Category: Orange Prize

Categories
2009 Crime Orange Prize Thriller

Black Water Rising – Attica Locke

 Short listed for the Orange Prize 2010

Black Water Rising was the most controversial choice on the Orange short list this year. Everyone who had read the book was surprised by its inclusion on the list and having read it I can only agree with them.

Black Water Rising is a thriller, similar in style to those written by John Grisham, but much longer and more convoluted.

The book is set in Houston in the 1980s. It begins with a young black lawyer heading out on a boat trip. He hears gun shots and a scream and then sees a woman fall into the water. He rescues her, but in doing so becomes entangled in a murder investigation.

My problem with this book was that it didn’t have enough pace to be enjoyable as a thriller, but the writing was too light for it to properly investigate the numerous social and political problems raised.

There were some good sections, but these were connected by long, irrelevant side stories.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters in the book and found the addition of their back stories awkward.

The main theme of the book was racism, but I found the issue to be over emphasised – I like to be shown the problems, not told them. This book treated me as an idiot, repeatedly explaining how terrible things were. 

Overall I’m afraid this book frustrated me more than it entertained. Recommended to thriller lovers who don’t mind a slower pace of plot.

This was another book that divided opinion:

 I loved it. I adored it. I cannot shut up about its absolute brilliance… Nomad Reader

 I don’t think she’s quite got the hang of something…. Book Gazing

 I went into it thinking I was going to fall in love, and I just felt lukewarm like for it.  Wordsmithonia

…intelligent and unflinching storytelling…. Buried in Print

Categories
2009 Chunkster Orange Prize

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle – Monique Roffey

 Short listed for the Orange Prize 2010

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is set on the island of Trinidad. George Harwood is given a three-year contract to work on the island and so moves from England, with his wife Sabine, to take up the post. George quickly falls in love with his new surroundings, but Sabine is home sick and longs to return to England. This causes friction within their marriage, but Sabine comforts herself with a fixation on Trinidad’s new leader, Eric Williams. She explains all her problems in detailed letters to him, but can never bring herself to post them. One day George discovers these letters and realises how many of his wife’s problems had been kept hidden from him. He decides that he needs to prove how much he loves her, but things go very wrong…

There was some fantastic imagery in the book. This section is taken from the very beginning, but it sets the scene perfectly:

Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree. Bdup! While sunbathing, it had fallen asleep, relaxing its grip, dropping from a considerable height. It always landed like a cat, on all fours, ready to fight. The dogs always went berserk, gnashing and chasing after the creature as it fled, scuttling across the grass, a streak of lime green disappearing off into the undergrowth.

There was quite a lot of dialect and this was occasionally difficult to follow, but I didn’t mind as it added to the atmosphere.

My main problem was that the book had no forward momentum and so I often found myself with no desire to read on. With a book of this length (my copy has 437 pages) this isn’t an ideal situation. If I put the effort into reading it then I was often rewarded, but there were times when I considered giving up as reading was a chore.

With hindsight it was a fantastic story, but the pace was too slow for me. I would have preferred it to have been much shorter, but I can see why it was short listed for the Orange prize.

Recommended to those who enjoy slow, character driven novels.

Not many people have read this one, but opinions seem mixed:

I was bowled over by this book.  Other Stories

 …didn’t have the star quality in terms of either plot or writing that my favourites from the Orange longlist have had. The B Files

I think this one will be nestling into my list of favourite reads for 2010. Buried in Print

Categories
2009 Chick Lit Orange Prize

The Very Thought of You – Rosie Alison

 

Short listed for Orange Prize 2010, Short listed for Amazon’s Rising Stars award 2009, Long listed for the RNA Romantic novel of the year 2010, Long listed for the Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love Stories 2010

The Very Thought of You is set during WWII and follows eight-year-old Anna as she is evacuated to a large country house in Yorkshire. The house belongs to a childless couple, Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, who decided to covert their home into a school in the hope that children will bring some happiness back into their lives. Unfortunately the children only seem to exacerbate their problems and their marriage falls apart.

The theme of the book appears to be loving someone that you can’t have. All the characters seem to be in love with someone that they cannot be with; whether that is due to being separated by war or yearning to be with someone already in a relationship.

The Very Thought of You was very readable and I finished it quite quickly, but it left no lasting impression on me. There were too many characters and so each one failed to develop its own identity, all seeming to have the same voice.

The book also lacked atmosphere – I couldn’t picture the places mentioned or feel the emotions each character experienced.

Overall I’d describe it as a light romance book, similar in style to The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson.  I have no idea why it was short listed for the Orange prize.

Opinions seem to be divided on this one:

…it is intelligently written with an eye for detail… The Truth About Lies

It is the narratorial voice that kills it stone-dead for me. Eve’s Alexandria

This is an impressive book, particularly as a debut novel. Pursewarden

Categories
2009 2010 Orange Prize Recommended books

Hearts and Minds – Amanda Craig

 Long listed for the Orange Prize 2010

Hearts and Minds seems to be one of the most praised books on the Orange long list this year. It’s London setting appealed to me and so I decided to read it, despite the fact it didn’t make the short list.

Hearts and Minds gives a snap-shot of life in London today. Its range of characters shows the diversity of people living in the capital city and the problems faced by them. We see asylum seekers, teachers, prostitutes, taxi-drivers and a whole range of other people. I normally struggle to cope with this many characters, but the vividness of the writing meant that each one jumped off the page and I had no trouble keeping track of them all.

The book impressively manages to combine a murder mystery with literary fiction. In many ways it reminded me of The Road Home by Rose Tremain, but I actually think that Hearts and Minds is the better book.

The story is split into several narratives which at first seem independent, but as it progresses connections are made until everything comes together in the final poignant chapters.

This isn’t a pleasant read; we witness the worst of London society, but the power of the words had me gripped from beginning to end.

He thinks about how, all along the street, there must be flats like this one in which other girls have been raped and beaten, flats that are perhaps now occupied by happy couples or successful professionals or pensioners, all with the same sash windows and lumpy corniced ceilings; and yet this horror has happened here. A sensation of lives layered on top of each other, which he will never know about, overwhelms Ian momentarily.

I have no idea why this book didn’t make the Orange short list. It deserved to be there.

The Thoughts of Other Bloggers

…even more gripping and packs more of a punch than anything I’ve read in 2010 so far. The B Files

It is page after page of unrelenting misery. Books Please

….characters so well-drawn that they become so close to you It’s a Crime!

…somehow Amanda Craig touches on the reality and the truth of this and you really do want to weep. Dovegreyreader

Are you planning to read Hearts and Minds?

Why didn’t this make the Orange short list?

Categories
2010 Historical Fiction Orange Prize

The Long Song – Andrea Levy

 Long listed for Orange Prize 2010 

The Long Song is set on Jamaica and follows July, a young slave girl, during the last few years of slavery and after she is granted freedom. 

The book is very different in style to Andrea Levy’s last book, Orange Prize winning Small Island, but I think they are both good in their own way. 

Much of the speech in The Long Song is written in Jamaican dialect, which adds atmosphere to the book. I think this would be even better on audio, as I’m sure my inner mind doesn’t quite do it justice! It isn’t hard to understand the dialect, in fact the whole book is quick and easy to read. I felt that this was actually one of the negatives of the book – it was so light that it seemed to skim over some very important scenes. The plot was quite simple, but the book covered a reasonably large chunk of time. This speed of events meant that I didn’t fully connect with July or understand which emotions she was experiencing. 

The narrator, July, frequently addresses the reader of the book, adding references to her present day life. 

Reader, my son tells me that this is too indelicate a commencement of any tale. Please pardon me, but your storyteller is a woman possessed of a forthright tongue and a little ink. 

Having read a few other reviews I’ve discovered that this style seems to annoy some people, but I found it a refreshing change to the similarity of many books. 

Overall, it was a light, entertaining read, but I have heard the amazing way Andrea Levy narrates her books and so I recommend getting the audio version of The Long Song.

Did you enjoy The Long Song?

Do you think it will make it onto the Orange short list tomorrow?

Categories
2009 Orange Prize

The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

 

Long listed for Orange Prize 2010, Short listed for Guardian First book Award, Winner of the Betty Trask Award

I had heard The Rehearsal mentioned a few times in 2009, but when it was included on the Orange long list this year everyone started talking about it. The Rehearsal seems to divide opinion, with a roughly equal split between those who love the book and those who hate it. I must admit that the premise didn’t appeal to me, but I don’t like being unable to join a heated book discussion and so I reserved a copy from my library.

The book centres on a sex scandal involving a teacher and his pupil. The narrative travels forwards and backwards in time, following a group of pupils who gossip about the event and members of a drama school who decide to put on a play about the sex scandal.

The book is quite confusing to read, as you are never really sure which scenes are part of the play and which are ‘real’. I’d read about 50 pages of the book when I re-read Claire’s review in which she pointed out that chapters starting with a day of the week were about the school pupils and ones titled with a month were set in the drama school, but although this information helped a lot I was still confused about many things.

The book realistically portrays teenagers, managing to capture that uncertainty and awkwardness. I was particularly impressed by the insecurites of a younger sibling:

No, Isolde says, ‘I will make the same mistakes, but by the time I do they won’t seem interesting because you’ll already have done it, and I’ll only be a copy.’

The teenage banter was witty and insightful, but the plot was almost non-existent. I was particularly disappointed by the ending, as the book just stopped without reaching any real conclusion.

I am still trying to decide if I liked The Rehearsal or not.  I can’t work out whether this book is genius, or just trying too hard to be clever. If The Rehearsal  had been written in chronological order I suspect it might have been a fairly average read. Does confusing your readers make a book incredibly good, or does it just hide any flaws in a cloak of confusion?  Despite my uncertainty The Rehearsal is the most impressive book I’ve found on the Orange long list so far and I’d be happy to see it win. 

Overall I enjoyed reading this book for the individual passages, but it was too clever to work as a novel for me.

Did you enjoy The Rehearsal?

Can a book be too clever?