Thoughts on the Women’s Prize and Carol Shields Prize Longlists
Yesterday was my 9th blog anniversary! I love that it coincides with International Women’s Day.
It’s traditionally also been the day of the Women’s Prize longlist announcement, but the past two years they’ve brought it forward to pre-empt news of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist. It’s hard not to see these prizes as being in competition, though the CSP is only for U.S. and Canadian residents; also considers short story collections, graphic novels, and work in translation; and is more deliberate about including trans and nonbinary authors.
Like last year, their lists are extremely different. In 2023 there was no crossover; this year only one novel appears on both (Brotherless Night). Although it’s easier for me to feel engaged with the WP, I’m drawn to reading much more from the CSP list.
Women’s Prize
Of my predictions, only 1 was correct, compared to last year’s 4. I got none of my personal wishes, as in 2023. I guess making a wish list is a kiss of death! Once again, we have a mix of new and established authors, with a full half of the list being debut work. Nine of the authors are BIPOC. I’ve read 2 of the nominees and would be agreeable to reading up to 6 more. My library always buys the entire longlist, so I’ll eventually get the chance to read them, but not soon enough to add to the conversation.
Read:
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (CORRECT PREDICTION): Enright’s astute eighth novel traces the family legacies of talent and trauma through the generations descended from a famous Irish poet. The novel switches between Nell’s funny, self-deprecating narration and third-person vignettes about her mother, Carmel. Cycles of abandonment and abuse characterize the McDaraghs. Enright convincingly pinpoints the narcissism and codependency behind their love-hate relationships. 
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo: Easy to warm to even if you’ve never played and know nothing about squash. A debut novella that is illuminating on what is expected of young Gujarati women in England; on sisterhood and a bereaved family’s dynamic; but especially on what it is like to feel sealed off from life by grief. This offbeat, delicate coming-of-age story eschews literary fireworks. In place of stylistic flair is the sense that each word and detail has been carefully placed. 
Will read:
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad – requested from the library
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee – on my Kindle from NetGalley
Interested in reading:
In Defence of the Act by Effie Black – queer novella, suicide theme
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott – Indigenous Canadian, postpartum depression theme
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy – Irish author, new motherhood theme
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord – Black sci-fi author
Maybe:
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan – see below
Not interested in reading:
Hangman by Maya Binyam – meh
The Maiden by Kate Foster – not keen on historical mysteries, and this looks very commercial
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville – will read more Grenville, but not this one any time soon
River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure – have read mixed reviews
Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie – disliked her debut novel
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan – enjoyed her first novel, but DNFed this
A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams – nah
See also the reactions posts from Eric and Laura.
Predictions:
I’d expect to see two or three of the Irish writers on the shortlist, plus probably Western Lane, Enter Ghost, and a couple of other wildcards (but not the SF novel). Enter Ghost, set in Palestine, would certainly be a timely winner…
What comes next:
Shortlist (6 titles) on 24 April and winner on 13 June.
Carol Shields Prize
After I badgered the administrators for six months about Q&A responses that never materialized, they kindly offered me digital review copies of any of the nominees that I’m not able to easily access in the UK. This is, in general, a more rigorous list of highbrow literary fiction, with some slight genre diversity thanks to Catton and Makkai (plus a mixture of historical and contemporary fiction, three story collections, and one book in translation); 10 of 15 authors are BIPOC. There are further details about all the nominees on the website.
Read:
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai – When an invitation comes from her boarding school alma mater, Granby, to teach a two-week course on podcasting, Bodie indulges her obsession with the 1995 murder of her former roommate. Makkai has taken her cues from the true crime genre and constructed a convincing mesh of evidence and theories. She so carefully crafts her pen portraits, and so intimately involves us in Bodie’s psyche, that it’s impossible not to get invested. This is timely, daring, intelligent, enthralling storytelling. (Delighted to see this nominated as I hoped the WP would recognize it last year.)
Skimmed and didn’t care for:
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Loot by Tania James
Will read:
Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang – requested from the library
Know little or nothing about but will happily read if I get a chance:
Cocktail: Stories by Lisa Alward
Dances by Nicole Cuffy
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou – has just won Canada Reads
A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power
Chrysalis: Stories by Anuja Varghese
Less interested in reading:
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan – Sri Lankan civil war setting
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote – Fictionalized family memoir with 9 POVs
A History of Burning by Janika Oza – Big Indian-Ugandan multigenerational story
Predictions:
Not the first clue. Come back to me after I’ve read a few more.
What comes next:
Shortlist (5 titles) on 9 April and winner on 13 May.
What have you read, or might you read, from the longlists?
Six Degrees of Separation: From Born to Run to Scary Monsters
I take part in this meme every few months. This time we begin with Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s memoir. (See Kate’s opening post.)
#1 Springsteen is one of my musical blind spots – I maybe know two songs by him? – but my husband has been working up a cover of his “Streets of Philadelphia” to perform at the next open mic night at our local arts venue. A great Philadelphia-set novel I’ve read twice is The Sixteenth of June by Maya Lang.
#2 The 16th of June is, as James Joyce fans out there will know, “Bloomsday,” so I’ll move on to the only novel I’ve read so far by Amy Bloom (and one I felt ambivalent about, though I love her short stories and memoir), White Houses.
#3 A recent and much-missed occupant of the White House: Barack Obama, whose Dreams from My Father didn’t quite stand up to a reread but is still a strong family memoir when it doesn’t go too deep into community organizing.
#4 Similar to the Oprah effect, Obama publicly mentioning that he’s read and enjoyed a book is enough to make it a bestseller. On his list of favourite books of 2022 was The Furrows by Namwali Serpell, which I currently have on the go as a buddy read with Laura T.
#5 The Furrows is longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. In 2020 I did buddy reads of six Carol Shields novels with Marcie of Buried in Print. One of those was Happenstance, the story of a marriage told from two perspectives, the husband’s and the wife’s.
#6 My Happenstance volume gives the wife’s story first and then once you’ve read to halfway you flip it over to read the husband’s story. The only other novel I know of that does that (How to Be Both does have two different versions, each of which starts with a different story line, but you don’t physically turn the book over) is Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser, which recently won the Rathbones Folio Prize in the fiction category. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Ali Smith was a judge! (How astonished am I that I predicted all three category winners and the overall winner in this post from three days before the announcement?!) I know nothing else about the novel, but I have a copy out from the library and plan to read it soon.
Where will your chain take you? Join us for #6Degrees of Separation! (Hosted on the first Saturday of each month by Kate W. of Books Are My Favourite and Best.) Next month’s starting book is Hydra by Adriane Howell, from the Stella Prize 2023 shortlist.
Have you read any of my selections? Tempted by any you didn’t know before?
Eighth Blog Anniversary! & Thoughts on the Women’s Prize Longlist
Last year, in the manic busyness that preceded moving into our house, I completely forgot to mark my blog anniversary. This time (8 years!) I wanted to be sure to remember it. Why have I not noted before that it coincides with International Women’s Day?! I’m pleased with that.
By Հայկ Ափրիկյան, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday evening the Women’s Prize longlist was announced.** Of my predictions, 4 were correct, which is pretty good going for me. I got none of my personal wishes, however. Of course, I would have preferred for us to have one of my lists. Still, overall, it’s a fairly interesting mix of new and established authors, with a full half of the list being debut work. Seven of the authors are BIPOC. I’ve read 2 of the nominees and would be amenable to reading up to 7 more. My library always buys the entire longlist, so I’ll eventually get the chance to read them, but not soon enough to add to the conversation.
Read:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (CORRECT PREDICTION): Follows the contours of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, transplanting the plot to 1990s southwest Virginia to uncover the perils of opiate addiction. Ten-year-old Damon Fields lives in a trailer home with his addict mother, who works at Walmart, and his new stepfather, a mean trucker. Tragedy strikes and Damon moves between several foster homes before running away. His irrepressible, sassy voice is reminiscent of Holden Caulfield’s in this Appalachian cousin to Shuggie Bain.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris: Drawing on her own family history, Morris has crafted an absorbing story set in Sarajevo in 1992, the first year of the Bosnian War. Zora, a middle-aged painter, has sent her husband, Franjo, and elderly mother off to England to stay with her daughter, Dubravka, confident that she’ll see out the fighting in the safety of their flat and welcome them home in no time. But things rapidly get much worse than she is prepared for. It was especially poignant to be reading this during the war in Ukraine.
Requested from the library:
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks – Sounds good, if too much like this year’s Opal & Nev.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (CORRECT PREDICTION) – I was going to skip this because I wasn’t keen on Hamnet, but I do love O’Farrell in general, so I guess I’ll give it a try.
Interested in reading (but can’t find):
Homesick by Jennifer Croft – N.B. This was subtitled “A Memoir” at its U.S. release.
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel (CORRECT PREDICTION)
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Not interested in reading:
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo – Like I said when it was nominated for the Booker, I have to wonder why we needed an extended Animal Farm remake…
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes – I really should have predicted this one. It’s a hard pass on the Greek myth retellings for me.
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (CORRECT PREDICTION) – I avoid anything set during The Troubles. (Sorry!)
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh – The Water Cure was awful.
The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie – The Portable Veblen was trying too hard.
Pod by Laline Paull – Her novels always sound so formulaic.
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff – Nah.
See also the reactions posts from Cathy, Clare, Eric and Laura.
**The announcement has traditionally been on International Women’s Day, but I’m guessing that this year they brought it forward to pre-empt news of the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist. This prize is open to novels, short stories and graphic novels by women, published in calendar year 2022, with parameters otherwise quite similar to those of the WP except that it’s only for U.S. and Canadian residents. {EDITED} To be honest, I was not convinced that the literary world needed an additional prize for women’s fiction, especially as North Americans tend to do well in the WP race. However, at first glance, its longlist is a lot less obvious and more interesting, with 11/15 BIPOC and some short story collections as well as a graphic novel in the running. It remains to be seen if I’ll follow both prizes or switch allegiance. Some of the CSP books may prove difficult to access in the UK. So far I have read Brown Girls and can get The Furrows from the library. Of note: the Carol Shields Prize is worth a lot more ($150,000 U.S. vs. £30,000).
What have you read, or might you read, from the longlist?
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Blog Tour Review)
Is it possible to capture the complete course of a life, whether looking from the outside or telling it from the inside? What is set in stone and what is fleeting? These are questions Carol Shields addresses in her 1995 Pulitzer Prize winner, which plays with perspective and forms of storytelling as it conveys the extra/ordinary life of Daisy Stone Goodwill Flett. What with the family tree and section of black-and-white photographs, you might expect this to be a family saga; with the chronological chapters proceeding from “Birth” in 1905 to “Death” in the 1990s, you might expect an objective faux-biography. But The Stone Diaries is neither.
The facts are these. Daisy’s mother, Mercy, dies giving birth to her in rural Manitoba. Raised by a neighbor, Daisy later moves to Indiana with her stonecutter father, Cuyler. After a disastrously short first marriage, Daisy returns to Canada to marry Barker Flett. Their three children and Ottawa garden become her life. She temporarily finds purpose in her empty-nest years by writing a “Mrs. Green Thumb” column for a local newspaper, but her retirement in Florida is plagued by illness and the feeling that she has missed out on what matters most.
What makes this surprising life story so remarkable is its unpicking of (auto)biographical authenticity: Shields switches between the first and third person, between Daisy’s point of view and a feigned omniscience. Some sections foreground others’ opinions: Chapter 6 is composed entirely of letters Daisy receives, while Chapter 7 collects short first-person narratives from her children and friends as they speculate on why she has fallen into a depression.
As in Shields’s Happenstance and Larry’s Party, which I’ve also reread this year, I was struck by the role that chance plays in any life:
History indeed! As though this paltry slice of time deserves such a name. Accident, not history, has called us together, and what an assembly we make. What confusion, what a clamor of inadequacy and portent.
Talk of bias, gaps and unreliability undermines the narrative:
Well, a childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction. Which is why you want to take Daisy’s representation of events with a grain of salt, a bushel of salt.
Daisy herself almost disappears from the parts of the book where she is voiceless, consumed by her roles – by the end she is universally known as “Grandma Flett.” This meant that other characters stood out as more memorable to me: Cuyler for his obsessive building of stone monuments and streams of words, Barker for his love of plants and long-deferred sexual fulfillment, Daisy’s friend Fraidy Hoyt for her careful chronicling of fast living, and Magnus, Barker’s father, who lives long past his 100th birthday after his return to the Orkney Islands.
As in Moon Tiger, one of my absolute favorites, the author explores how events and memories turn into artifacts. The meta approach also, I suspect, tips the hat to other works of Canadian literature: in her introduction, Margaret Atwood mentions that the poet whose story inspired Shields’s Mary Swann had a collection entitled A Stone Diary, and surely the title’s similarity to Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel (1964) can’t be pure coincidence.
Experiencing the novel again after 14 years, I was impressed by the experimentation but ultimately somewhat detached from the story. It was admiration rather than love; I enjoyed earlier chapters more than the last few. But isn’t that just like life, to keep going past the point where it’s fun? And isn’t that the point, that the meaning you long for may not be there at all?
Marcie (Buried in Print) and I have reread – or, in my case for half of them, read for the first time – six Shields novels together in 2020. I hope I’ll find time to respond to the rest of them in the next few weeks. It has been so rewarding to observe how her themes recur and interlock. How heartening to see that, 17 years after her death, Shields is still being read and remembered, through the World Editions reissues (three more are coming in 2021) and through the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, a new $100,000 annual award for North American women’s writing.
The Stone Diaries was reissued in the UK by World Editions on December 3rd. My thanks to the publisher for the free copy for review.
I was delighted to be invited to help close out the blog tour for The Stone Diaries. See below for details of where other reviews have appeared.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 