The Orange Prize, that is, and the blogging community is preparing for the longlist announcement tomorrow. I'm more than pleased to see the sense of anticipation building; it means that I have more people to share it with. Eve's Alexandria has been covering the Orange Prize for several years now. Along with the Clarke Award (for sf), it is the book prize we have followed most avidly and consistently, much more so than the Booker. I first read along in 2006, which turned out to be a good vintage year for the prize: Naomi Alderman won the New Writer's Award for Disobedience (which was amongst the first books I reviewed here) and Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith were all on the shortlist. Beyond Black, The Accidental, The Night Watch. Three books I still think about with admiration. Ironically, the fact that Zadie Smith's book On Beauty won that year, sealed my affection for the Orange. I didn't like the book (an understatement?) but its winning was an exciting sort of disappointment. It was something to feel passionately and lively about; I like a bit of bookish outrage.
Year after year I'm always surprised by the longlist - sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not - but this year (fingers crossed) should be a bumper year. Fiction by women has already been in the spotlight with the Booker shortlist. So, predictions? I'm hoping that Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man will make an appearance, not just on the longlist but on the shortlist. (I have a feeling, a little niggly feeling, that this might be Sarah Water's year for winning - you heard it here first...maybe.) Those are the three books I've read by women in the last year which took up permanent lodging on my shelves. Of the ones I haven't read I'm betting that Evie Wyld's After the Fire, A Small Voice is in with a sound chance of making at least the longlist. It is standing very high on my TBR. Margaret Atwood is eligible for The Year of the Flood, as is Penelope Lively for Family Album; as old-guards of the prize, I think they are likely picks. Perhaps we'll also see Joyce Carol Oates' A Fair Maiden on there, and Anne Tyler's Noah's Compass, and there is Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations too. Oh and Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures. I'm sure that Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly will be on the New Writer's shortlist.
What I like about the Orange prize, though, what I have always liked, is discovering books I've never heard of. I'm expecting at least half of the longlisters to fall into this category. Every year I promise myself I will read the full list, and every year I fail miserably, so what the hell I'll say it again: this year I'm going to read the full longlist. Twenty books in two months? Surely not impossible? I shall just have to hope and pray that I've read at least three of them already.
~~Victoria~~