Making the Longlist look much longer...

Having spent the last few days moaning about the books that didn't make the Orange Prize longlist, I thought it was about time I looked at what was there more closely. My total ignorance of many of the titles was quite shameful. On the whole the field looks good, certainly better than I'd feared at first; there are several books that I wouldn't ordinarily have touched but will now try. Of course, a few that turn me off, but that is only to be expected and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Anita Amirrezvani The Blood of Flowers (Headline Review)

[Iranian/American, 1st Novel]

First up is The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani, a novel which is ill-served by its cloyingly sentimental press release.  Set in 17th century Iran, it is the 'story of one girl's struggle to live a life of her own choosing'; said girl faces all the obstacles one might expect - controlling male relatives, economic hardship, an unhappy marriage and societal norms - before exerting her 'extroadinary will' to save herself from a 'grim and unfulfilling future.'  Despite the formulaic pitch (aimed, no doubt, at a very specific audience), the background sounds intriguing: 'Set in the legendary time of Shah Abbas the Great, the novel captures the bustle of bazaars overflowing with pomegranates, rosewater and saffron; the breathtakingly beautiful silk and gold rugs of the Shah’s carpet workshop; and Isfahan’s incomparable bridges, gardens, teahouses, and hammams.'  And in an interesting sleight of narrative, the main character is unnamed, thus anonymous and every-woman.  I've placed a library-hold.

Stella Duffy The Room of Lost Things (Virago)

[British, 11th Novel]

Next is Stella Duffy's eleventh novel, The Room of Lost Things.  Having picked up and put down several of Duffy's previous books, I was surprised by the synopsis to this one:

Under his railway arch in Loughborough Junction, South London, Robert Sutton is taking leave of a lifetime of hard work. His dry-cleaning shop lies at the heart of a lively community, a fixed point in a changing world. And, as he explains to his successor, young East Londoner Akeel, it is also the resting place for the contents of his customers' pockets - and for their secrets and lies. As he helps Akeel to make a new life out of his old one, Robert also hands on all he knows of his world: the dirty dip of the Thames; the parks, rare green oases in a desert of high-rises and decaying mansion blocks; and the varied lives that converge at the junction. Humming with life, packed tight with detail, The Room of Lost Things is a hymn of love to a great and overflowing city, and a profoundly human story that holds us in its grip from the first sentence until the last.

I won't be reading it unless it makes the shortlist, but it sounds as though it could be interesting.

Jennifer Egan The Keep (Abacus/Little Brown)

[American, 3rd Novel]

Then there is The Keep by Jennifer Egan, a book that has been on the edge of my vision for a while.  I didn' t know a great deal about it until today though, so you'll forgive me if I just give another synopsis:

'Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank whose devastating consequences changed both their lives, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe, a castle steeped in blood lore and family pride. Built over a secret system of caves and tunnels, the castle and its violent history invoke and subvert all the elements of a gothic past: twins, a pool, an old baroness, a fearsome tower. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youths, with even more catastrophic results. And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story—a story about two cousins who unite to renovate a castle...—that brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.'

It sounds just the thing for me, but typically the library doesn't have a copy. It might have to be a purchase, unless I can wheedle a copy from the publisher.

Anne Enright The Gathering (Jonathan Cape)

[Irish, 4th Novel]

Anne Enright's The Gathering, winner of the 2007 Booker prize, needs no introduction.  I read it last year and wrote about it here.

Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago)

[British, 4th Novel]

The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant looks like a novel that wears its metaphor on its sleeve.  Set in 1950s London, it tells the story of Vivien, a sensitive bookish girl, the daughter of reclusive immigrants, who is disturbed to question her identity by the arrival of her glamourous Uncle Sandor.  The press release helpfully points out that it is 'wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.'  Thank goodness they spelled it; I'd never have riddled that one out for myself.  But, more seriously, this is one of those books that could be either brilliant or terrible.  Grant has won the Orange before, back in 2000 for When I Lived in Modern Times, and is certainly worth a look. 

Tessa Hadley The Master Bedroom (Jonathan Cape)

[British, 3rd Novel]

In contrast, Tessa Hadley's The Master Bedroom sounds like the antithesis of every book I've ever enjoyed:

A single woman at loose ends becomes the object of two men's affections—a father and his teenage son—in this sly, richly drawn novel. After more than twenty years in London, Kate Flynn has returned to her family home in Wales to care for her aging mother. Having cast off her academic career, she is unmoored, and when she runs into a childhood friend, David Roberts, at a concert, she finds herself falling for him, although she knows she's grasping at anything to fill the sudden emptiness of her life. David's seventeen-year-old son, Jamie, is also drawn to Kate's eccentricity and her strange, glamorous old house full of books and music and history. As both father and son set about their parallel courtships, Tessa Hadley's intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, revealing how each generation replays the stories of the one that came before, in new and sometimes startling patterns.

Undoubtedly, this means that I should challenge my expectations by trying it... but perhaps not until it makes the shortlist.

Nancy Huston Fault Lines (Atlantic Books)

[Canadian, 11th Novel]

I feel ashamed not to have heard of Fault Lines by Nancy Huston.  Originally written in French - the author is Canadian but has lived in France since 1973 - it has already won the Prix Femina, the Orange's French counterpart and been shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt.  It is a generational saga, charting the history of one family from wartime Germany to 1980s Israel to present-day California. Except not quite.  It is told backwards, beginning with Sol, a monstrously precocious six year old who idolises George Bush Jr. and masturbates to images of Iraqi torture and working back to his great-grandmother, an Eastern European child of Aryan appearance kidnapped by the Nazi's under the Lebensborn programme and brought up as a German.  Honestly, it sounds absolutely fascinating.  But of course, the library doesn't have it. Grrrrr.

Gail Jones Sorry (Harvill Secker)

[Australian, 4th Novel]

Does anyone remember this?  Back in 2006 Gail Jones was Orange longlisted for her third book, Dreams of Speaking, a tour de force of baseless literary pretension that provided me with no end of hysterical entertainment. Now she is back with Sorry and, of course, I have to read it.  I'm not sure anyone could produce two novels quite that bad, but I live in hope.  The plot certainly has a lot of scope for error:

'In the remote Australian outback during World War II, the emotionally stunted child of an English couple is befriended by equally adrift strangers. Perdita becomes friends with a deaf and mute boy, Billy, and an Aboriginal girl, Mary. Perdita and Mary soon come to call one another sister and begin to share a profound bond. They are content with life in this barren corner of the world until a terrible event lays waste to their lives.'

I find myself wondering whether the title is a pre-emptive apology.

Sadie Jones The Outcast (Chatto & Windus)

[British, 1st Novel]

Against my better judgement of the cover - it may as well be subtitled 'Fiction for Women of A Certain Age' - I actually like the sound of this.  Set in the home counties in the 1940s and 50s, it focuses on Lewis Aldridge, a 19 year old boy who has just been released after a two year prison sentence for setting fire to his parish church.  A child during the Second World War, Lewis is returning home to his family - his ill-adjusted father, Gilbert, and his difficult stepmother, Alice - in the hope of a new beginning.   It has the potential to be truly saccarhine.  But Mark Thwaite seems to like its chances and who am I to argue.  Duly requested from the library.

Lauren Liebenberg The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam (Virago) 

[South African, 1st Novel]

What does the title make you think of?  Is it 1970s Rhodesia (that is, modern-day Zimbabwe)?  No?  Me neither.  Apparently: 'Nyree and Cia O'Callohan are sisters who live on a remote farm in the East of what was Rhodesia. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, Oupa, theirs is a seductive world laced with African paganism, bastardised Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm - until their idyll is shattered forever by their orphaned cousin, Ronin. the press release calls it 'a magical evocation of childhood'  The press release also calls it 'laugh-out loud funny' and 'heart-breakingly sad', a combination that conjures The Poisonwood Bible and sets a high standard for comparison.  The cover is lush; faintly disconcerting in its cuteness.  My interest is piqued, but it doesn't come out from Virago until March 31st.   

Charlotte Mendelson When We Were Bad (Picador)

[British, 3rd Novel]

Aha! Finally! A book I've actually heard of; I even started reading it a few months ago. Admittedly it didn't grab me at the time, but I think I was distracted by various other books.  It should be right up my alley what with the Jewish interest:

'The Rubin family, everybody agrees, seems doomed to happiness.

…If this, the few minutes before the wedding, could be frozen and kept unsullied by the future – the Rubins in their heyday – their happiness would be complete. But it cannot be frozen. Things happen.

It is the wedding day of Leo, the glamorous Rabbi Claudia Rubin’s first-born son.  Leo, like his sister Frances before him, like, in fact, the famously happily-married Claudia herself, seems about to marry well.  But even perfect families can fall apart and today, at Leo’s glorious wedding, with every eye upon them, the spectacular fall of the Rubin family is about to begin.'

Deborah Moggach In The Dark  (Chatto & Windus)

[British, 16th Novel]

I shudder slightly everytime I see Deborah Moggach's name.  It has nothing to do with her previous novels (which I've never read), but everything to do with the part she played in the most recent film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the one starring Keira Knightley.  She wrote the screenplay (with significant borrowings from the great Andrew Davies) and, while I know its unfair, I can't help blaming her for the horror of the bit with the pigs in the hallway or the kiss-in-mist at the end. Ugh.  But back to the Orange Prize.  The novel in question is another historical, set in inner London during the First World War.  Eithne Clay - pretty and enigmatically named - runs a shabby but genteel boarding house while her husband is away at the Front, along with Ralph, her fourteen year old son, and Winnie, a 'good-hearted maid from the country'.  Their lodgers include Alwyne Flyte, a communist, a cynic and a victim of a gas attack in the trenches.  When Eithne's husband is (inevitably) killed, her life, and the life of her dependents, is thrown into turmoil.

Anita Nair Mistress (BlackAmber)

[Indian, 3rd  Novel]

Another novelist and novel I hadn't heard of before. (This whole list business is making me feel very inadequate!) Set in present day India, the plot has a feel of Anita Desai about it (although negated somewhat by the loud cover):

'When travel writer Christopher Stewart arrives at a riverside resort in Kerala to meet Koman, Radha's uncle and a famous kathakali dancer, he enters a world of masks and repressed emotions. From their first meeting, both Radha and her uncle are drawn to the enigmatic young man with his cello and his incessant questions about the past. The triangle quickly excludes Shyam, Radha's husband, who can only watch helplessly as she embraces Chris with a passion that he has never been able to draw from her. Also playing the role of observer-participant is Koman; his life story, as it unfolds, captures all the nuances and contradictions of the relationships being made--and unmade--in front of his eyes.'

Nair's website describes her as one of India's most exciting writers, which is intriguing, if not a little hyperbolic; it's a shame that York City Libraries doesn't have a copy.  Part of the proceed from sales will go to the Nila Foundation set up to revive and regenerate the Nila river in Kerala. 

Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals (Quercus)

[Canadian, 1st Novel]

Both the cover and synopsis of this make me think it's being marketed as fiction for the misery memoir generation:

'Baby is twelve. Her mother died soon after she was born so she lives with her father - and his heroin addiction. She's grown up in Montreal' red-light district, never staying anywhere long enough to call it home, and now Baby is losing the only constant in her life; her father. He's been sent to hospital and she's been forced into foster care. She longs for his return; other people's families are no substitute for her own. Starved of affection, Baby is attracted to all the wrong people. And when her father betrays her and she is sent to a juvenile detention centre, she is more at risk than ever. Baby' survival rests on her gift for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness which fall into her lap. Poised on the threshold between childhood and adult life, she is bright, funny, observant and ultimately wise enough to realize that salvation rests in her hands alone.'

I'm instinctively wary of it and, although I'm hearing good things around the blogosphere, I'm afraid that it will just be an exercise in emotional manipulation. Also, 'Baby'?  I'll reserve judgement until the library puts its copy in my hands.

Elif Shafak The Bastard of Istanbul (Viking)

[Turkish, 7th Novel]

I've both heard of this one (hurrah!) and seriously considered reading it(hurrah again!)  Shafak is one of those writers whose name has been in the back of my mind forever, and The Bastard of Istanbul sounds particularly tempting.  At its center is the bastard of the title - Asya, a nineteen-year-old girl who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists - and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.  There is Zehila, who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya's mother; Banu, a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres.

Shafak was prosecuted for 'insulting Turkishness' because of the content of the novel and, although she was eventually acquitted, the BBC has fussed about the 'controversiality' of long listing her.  Of course this makes me want to read it all the more.

Dalia Sofer The Septembers of Shiraz (Picador)

[American, 1st Novel]

Another debut.  I remember Sofer's novel coming out, and dovegreyreader's review of it, but I haven't given it a thought since then. Silly me. It sounds rather good:

'In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappear-ance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known.

As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer. And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.'

Scarlett Thomas The End of Mr Y (Canongate)

British (7th Novel)

Finally, a book I already own.  I relieved a friend of his surplus copy at New Year and pledged myself to read it as part of my 'I-will-read-all-my-Christmas-presents' challenge.  I've heard it called 'Foucault's Pendulum for the iPod age' and I'm not sure I can synopsise it clearly. Here goes: Ariel Manto is a postgraduate student working in the field of thought experiments with Professor Saul Burnem. Like her teacher she is fascinated by Thomas Lumas, the obscure 19th century author of a book called 'The End of Mr Y'  which nobody has ever read.  Finding a copy in an antique store, Ariel reads Lumas' detailed instructions on how  to enter the "Troposphere," an alternate world where the visitor can travel through time and space by entering other people’s minds and accessing their thoughts and memories. When Ariel uses the instructions to follow in Mr. Y’s footsteps and visit the Troposphere, she discovers a strangely enchanting, strongly addictive world. But she is quickly attacked by two menacing ex-CIA agents who also know the secrets of the Troposphere, men who are determined to enter her mind and destroy her memories.  With me so far? Because this is where it really gets weird: 'Shaking off her pursuers with the help of an errant Jesuit priest and a mouse-god named Apollo Smintheus, who becomes her guide and protector on this journey through consciousness, Ariel sets out to find Saul Burlem [I forgot to mention that he has gone missing by this point] who may be the only person left who can save her.'

Carol Topolski Monster Love (Fig Tree)

[British, 1st Novel]

What is it about novels about coupledom that turns me off? When I read the Guardian review of this I only got as far as 'the perfect couple in the perfect home' and switched off thinking 'meh, another book about the minutiae of a marriage going sour'.  I forced myself a little further this time, and it sounds much more sinister and much more compelling.

'Brendan and Sherilyn. A young couple in love. Each has met their soul mate, and nothing can come between them. In fact, the Gutteridges are so wrapped up in each other that their neighbours barely know them, despite the woman next door’s nosy curiosity. Their families and their work colleagues see only the perfect couple in the perfect home, the perfect car crouching in the drive. And then a baby is born – contaminating this pristine life in which there is only room for two. But they find the ideal solution. What may be one couple’s happy ending is everyone else’s indescribable nightmare…

Told through the Gutteridges’ voices, and those of their families, neighbours, and those who will come across them in the aftermath, this perverse love story hurtles to the heart of evil - the evil that could be anyone’s next door neighbour.'

Rose Tremain The Road Home (Chatto & Windus)

[British, 10th Novel]

I'm tiring a little now.  Like Nic, I've read Tremain's Music and Silence - I enjoyed it; didn't adore it - but I've collected several more of her novels over the years on the strength of it and Sarah Bower's recommendation of The Road Home on my initial Orange post has piqued my interest.  It is a highly topical novel at the moment, being about the flow of Eastern European migrant workers into the UK.  It is centred on Lev, a widower in his 40s, who arrives in London intent on sending money back to support his elderly mother and young daughter.  The Guardian review paints a sweet and convincing portrait of what sounds like an eminently readable novel:

'The arc of the novel is essentially one of self-improvement; although Lev has various ventures in employment, there is no plot, per se. We are, rather, accompanying Lev on his journey, relishing his many encounters - with a sexy, spiky co-worker at the restaurant who becomes his girlfriend; with the imperious chef from whom Lev picks up tips on the restaurant trade; with an elderly Englishwoman at a home; with a recently arrived young countryman named Vitas who misses, more than anything else, his dog. In Suffolk, part of a crew picking asparagus, Lev meets a farmer who takes a liking to him, and two benevolent gay Chinese migrant workers. Tremain is at her luminous best in these odd moments of companionability; she has the art of finding the improbable graces in human connection. That these relations lead Lev gradually to the road home gives the story a gentle, pleasing form, if not any real dramatic denouement.'

Patricia Wood Lottery (William Heinemann)

[American, 1st Novel]

And the prize for worst cover goes to... Maybe there is a good novel in there trying to get out, but unfortunately it looks like a cross between a GCSE textbook and a boardgame box. Ugh.  The excerpt I just read online, which reminded me of nothing more than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time sans the charm, did nothing to soften me to its potential charm. Has anyone read it?

'Perry’s IQ is only 76, but he’s not stupid. His grandmother taught him everything he needs to know to survive: She taught him to write things down so he won’t forget them. She taught him to play the lottery every week. And, most important, she taught him whom to trust. When Gram dies, Perry is left orphaned and bereft at the age of thirty-one. Then his weekly Washington State Lottery ticket wins him 12 million dollars, and he finds he has more family than he knows what to do with. Peopled with characters both wicked and heroic who leap off the pages, Lottery is a deeply satisfying, gorgeously rendered novel about trust, loyalty, and what distinguishes us as capable.'

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Sarah Bower]

Victoria, I hope you enjoy the Tremaine as much as I did or I shall feel horribly guilty!

[Caroline]

Thanks ever so much for this round-up, Victoria. I was determined actually to read at least some of the longlisted books this year, before the short list announcement, but I was brought up short when I realised I had heard of virtually none of the books/authors. (Don't feel ashamed - you know about far more of them than I do!) Now at least I have an idea of where I'd like to start, so it's off to the online library catalogue for me. I look forward to your reviews!

[Cathy]

There is a short review of 'Lottery' over on bookersatz

http://bookersatz.blogspot.com/

[Mark Thwaite]

Hiya Victoria,

Good round up. My tip that Sadie Jones's The Outcast might do well isn't a personal endorsement -- I've not read it. But I have a "feeling"!!

Moggach is probably due something soon -- she seems to have been around a while.

O'Neill's does look like a misery memoir, but perhaps might be thought of as "timely"?

Personally, I don't think there is one on the list that has me particularly excited. But I would like to read the Shafak.

[Danielle]

I have to agree with you on the last one. To be honest the story doesn't really appeal to me, but that cover pretty much assures that I won't be tempted to pick it up. The American version is slightly better:
http://www.amazon.com/Lottery-Patricia-Wood/dp/B000Z4LV2C/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206458532&sr=1-1