The Orange Shortlist, 2007

The Orange shortlist for 2007 was announced this morning and this is it:

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)

Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk (Faber)

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Chatto & Windus)

The Observations by Jane Harris (Faber)

Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus)

Some interesting choices I think. The Adichie and the Desai seemed to be foregone conclusions, but I wasn't expecting The Observations to be there.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it - a hearty pastiche with a strong narrator - but I thought the end was somewhat soggy end and the overall ambience a little slack. (If it won it would be a slap in the face to Sarah Waters who failed to win with her vastly superior Victorian number, Fingersmith.)  However, I was expecting to see Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland, which I considered a great literary novel, and I had thought that Stef Penney's Tenderness of Wolves might make it.  Three of the books - the Xiaolu Guo, Rachel Cusk and the Anne Tyler - have been somewhat off my radar, something which I mean to rectify as quickly as possible. 

My prediction at this moment? I think Adichie is the most likely winner, but Kiran Desai is my quiet favourite.  I think that The Inheritance of Loss is one of those peculiar novels that works on you over time, so that, although you may not have seen all its best qualities at first, they emerge clearly in retrospect.

In other news, Cormac McCarthy has won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road.  Which is a sound and clearsighted piece of judging I think.

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Dorothy W.]

I've actually read one of those -- the Tyler book (I'm usually not even that up-to-date in my reading). I liked it pretty well, although it didn't blow me away.

[hobgoblin]

I agree with you about the Pulitzer choice. In some ways, The Road does not fit the usual Pulitzer pattern, but it is, nevertheless, a powerful book.

[Becca]

I agree that Adichie seems the most likely winner. Her writing is accomplished, characterization was good, and the scope of the book will be attractive to the Orange judges, I'm sure.

I'm reading Digging to America at the moment, and then have the Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers to tackle. The latter I picked up in Blackwell's a couple of months ago, and sadly put it back down. It's nice to have a good excuse to buy it!

[Elaine Simpson-Long]

Totally agree with your comments re Observations. Am very surprised to see it on this list. Good start but then tailed off very badly.