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James is the current massive favourite, having won everything this year beyond the U.S. Presidency, with Orbital in second place. However, my picks are, in this order, while fresh in what Iâm pleased to call my brain (have read them all here in Crete, over the last fortnight, in fact!!!)
- Orbital: I finished this in tears and started to read it all over again. Poetic, moving and inspired, Samantha Harvey explores the feelings of six astronauts in the orbiting space station. Having zero, repeat zero, interest in space, except that I wish that Elon Musk would buzz off and live in it, I kept putting off reading it. Wrongly. It transcends the novel form â there is just enough plot to captivate. A stunningly beautiful read!
- Stonehouse Devotional comes second. A curiously gripping and provocative novel by Charlotte Wood about a Catholic Australian who visits a nunnery for a short retreat and - to her own surprise â doesnât go home again. It's about forgiveness, grieving, and the passage of time, with strangely mesmerising characters and terrific character development. (Also, an invasion of mice. Did I mention the mice?) Deeply symbolic and acutely observed.
- Held, for me, ties for the bronze. The form here somewhat defeated me, but Anne Michaelâs writing is almost as beautiful as Orbital. Spanning four generations of sometimes very loosely connected people (it starts in 1920, with a soldier permanently incapacitated in WWI) it was, at times, immensely powerful. However, in the final third of the book, we zip around places and decades with such abandon that the precarious uniting threads (desire, longing) were stretched to breaking point. Perhaps I didnât read it with enough attention, but audience confusion is a theme in its reviews, and the bookies have Held as least-likely winner, almost certainly for that reason.
I recommend her masterful Fugitive Pieces, instead.
- Yael van der Wouden's The Safe Keep I also awarded bronze. It starts out claustrophobic and vaguely reminiscent of Du Maurier's famous Rebecca. The protagonist, Isabel, is young but judgemental, hard-bitten, borderline dislikeable, and way more than borderline OCD. She's convinced that even her honest maid is robbing her... Then her brother/landlord dumps his unbuttoned girlfriend on her hands for a month - a younger woman whom she initially detests. But... feelings can alter. This is a very clever, silkily written exploration of families, lesbian sex (apparently too graphic for some) and historical consequences.
Perhaps it should take bronze on its own - except that Held's prose is so unusual. The Safe Keep is the better story, however. (I don't want to say more, because I hate spoilers.) Recommended.
- Creation Lake comes fifth out of six.To be honest, Iâm unsure how this medium-paced, well-crafted thriller made the shortlist, as itâs only on nodding terms with literary fiction. The prose is not in the same league as the other short-listers, and its narratorâs tone can grate. However, it's got some grip, some clever scenes, and is still much better thanâŚ
- James. I truly canât see whatâs so great about James, a retelling/expansion of Huckleberry Finn by Percival Everett. It stars Huckâs friend Jim, the slave with whom Huck shares adventures in Twainâs original. Implausibly enough, Jim in this version can not only speak and write perfectly grammatically, without schooling, but also read hardcore philosophy â attributes he keeps secret even from his closest friends. I could - just about - swallow this notion. But at the end of the book, I swear Jim also turns into a swashbuckling combo of James Bond with Superman.
A very silly idea, and an excessively silly book.
Almost certainly, it'll win. |
