The Orange Prize Shortlist, 2011

EDIT, 13th April 2011, 8.17am (due to be at work in precisely 13 minutes time. Eep!)

The actual shortlist was announced yesterday, and because it was my night to work late at the library, I hardly had time to digest it at all.  Now I've had a better chance to look, here it is:

Great House by Nicole Krauss

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Room by Emma Donoghue

Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson

Which means that I guessed four out of the six below (hooray!); it would have been five if I'd gone with my instinct over The Memory of Love.  I feel very positive about the list as a whole - a little sad not to see Anne Peile on there, because Repeat It Today with Tears is a daring book that deserves a wider audience.  More thoughts soon.

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Here I am, at 9.45am on the morning before the day of the shortlist announcement, already avidly waiting.  And while I'm waiting I thought I would make a nonsense prediction of which six longlisted books will be on the shortlist. Since I've only read four thus far, with five and six on the go, I don't have a lot of grounds to base it on, but what the hell. 

Of the books I've read, one is definitely on my own personal shortlist: Anne Peile's Repeat It Today with Tears.  From synopses and hype alone, I predict the following five to join it:

Great House by Nicole Krauss

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Room by Emma Donoghue

 
 

I almost omitted Room and replaced it with Jamrach's Menagerie (because that sounds more interesting to me); and I umhed and ahhed about The Tiger's Wife and about The Memory of Love instead. It's a very difficult year to predict.

More predictions from Jackie at Farmlanebooks - we have a pretty similar line-up.  

~~Victoria~~  

Comments

[nomadreader]

I'm eagerly awaiting the announcement tomorrow too (and planning to wake up at 4:30 a.m. New York time to see it. I stopped short of predicting, but I'm hopeful Room and Goon Squad make it. Of the 8 I've read, they were both 5-star reads for me.

[BuriedInPrint]

I wish I'd made it more than halfway through the list before the shortlisting; Annabel is at the top of my list, with Peile's and Hunt's novels next, with a couple of wouldn't-be-sorry-to-sees after that.

On one hand, I'm very very curious to see the shortlist tomorrow but, unlike past years, I am still quite excited about the books that remain on my Orange stack, so I'm looking forward to reading them even if they're not shortlisted and, in some ways, would rather not know so that I could anticipate them all equally as I have been since the longlist announcement.

::eyes the clock all the same::

[Shelley]

You were totally right, weren't you?

I haven't read a great deal about this well-known contest; is its legitimacy at all in question?

[Jackie (Farm Lane Books)]

Congratulations on guessing four too! It looks as though we were both surprised by the absense of Goon Squad, but apart from that I think they've made a good shortlist. Enjoy the rest of your Orange reading :-)

[Victoria]

Shelley, I'm really interested in the idea of the legitimacy for the Orange Prize. I'm an advocate, obviously, and I wrote a bit about why I think it's still very necessary a couple of years ago: http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2009/04/why-we-still-need-the-orange-prize.html

Two years on I think the things I said in that post still hold true. But I also think, more and more, that the Orange Prize is legitimate simply by virtue of giving fiction by women an expansive space in which to be read and discussed. I also think the Orange Prize' sex discrimination in favour of women is at least open and honest, whereas the sex discrimination in the IMPAC Prize and the Booker and various others is veiled and denied. I know which I'd prefer. :-)