The winner of the Orange Prize, and of the Orange New Writer's Award, is announced this evening. After three months and nine novels, I'm eager to finally hear the news, although sadly I'll be at work on the late shift when the ceremony takes place. Typical! I shall be refreshing the Orange Prize webpage in anticipation. I already picked my winner in Monday's post but, just for the hell of it, here is the full shortlist in order of my preference (links are to my reviews-cum-yatterings):
1. Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill - I hope that O'Neill's debut novel is a sign of great things to come. Her narrative voice is fearless, her prose pitch perfect, and her simile construction delightfully inventive. I'm betting on the dark subject matter, and the constrasting stylistic whimsy, to woo the judges.
2. Fault Lines by Nancy Huston - The battle for second place was a toughy, because I very much admired Sadie Jone's debut, but Nancy Huston just about wins through. I thought her generational saga was edgy and provocative, while still maintaining its poise. Also, it offered some wonderfully forensic character studies and did well to tease out inter-generational tripwires without resorting to Freudian cliche.
3. The Outcast by Sadie Jones - As I said, an admirable debut, and an honestly fresh voice. But, in the end, the gender stereotypes were too stale for me to stomach.
4. The Road Home by Rose Tremain - I'm loathe to place Tremain's novel in such a low spot, since I think it a traditional, lucid meditation on immigration, grief and hope in 21st century Britain, but compared with O'Neill, Huston and Jones I thought it lacked verve. The bookies have it as their favourite though, so maybe I've got it all wrong.
5. When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson - I was all geared up to love this book - it started off so high in my estimation. And then plummeted. I've placed it above Lottery because it does have some thematic juice. Shame that the characters and the slippery wit of the prose spoiled it for me.
6. Lottery by Patricia Wood - I almost feel mean putting this at the bottom of the list, but I'm afraid I don't think Lottery is a sufficiently thought-provoking or bar-raising novel to win. It is cosy, bitter-sweet and infused with a simply morality, all of which will make it a highly saleable novel but not, I hope, a prize-winning one.
You might remember how disappointed I was back in March when the longlist was announced, and so many of the great novels by women I could think of from 2007/8 had been omitted. Has reading the shortlist dispelled that disappointment? Am I now convinced that these six books were the six best books in the running? The simple answer is no. There is some excellent writing on the shortlist - the top three books are strong contenders - but there is nothing to match Nicola Barker's Darkmans, or Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army or Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods.
For me this is symptomatic of the prize in the last few years - it has become more about rewarding fiction by women, for women, that deals with so-called 'women's issues', than about finding the best book by a woman. Kirsty Lang, the chair of this year's judges, recently confirmed my suspiscions when she suggested that 'The one disadvantage to an all-female jury is that there are certain books that women like …' This extroadinarily prejudical and illogical statement says it all: Lang believes her opinions as a woman, as well as the opinions of her fellow panellists, are circumscribed by her gender, by a natural inclination to certain books. One can only imagine she means books about being a woman, about motherhood and marriage and family. She seems to have forgotten that the books she naturally turns from - she mentions SF, so that would include Hall and Winterson - are also by women, and therefore not outside the remit of a woman's taste or interests. I find this kind of thing both frustrating and demoralising, not to mention self-defeating - what is the point of championing novels by women if you then suggest that womenaren't fully qualified to make a balanced judgement? Lang goes on to say that having men on the jury might provide a better balance. (There is a fuller discussion on this at Torque Control.)
I add my discomfort with this to my ever-present confusion about the conflicting jurisdictions of the main prize and the New Writer's Award. I still think it is unfair for some debuts to be on the main shortlist while others are 'delegated' to the New Writer's list, creating a relative hierarchy of quality which simply doesn't exist in the lists themselves. I plan on writing a long, rambling, loving post about the New Writer's Award later this week, after the announcement, but I don't mind making my preferences felt now. The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenburg is a stunning book, and will hopefully win. It is at least as good as Lullabies for Little Criminals, a book with which it shares several excellent qualities, and better by far than Patricia Wood's Lottery (also a debut). I simply don't understand the rationale of it, particularly when it was on the main longlist. (Btw, there is a pattern here - books that have been on the main longlist, but then moved onto the New Writer's list, tend to win. I wonder why?) Given the evidence of the main shortlist, and of the main longlist, it would have been preferable to have all the debuts on a six-book-strong New Writer's shortlist, while the main prize was reserved for non-debuts. That or make no distinction at all.
In anticipation,
~~Victoria~~