It's that time of year again. The Orange Prize longlist was announced this morning, much to my excitement. My first and dominant response to it is bewilderment. Over half the books and authors are entirely new to me, and there seem to be some notable omissions. Where is Nicola Barker's Darkmans? Or AL Kennedy's Day? Where is Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods? I find it difficult to rationalise a list of 2008's best novels by women that doesn't include them. Anne Enright's The Gathering sticks out like a sore-thumb of literaryness. And I wonder, uncharitably, whether they were simply too much for some of the judges. I also wonder whether this could be the year that I fall out with the Orange Prize...
Anita Amirrezvani The Blood of Flowers
Stella Duffy The Room of Lost Things
Jennifer Egan The Keep
Anne Enright The Gathering
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
Tessa Hadley The Master Bedroom
Nancy Huston Fault Lines
Gail Jones Sorry
Sadie Jones The Outcast
Lauren Liebenberg The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam
Charlotte Mendelson When We Were Bad
Deborah Moggach In The Dark
Anita Nair Mistress
Heather O'Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals
Elif Shafak The Bastard of Istanbul
Dalia Sofer The Septembers of Shiraz
Scarlett Thomas The End of Mr Y
Carol Topolski Monster Love
Rose Tremain The Road Home
Patricia Wood Lottery
More indepth coverage later. In the meantime, can you think of other notable omissions?
~~Victoria~~