Almost immediately after I read Nic's post on the Arthur C. Clarke shortlist, I received an email about the Orange Prize longlist announcement. Two prize announcements in one day. It's almost too much for my list-addicted brain to cope with. If I had the time I'd read everything on both I absolutely would, but unfortunately I don't and I can't. I'll have to content myself with just the Orange shortlist (as usual), which will be announced on 21st April, and a few of the longlisted titles in between now and then. The list has me excited again this year, a) because there is a glut of historical fiction on it, b) because there are half a dozen books and names I've never heard of, and c) because I've forgotten what a pain reading it can be. Here is my take on it thus far. Books I already have are in bold, books I have on hold at the library are in italics.
Debra Adelaide The Household Guide to Dying (HarperCollins)
The first book on the list is the one I'm least interested in. This is not really the book's fault, since I have nothing on which to judge it apart from the synopsis I've read online, the cover and the news that Debra Adelaide earnt a $1 million dollar advance for it. What puts me off almost instantly is how typical of the Orange Prize it is: a mother dying from cancer decides to write a household guide to dying for herself and for her daughters, which forces her to confront her own past in the process. Mother, daughters, love, grief, memory, the household - could it better fit the Orange mould of what women's writing is? I doubt it. One reviewer describes it as Six Feet Under meets Desperate Housewives, which sounds like the most unholy union imaginable and dangerously like this year's Lottery.
Gaynor Arnold Girl in a Blue Dress (Tindal Street Press)
I have heard such mixed reviews of this novel that I must, must, must read it for myself. (You may remember that it was longlisted for the Booker Prize last year, much to the credit of Tindal Street Press, and became something of a hot-topic around the blogs.) It is the first of four historical novels on the list. Set in the mid-late 19th century it is a part biographical, mostly fictional take of the marriage of Catherine Hogarth and Charles Dickens. The main characters have different names - Dickens becomes Alfred Gibson and Catherine is Dorothea - but the contours of the real couple's life are the same. I'll be picking it up from the library later today. Incidentally, I'm not sure about the cover. Looks a bit amateurish to me.
Lissa Evans Their Finest Hour and a Half (Doubleday)
The second historical novel on the longlist is set in 1940s London, and focuses on a female copywriter commissioned to script a patriotic film about Dunkirk. It sounds like good fun, and I love the stylised cover. If the library had it, I'd be reserving it, but alas they're slow off the mark and copies are still on order.
Bernadine Evaristo Blonde Roots (Hamish Hamilton)
I love historical fiction, and I often love alternate historical fiction better still. Bernadine Evaristo's latest novel has a simple premise: black Africans enslaved white Europeans and set them to work in the fields of America rather than the other way round. The novel explores what this might mean for the course of our history through the eyes of Doris, a white slave girl who works her way to freedom. The book has been generally well-reviewed as a clever piece of satire. Will it prove more than that? The extracts I've read promise interesting but the writing is a little...clunky.
Ellen Feldman Scottsboro (Picador)
This is the third historical novel on the list and the first that I'd never heard of. To my surprise the York Library system was there before me and had two copies in stock. It takes us back to Jim Crow's South in 1931 and dramatises the apparently infamous Scottsboro case in which 8 black men are sentenced to death for the alleged rapes of two white prostitutes. The case is covered by journalist Alice Whittier for the liberal New York New Order, the only woman on the case she has a unique perspective of the crime and its victims. Sounds good, yes? I have seen it described as both minutely researched and impenetrably dull. Historical fiction often walks this fine line, and we shall see where Feldman plumps down in my opinion.
Laura Fish Strange Music (Jonathan Cape)
Historical fiction number four (I'm beginning to warm to this trend), and this time with extra literary kudos for starring a Victorian poet of repute. I remember reading reviews of this book in the broadsheets months ago, and remembering the name of the author, but I'd forgotten how interesting it sounded: it apparently intertwines the stories of ailing poet Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) with those of a maidservant and a former slave employed on the Barrett family estate in Jamaica. Great concept; great cover.
V V Ganeshananthan Love Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
This novel was sent to me in proof several months ago, and I popped on my interminable TBR shelf only to forget about it soon after. I can't say I'm wildly inspired by the premise, but since I have it it'd be a shame not to try it.
Yalini, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, finds herself caught between the history of her ancestors and her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, she is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present.
While Kumaran's loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family's roots—and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils—through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran's death and his daughter's politically motivated nuptials edge closer, in the tradition of her family, Yalini too must decide where she stands.
Allegra Goodman Intuition (Atlantic Books)
Another one I already have. I have read very good reviews of it, which convinced me that a book about scientific discovery and corruption was worth a look. Here is a snippet from the linked review by Abigail Nussbaum at Asking the Wrong Questions (which is well worth a read in itself):
Intuition takes place in Boston in the mid-80s. In the small, chronically under-funded Mendelssohn-Glass lab, post-doctoral fellow Cliff makes a discovery that seems to have been lifted wholesale out of the most unrealistic popular-culture depiction of science. His heretofore unsuccessful attempts to attack breast cancer cells with a genetically modified virus, which he had been ordered to stop by the lab's directors, Marion Mendelssohn and Sandy Glass, appear to be bearing fruit. Several of his experimental mice, deliberately given cancer and then exposed to the virus, have gone into remission. For Cliff, this promising result marks a dramatic turnaround in his prospects at the lab. Overnight, he is transformed from a golden boy who never lived up to his potential to one who has made good. Cautious Marion and exuberant Sandy sanction another round of experiments, and when these show dramatic results--a 60% rate of remission--they dedicate the entire lab to Cliff's research, scrambling to draw attention to themselves within the scientific community, through journal publications, and in the general media, through puff pieces in People and Time.
Samantha Harvey The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape)
The Wilderness wins the prize for most-depressing synopsis on this year's list: Jake Jameson, a sixty-five year old architect has Alzheimer's and is suffering under the disintegration of his identity. He is the very epitome of an unreliable witness, his memories shifting and changing, and innumerable questions arising out of the mysteries of his past. If it is well-written it could well be beautiful as its cover. The library has copies out on loan, and I've patiently put my name on the list for one.
Samantha Hunt The Invention of Everything Else (HarvillSecker)
Yet another historical novel, and yet another famous subject, this time the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla. Apparrently it also stars a number of pigeons. I remember reading a luke warm review of it in The Guardian, but the publisher's blurb is eye-catching:
A wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker where Tesla lives out his last days.
From the moment she first catches sight of the Hotel New Yorker's most famous resident on New Years Day 1943, Louisa — obsessed with radio dramas and the secret lives of the guests — is determined to befriend this strange man. As Louisa discovers their shared affinity for pigeons, she also begins to piece together Tesla's extraordinary story of life as an immigrant, a genius, and a halfhearted capitalist.
Meanwhile, Louisa — faced with her father's imminent departure in a time machine to reunite with his late wife, and pleasantly unsettled by the arrival in her life of a mysterious mechanic (perhaps from the future) named Arthur — begins to suspect that she has understood something about the relationship of love and invention that Tesla, for all his brilliance, never did.
Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog (Chatto & Windus)
Hmmmm. Another book from last year's Booker longlist making an appearance. I tried it then and I didn't really like it. Which probably means it is destined for the shortlist, at which point I'll give it a second try. I'd love to give you a synopsis, but the premise is incredibly complicated. My summation is: man looses dog in the Australian outback; life crumbles; contemporary angst ensues.
Deirdre Madden Molly Fox’s Birthday (Faber)
I've never heard of Deirdre Madden and it would appear that is my loss. She has been described as a 'pivotal voice in Northern Irish writing', and her fiction called understated and complex. She has won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Somerset Maugham Award. Molly Fox's Birthday is her 7th novel and her second Orange nomination (she was shortlisted for One by One in the Darkness in 1997). The premise of the novel doesn't sound all that promising, but her reputation teaches me not to judge it on those terms: In the course of a midsummer's day, a playwright goes about her everyday activities in her friend Molly's house in Dublin, borrowed while the actor is working in New York. She meditates on their friendship, and on how an earlier friendship with a student at Trinity, Andrew Forde, has expanded to accommodate the three of them.
Toni Morrison A Mercy (Chatto & Windus)
Morrison is the biggest and most venerable name here, on the list with her 9th novel. A Mercy is another historical novel (and the third concerned with slavery), short at 176 pages and set in 1680s America. Its principals are Florens, an eight year old slave in New York sold away from her mother, and Lina, an older Native American servant; the themes, as you can imagine, are freedom, intolerance, identity and religion. I've read two of Morrison's earlier novels - Beloved and Song of Solomon, both of which I loved - and am looking forward to reading this when it comes available at the library. Esther tells me that Love, the novel before this one, was a bit of a disappointment but I can't imagine Morrison writing badly.
Gina Ochsner The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight (Portobello Books)
I know of Ochsner through her acclaimed short story collection People I Wanted To Be, but this novel sounds truly bizarre. The synopsis must speak for itself:
In her very dusty provincial museum of fake exhibits lovingly crafted from cardboard, wire and glue, Tanya dreams of Russian art's long colors and wonders when Yuri will stop fishing long enough to notice how she adores him, while she tries the zero-one-zero diet in order to meet Aeroflot's maximum waist requirements for trainee cabin-crew. When her boss at the museum gives her the vast responsibility of cultivating some potential benefactors from America, and persuading them to give their money to the very needy All-Russian All-Cosmopolitan City Museum, Tanya finds herself involuntarily enlisting all her neighbors in the scheme. But their shared hopes of riches and dreams of escape start to rot.And the rounded corpse of Mircha in the courtyard refuses to decompose, as the snow turns it into a hill, and its spirit takes flight around the apartments, dispensing more advice than anyone desires, goading the men, annoying the women, in a block where too many mothers and fathers are missing and too many memories lie stagnant on old battlefields.
Marilynne Robinson Home (Virago)
The list's second big-hitter, I think. Home is a sort-of-sequel to the achingly good Pulitzer-prize winning Gilead and has been on my TBR pile since the day it was released. It is contemporaneous with the story in Gilead, and whereas that novel focused on Rev. John Ames, a Congregationalist Minister, Home turns its gaze on his friend Robert Broughton, the town's Presbyterian minister and his eight children. As he also comes to the end of his life, his youngest daughter Glory has been co-opted as his care-giver, and his prodigal son Jack (who we know from Gilead) has just returned home. I honestly can't wait.
Preeta Samarasan Evening is the Whole Day (Fourth Estate)
I'm starting to tire a little now, and my interest is waning a little. There isn't much in this one that cries out 'read me'. I feel like I've read this novel half a dozen times already: marriage, women, disappointed love, domineering families, thwarted ambition...
Set on the outskirts of Ipoh in Malaysia, Samarasan's impressive debut chronicles another bad year in the Big House on Kingfisher Lane. With the death of Paati, the grandmother, and the disgraceful departure of Chellam, the family's servant girl, the wealthy Rajasekharan family is in shambles. Skillfully jumping from one consciousness to another, Samarasan moves back in time to reveal the secrets that have led to the family's unraveling. Father Raju's dreams have been stifled by his unrealized political ambitions, and his home life is no consolation. Vasanthi, his wife, bristles at reminders of her lower-class roots and wouldn't mind seeing Uma, their oldest daughter, "destroyed by an endless string of disappointments." Uma all but disconnects herself from the family in anticipation of escaping to Columbia University, and her six-year-old sister, Aasha, whose desire to recapture Uma's love is a primary focus of the book, must settle for interactions with a ghost only she can see.
I'm probably being unfair, and I'll keep it in mind for the paper back release.
Kamila Shamsie Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury)
I love the cover of this novel. Isn't is beautiful? I wish it didn't sound like the prototypical 9/11 novel:
August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki: Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost.In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts.But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11.
Curtis Sittenfeld American Wife (Doubleday)
Sittenfield and I have a history of incompatibility. I tried her debut novel, Prep, way back in 2006 when I read the Orange longlist for the first time. I wasn't the right reader for the book - I still feel frustration when I think about it - but her third novel sounds much more attractive to me. It seems an innovative way of writing about the dilemmas and crises of the last decade; could it be a new type of 9/11 novel? It is a story about being First Lady to a contentious President who starts a disastrous war on the other side of the world; the parallel to George and Laura Bush is obvious and overt. Not sure what the period cover is all about.
Miriam Toews The Flying Troutmans (Faber)
It sounds as though this is the long list's comedy novel. The synopsis reads a little like a precis of the film Little Miss Sunshine, with an overwhelmed aunt driving her nephew and niece across America to find their long-missing father after their mother has been sectioned. Publisher's Weekley promises 'a quest in which the characters learn about themselves and each other as they weather car repairs, sleazy motel rooms and encounters with bizarre people. Toews's gift for writing precocious children and the story's antic momentum redeem the familiar set-up...' Which sounds fun enough, but perhaps not the literary giant we might hope for on a literary prize list.
Ann Weisgarber The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (Macmillan New Writing)
Phew, we've made it to the end of the list at last (and if you've made it too, congratulations) and to Ann Weisgarber's debut (historical!) novel. Because I'm exhausted, and because I've never heard of it till you, here is a quick publisher's blurb:
It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands, and summer has been hard. Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to stake a claim in this unforgiving land. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle bellow with thirst, and supplies are dwindling.Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband will never leave his ranch: land means a measure of equality with the white man, and Isaac DuPree is not about to give it up just because times are hard. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to do what is right - for her children, for her husband, and for herself. Moving and majestic, "The Personal History of Rachel DuPree" is an unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging. Above all, it is the story of one woman's courage in the face of the most punishing adversity.