary fame through being short-listed or scooping the big prize: Zadie Smith won in 2000 with White Teeth and Jonathan Safran Foer with Everything is Illuminated in 2002.

This year’s long-list was released in August and rather excitingly included a first time novelist who hails from New Zealand, Eleanor Catton. Her novel The Rehearsal has been garnering glorious reviews, The Guardian reviewer Justine Jordan has described it as “smart, playful and self-possessed, it has the glitter and mystery of the true literary original.” The Rehearsal centres around a scandal, the illicit relationship between a young music teacher and an underage schoolgirl. Their tale is re-written and dramatised by a local theatre group for an end of year performance and the original and re-worked tales run both side-by-side and interwoven for much of the novel. Reviewers have been particularly taken by Eleanor’s ear for both the everyday and heightened theatrical dialogue used in the novel and her deft handling of the interchange between the play and the original scandal. The four other short-listed titles were:

A swamp full of dollars: pipelines and paramilitaries at Nigeria’s oil frontier by Michael Peel.
 A former West Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, Peel examines the petroleum industry in the Niger delta and its impact on the people of Nigeria. The only shortlisted non-fiction title this year.

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey.
Already shortlisted for the Orange prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and winner of the Betty Trask Prize, Harvey’s novel centers around Jake Jameson a retired architect succumbing to Alzheimer’s.

The Selected Works of TS Spivet: A novel by Reif Larsen.
Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is twelve years old and a compulsive cartographer. This novel includes charts, diagrams and ephemera to trace TS’s tale as he journeys from rural Montana to Washington.

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah. This short story collection looks with both humour and sadness at the challenges of living in modern Zimbabwe.

 

And the bad sex winner is….

Drum roll, bated breath, nervous giggles. The 2009 Bad Sex In Fiction winner is Jonathan Littell!

400 connoisseurs of crummy sex writing gathered at London’s In & Out Club (I didn’t make that name up) to toast Littell’s sucess. The man of the moment didn’t attend but the award, presented by the lovely Charles Dance, was accepted by his editor at Chatto and Windus. The judges praised The Kindly Ones as an “ambitious and impressive novel” and hoped Littell took the prize in “good humour”.

So bad luck Philip Roth, John Banville, Nick Cave etc but don’t be too despondent there is always next year. For a peep at the prizewinning passage see The Literary Review, be prepared to blush.

 

NZer Eleanor Catton on the Guardian First Book Award shortlist

Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal has made it to the Guardian First Book Award shortlist. This is really exciting news for NZ literature and we’ve all got our fingers crossed for victory.

The Guardian reports of her chances in the article Fiction resurgent in Guardian first book award shortlist:

The third novel is New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal, which has already acquired something of a love it or hate it reputation. The novel has two linked narrative threads: one set in a girls’ school in the aftermath of a pupil-teacher affair and the other in a drama school where details of the affair are used for the end-of-year production. The Bath reading group praised Catton’s writing style for its originality and accessibility, while one Oxford reader remarked: “At last! A book to get lost in.”

• See our list of shortlisted titles
• Information on Eleanor Catton from Victoria University Press
• Listen to our interview with Eleanor as part of the 209 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

 

Mal Peet wins Guardian Children’s Prize

It turns out that my prediction for the winner of the Guardian Children’s Book Prize was wrong.  The winner was actually Mal Peet for his book, Exposure. Alison Flood from The Guardian describes Exposure as “a modern retelling of Othello, in which the Moor of Venice and his wife Desdemona are transformed into the South American equivalent of Posh and Becks.”  The book follows the fictional football legend Otello and sports journalist Paul Faustino, who have also featured in several of Mal Peet’s other books including The Penalty and Keeper.  Peet turned to writing these football themed novels for young adults as he felt that all football books for children were a load of rubbish.

We have all of his books in the library and you can read an interview with him in The Guardian here.

 

Odds on favourite wins The Man Booker Prize

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has taken out the big one!

Her book revolves around Thomas Cromwell ‘the blacksmith boy who became Henry VIII’s right-hand man’:

Wolf Hall stands on its own, as a complete story – it is the end of one vital chapter in Thomas Cromwell’s life, and perhaps when we meet him again he will be slightly different. Five years are before him, his rise and rise – the destruction of Anne Boleyn, the battle for the soul of Henry’s daughter Mary, a revolt which is almost a civil war, the shaking and remaking of England…

I love her quote on the enduring fascination of the Tudors: ‘Almost all the stories you might want to tell are lurking behind the arras’.

So congratulations to Hilary, and if you’ve read Wolf Hall do chime in and tell us what you thought. I’m still patiently waiting to get my hands on a copy …

• Bookies favourite wins the 2009 Prize - Man Booker site
• Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall – A Chapter in Cromwell’s life - Man Booker site
• Our page on the Man Booker Prize (including previous finalists and winners)

 

Patrick Ness in the running for Booktrust Teenage Prize

Shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize

It’s children’s and young adult’s book awards season at the moment, with the shortlists for two prominent awards being announced.  The main award that recognises excellence in teenage fiction is the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the shortlist this year is very strong.  I was pleased to see that one of my favourite authors, Patrick Ness, was shortlisted again this year for his heart-stopping follow up to the award-winning The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer.  The other titles on the shortlist include Auslander by Paul Dowswell, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray, Ant Colony by Jenny Valentine, and The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant.  All of these books have got fantastic reviews and are all very strong contenders for the award. 

The other main shortlist that has been announced recently is for the prestigious Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.  While there are fewer contenders for this prize (only 4) they are all extremely good writers who have writen some interesting and varied stories.  Siobhan Dowd, who sadly passed away from cancer several years ago, wrote some very unique stories and her books have been nominated and won several awards in the past few years.  She has been shortlisted this year for her novel, Solace of the Road, alongside Then by Maurice Gleitzman, Nation by Terry Pratchett, and Exposure by Mal Peet. 

Who do you think should win?  My picks are Ask and the Answer for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and Solace of the Road for the Guardian Prize.

 

Discovering a new author

I love stumbling onto an author that I didn’t previously know about, who writes in a style I like and who tells a great story with characters and plotlines that ’work’. It’s such a delicious feeling to ‘discover’ someone new.

I’ve been a fan of Kathy Reichs’ style of forensic crime since her first novel and while I’m on the waitlist to read her latest book, 206 Bones, I have discovered a new author to delve into, Kathryn Fox.

Kathryn Fox is an Australian author, who won the 2005 Davitt Award for her debut novel, Malicious Intent. She has worked as a medical practioner, with a special interest in forensic medicine.

She appears on MySpace.com, here’s her profile on her publisher’s website, and then there’s always her Fantastic Fiction profile to check out as well.

So if you are a fan of any of the following writers, Karin Slaughter, Kathy Reichs, Jeffrey Deaver, Patricia Cornwall, Mo Hayder or Harlan Coben, then I’d recommend Kathryn Fox be added to your reading list.

 

Shaun Tan scoops another award

The Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Award winners were announced last week and Shaun Tan, an amazing illustrator and author scooped one of the top awards.  Shaun Tan is one of those illustrators that appeals hugely to adults as well as children and his artwork is absolutely stunning and quite surreal.  My mum, who has introduced me to so many great books since I was born, doesn’t like him because he’s a little too weird for her tastes, but it is this quirkiness that really appeals to me.  One of the main things I love about his illustrations is that they are quite different from book to book.  His latest book, Tales from Outer Suburbia, is the book that has won the Older Readers category of the CBCA Awards and it is the best example of his different styles.  It is a collection of  short stories that he has written and illustrated, some funny and some slightly disturbing.  Definitely check out his work, even if you don’t normally read picture books.

Although some of the other finalists in the awards did not win their category, several of my favourites got an Honour Award including The Big Little Book of Happy Sadness by Colin Thompson (in the Picture Book category) and A Rose for the Anzac Boys by Jackie French (in the Older Readers category).  You can check out all the winners on the Children’s Book Council of Australia website which also has some links to the websites of Australian authors and illustrators.

 

Is Christchurch the Motown of New Zealand poetry?

Christchurch poet Joanna Preston has recently launched her first collection. The first-ever winner of the University of Otago’s Kathleen Grattan award, Preston is an Australian living in New Zealand who describes herself as a “tasmanaut”.

Ahead of her performance with Frankie MacMillan at the Central Library on Friday, I spoke with her about daily visits to her bookcase, the vagaries of the writing process and why she calls Christchurch the Motown of New Zealand poetry.  Read the interview.

The local scene is pretty healthy, she reckons. What do you think – is Christchurch a big player on the poetry scene? Does geography make a difference to the poetry?  Or is poetry all a bit flaky for your tastes?

Have a read of the interview, then lob your comment like a poetic grenade!

Preston also has her own blog, A Dark Feathered Art.

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/P/PrestonJoanna/http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/P/PrestonJoanna/

 

Brooklyn

A recent blog mentioned the latest Colm Toibin novel Brooklyn as being disappointing. I had never read any of his work before so I didn’t come with expectations. By the time I had finished this novel I could see why it is on the Booker longlist and I can put money on it that it will be on the shortlist and it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to see it take out the big prize.

It is one of those deceptively simple novels that could easily be overlooked because they are dealing with everyday lives seemingly untouched by the big events of the time. The major character is Eilis, a young woman who lives at home with her widowed mother and her sister Rose. She works in a grocery store owned and operated by a truly awful woman who favours certain characters (the “better” people of the town), wilfully ignores others and bullies her two helpers. A priest visiting from America tells Eilis and family about the possibility of a job in a department store in Brooklyn and this is arranged for Eilis.

Her work in the store and her quite circumscribed life outside it are beautifully captured and the time (1950s) is tellingly evoked. I had no idea that at that time it was quite innovative when a counter for “coloureds” to buy clothing was introduced. The various young women in the boarding house where Eilis stays are all very real characters: in fact, there are no stock characters in the book even if some could, in lesser hands, be relegated to the part of sour spinster, bossy landlady, good time girl, Italian momma, etc.

Other bloggers have said that they found the main character passive and that put them off. Well, she just is and so is Hardy’s Tess and a lot of other literary characters and people in real life as well. She’s a girl from provincial small town Ireland and hasn’t much experience of the world and so she tends to fall in with what is arranged for her. The novel reminded me of the brilliant John McGahern novel Amongst women and also, in a strange way, of the brilliant French film The lacemaker, in which Isabelle Huppert made her name.

By the end of the novel Eilis is faced with a very tough decision and it is to the credit of the novel that it is both in character and unexpected. Will it win the Booker? I’d say the William Trevor and Hilary Mantel’s novel (which my wife is reading with great enthusiasm at the moment) are its strongest rivals and the one that will not make it to the shortlist is the pretty laboured jokey spoof of Cheetah the chimp telling all.