Category: Other Prizes

Categories
2011 Other Prizes Recommended books

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones Winner of 2011 National Book Award

Five words from the blurb: hurricane, threatening, family, pregnant, pit bull

When the Orange longlist was announced last week several people voiced their surprise that Salvage the Bones was missing. Intrigued by their passion I decided to give it a try and having read it, I agree. This book stands head and shoulders above everything else published this year. It deserved to win the Orange prize and I’m disappointed that it didn’t even make the longlist.

Salvage the Bones is set in Mississippi and follows one family as they prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. The unconventional and potentially unlovable family are the owners of a prize pit bull, renowned for her fighting skills. At the start of the book she gives birth to a litter of valuable puppies that they attempt to protect as the hurricane approaches.

I worried that I might be subjected to endless descriptions of wind and destruction, but this book is very cleverly structured. The hurricane hits in the final few pages and the power is in what is left unsaid. The details of the destruction are brief, but their lightness still manages to convey the devastation.

The hurricane laughed. A tree, plucked from its branches, hopped across the yard and landed against Daddy’s truck with a crunch, stopped short like it had won a game of hopscotch without stepping out of the lines. The sky was so close I felt like I could reach up and bury my arm in it.

One of the most impressive things about this book was that it made me care about a family who take part in dog fighting. It takes great skill for an author to enable me to connect with people I’d normally abhor, but somehow Jesmyn Ward  made me to see past their cruelty and I connected with them on an emotional level.

The atmosphere in the book was perfect. The dialogue gave a fantastic sense of place and the descriptions were vivid throughout:

“We ain’t going nowhere.” Skeetah unlashes his arms and they come whipping out from his sides, and his voice is loud, and he’s like those little firecrackers we get on the Fourth of July that throw out sparks from all sides and jump in bright acid leaps across the hard dirt yard.

This isn’t a happy book. It is a powerful insight into the lives of a family who had numerous problems before the arrival of a hurricane. The ending left me wondering how they’d cope once the waters receded and, given the news articles I’ve seen, I can only imagine the horrors a sequel would contain. I’m sure I’ll remember the characters in this book for a long time to come.

Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys emotionally powerful insights into the lives of other people.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…stunning, beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking, and wholly absorbing. Caribousmom

There is abusive sex and there is violence.  At times I wanted to stop reading but found I could not.  Page247

This novel absolutely broke my heart, but at the same time I can’t help but recommend that you read it too. Book Addiction

I also recommend listening to this NPR interview with Jesmyn Ward 

(Thanks to Caribousmom for drawing it to my attention)

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Chunkster Other Prizes

The Half Brother by Lars Saaybye Christensen

The Half Brother  Translated from the Norwegian by Kenneth Steven

Winner of the 2002 Nordic Prize for Literature
Longlisted for the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Shortlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Award

Five words from the blurb: Norway, epic, family, brothers, life

The Half Brother is an epic, multi-generational story from Norway. The book begins shortly after the end of WWII and follows one family over several decades, concentrating on Barnum and his older brother, Fred, who was conceived during a rape. The brothers are very different in terms of both personality and stature; we see them grow up, learning to cope with their problems.

It is impossible not to develop an emotional attachment to all the characters in this book. They are distinct and realistic – a fantastic achievement given that this involves both sexes and four different generations. But it is the relationship between the two brothers that is the real attraction of this book. It is rare to find a fraternal relationship described with such accuracy and compassion.

The story was simple and easy to read, giving a wonderful glimpse into Norwegian life after the war. Many of the historical events were new to me and I was especially interested to see how the population reacted to the death of their king:

Some of the girls stood in a huddle by the fountain supporting each other. I envied them because they could cry. They were good. I wasn’t. I was bad. I had never seen the playground so quiet before. Nobody laughed. No one threw chestnuts at me. No one called my name. It was a fine morning. It should have been like that every day. It was just the way I wanted the world to be – slow, quiet, and with no jagged edges.

At over 750 pages this is a daunting book to start, but I quickly became hooked. Every page was necessary to the plot and it never dragged. It could be argued that too many tragic events affected this one family, but although the method of death was occasionally a bit unusual, I thought this book was realistic. Light humour was present at the darkest moments, so it never felt depressing.

Details of the family’s secrets were revealed slowly and, although most plot threads were tied up by the end, the reader never knows the whole truth. The atmosphere can be summarised by this quote:

And I remembered what Dad had once said, that it was necessary to sow doubt, because the whole truth was dull and made people lazy and forgetful, whereas doubt never loses its hold.

This is story telling at its best. Highly recommended.

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Categories
2010 Non Fiction Other Prizes

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea Winner of 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction

Five words from the blurb: North Korea, repressive, secretive, survival, stories

Nothing to Envy is a frightening insight into the lives of ordinary people in North Korea. By interviewing those who managed to escape the oppressive regime Barbara Demick has created a comprehensive picture of what life is like for those living under the thumb of a powerful dictator.

More than 2 million North Koreans died during a famine in the 1990s, but their plight was made harder by the fact they could trust very few people. Under constant fear of being reported to authorities each individual had to find their own food, often by committing a crime that, if caught, could have lead to their execution.

It isn’t necessary to know anything about the country in advance as this book explains the situation perfectly, without a hint sensationalisation. Details of the slow decline in living standards are mesmerising in their horror and I think everyone should read this book so they can understand what occurs at the limits of humanity.

I have always been fascinated by North Korea and so I expected to love this book from the very first page. Unfortunately I initially felt a bit overwhelmed – so many people were introduced that I found it hard to keep track of them all and I longed for a bit of emotion to be injected into the statistics.

Luckily things improved quickly and by page fifty I was hooked. I began to recognise each person as their story was continued and it was impossible to not be moved by their increasingly difficult lives.

I thought I had a reasonable idea of what went on in the country, but I was shocked by some of the details of their existence.

North Koreans learned to swallow their pride and hold their noses. They picked kernels of undigested corn out of the excrement of farm animals. Shipyard workers developed a technique by which they scraped the bottoms of the cargo holds where food had been stored, then spread the foul smelling gunk on rooftops to dry so that they could collect from it tiny grains of uncooked rice and other edibles.

This book is one of the most important pieces of journalism to be written in recent years and it has just become one my favourite nonfiction titles.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

Nothing to Envy is a truly astonishing book. Reading Matters

Readers, even those who don’t often read non-fiction, will find themselves completely absorbed in these stories. Olduvai Reads

The book is fascinating, sad, and frustrating all at the time, which is the best sort of narrative nonfiction. Sophisticated Dorkiness

Categories
2011 Other Prizes

The Wandering Falcon – Jamil Ahmad

The Wandering Falcon Long listed for 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize

Five words from the blurb: Pakistan, remote, tribal, honour, conflict

The Wandering Falcon is set in the remote border region of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan where nomadic tribes travel in order to find food and water. When Partition occurred in 1947 the border controls were tightened, leaving entire communities at risk of drought as they were denied access to the springs they had visited for generations. This book follows a young boy, Tor Baz (meaning the black falcon) as he grows up in this threatened culture.

The book started off really well. The first chapter was a roller-coaster of emotion, ending on a heartbreaking scene which gave me high expectations for the rest of the book. Unfortunately I soon discovered that the story wasn’t continued in a linear fashion, but told through a series of short stories. These showed all the important moments in Tor’s life, but the fragmented approach meant that the reader is just thrown from one life changing moment to the next.

The Wandering Falcon provides a fascinating insight into a little known culture and is packed with period atmosphere. At times it read more like a non-fiction book, but it was always engaging and easy to read.

The Mahsuds, because they always hunt in groups, are known as the wolves of Waziristan. A Wazir hunts alone. He is known as ‘the leopard’ to other men. Despite their differences, the two tribes share more than merely their common heritage of poverty and misery. Nature has bred in both an unusual abundance of anger, enormous resilience, and a total refusal to accept their fate. If nature provides them food for only ten days in a year, they believe in their right to demand the rest of their sustenance from their fellow men who live oily, fat and comfortable lives in the plains. To both tribes, survival is the ultimate virtue.

At less than 200 pages it was a very quick read, but I can’t decide if this is a positive or negative. I’d prefer a longer book, with all those gaps filled in, but I can appreciate the power of this book’s simplicity.

The Wandering Falcon is a very important book, revealing the details of this traditional community and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about this region of the world.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

A brilliant book.  Highly recommended. ANZ Litlovers Litblog

….a beautiful meditation on the life of a nomad in an increasingly modernizing world. S. Krishna’s Books

….a real portrayal of the tribes men not just our western view of them. Winstonsdad’s Blog

 

Categories
2010 Books in Translation Other Prizes

The Twin – Gerbrand Bakker

The Twin Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

Winner of 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Five words from the blurb: remote, Dutch, twin, death, choices

The Twin is a quiet, tender story about one man learning to cope with the loss of his twin brother. Helmer lives on a remote Dutch farm with his dying father. He never wanted to be a farmer, but the death of his twin forced him to return to the family home. Helmer’s isolated existence is brought to an end by the sudden arrival of his twin’s fiancee.

Very little actually happens in this book, but I was captivated its emotional intensity. I quickly felt that I understood Helmer and his frustration at the way his life had unfolded. 

‘You never said anything,’ Father says. ‘You never said you didn’t want to.’

‘You didn’t have much choice.’ I walk back to the window and follow the line of the dyke until I can see the lighthouse again.

‘No.’

The writing was simple, but allowed subtle emotion to bubble through to the surface of every page.

From the description you’d expect this to be a depressing book, but while there were a few sad moments, I found that the tone always lifted before I had a chance to shed a tear.

This book won’t be for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for a book that investigates the inevitability of life then this is the perfect choice.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

As painful as it is, it’s a wonderous experience to dwell with them for a time. The Mookse and the Gripes

This simple book surprised me. I will read it again. Page247

The scenery is wonderfully described you get the feeling of isolation and strangeness of platteland… Winstonsdad’s Blog

Categories
2010 2011 Orange Prize Other Prizes Pulitzer Prize

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

A Visit From the Goon Squad

Winner of 2011 Pulitzer Prize
Longlisted for 2011 Orange Prize
Winner of 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award

Five words from the blurb: popular, humourous, lives, interact, loss

A Visit from the Goon Squad seems to have won more awards than any other book this year. There is no question that it is a groundbreaking novel (how many other books do you know containing an entire chapter written as a powerpoint presentation?), but I think this is going to be one of those books that divides opinion. Unfortunately I fall into neither camp – I’m going to sit on the fence for this one. For the best music related show and all simply go and check this.

A Visit from the Goon Squad shows an array of characters at various important moments in their lives. The book flips forwards and backwards in time and it is often hard to know who is narrating, let alone what period of time each character is in. Things do eventually fall into place, but a great deal of concentration is required to piece everything together.

The writing was easy to read and allowed an instant connection to be formed to each character, but I’m afraid I didn’t have any real interest in what the characters did. The music and PR industries have never interested me and so all the wonderful satire went over my head.

Very little actually happens in the book and although some of the scenes were fantastic I reached the end feeling a little bit let down. It all felt a bit too gimmicky for me.

Charlie doesn’t know herself. Four years from now, at eighteen, she’ll join a cult across the Mexican border whose charismatic leader promotes a diet of raw eggs; she’ll nearly die from salmonella poisoning before Lou rescues her. A cocaine habit will require partial reconstruction of her nose, changing her appearance, and a series of feckless, domineering men will leave her solitary in her late twenties, trying to broker peace between Rolph and Lou, who will have stopped speaking.

There was no real message behind the book and so I didn’t think the effort was worth it.

The best thing about this book is that it is impossible to read without forming an opinion on it – you’ll love it or hate it, or perhaps, like me, you’ll find you do both in equal measure.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…it just might make your brain explode…but in a very pleasing way. The Book Lady’s Blog

I recognize the genius of what Egan is doing but my main reaction after many of the chapters was “Huh.” Life with Books

There is a very, very fine line between quirky, original, and ambitious and plain old annoying. I think that A Visit From the Goon Squad is firmly on the side of awesome. Amused, Bemused and Confused.

….it was a bitter disappointment. Always Cooking Up Something