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~~