Category: Book Prizes

Categories
2009 Chunkster Historical Fiction Orange Prize

The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver

 Short listed for the Orange Prize 2010

I enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible so was hoping that I’d like The Lacuna too. I even saved it to be my last read from the Orange short list as a special treat to myself. Unfortunately my expectations were dashed as I really struggled to enjoy The Lacuna.

The Lacuna begins in Mexico in 1929 and covers an interesting period of history in both America and Mexico. The fictional characters are mixed with real people such as Lev Trotsky, so this book is a departure for Kingsolver in that it is her first work of historical fiction.

The book began slowly and I found I had to concentrate really hard just to understand what was happening. I quickly ensured that I only read the book in large chunks when I had nothing to distract me. Unfortunately this hard work didn’t pay off as I wasn’t rewarded by an entertaining story. I found the writing to be very passive and although some of the descriptions were interesting I was never drawn into their life. I was just a bored observer.

The market in Coyoacan is not like the Zocalo downtown, where everything comes ready-made. The girls in blue shawls sit on blankets with stacks of maize they just broke from the field an hour before. While waiting for people to come, they shell off the kernels. If more time passes they soak the corn in lime water, then grind it into wet nixtamal and pat it out. By day’s end all the corn is tortillas.

The characters were flat and I found it impossible to connect with any of them. There was just no emotion in the book – even scenes of horrific acts were observed in a pleasant way. I became increasingly frustrated by the light, monotonous tone and so considered giving up at several points. The length (nearly 700 pages) was the main reason I eventually gave up. It would have taken me a week of reading to complete this book and I didn’t want to dedicate such a large chunk of my reading time to a book that I wasn’t enjoying. I gave up after around 200 pages, but in many ways I wish I had done so much earlier.

Overall, this book was a big disappointment.

 (DNF)

The thoughts of a few other bloggers:

Throughout the story, important things were happening, but since I didn’t feel any connection to the main character, it became very hard for me to care. Fyrefly’s Book Blog

….the ending is amazing! A Book Sanctuary

At times Kingsolver seems to believe that she has to write for the lowest common denominator, a reader who knows nothing of history and has no chance of divining meaning. Book Gazing

Categories
2009 2010 Other Prizes

Good to a Fault – Marina Endicott

 

Winner of 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, Finalist for 2008 Giller Prize.

Good to a Fault follows 43-year-old Clara as she makes a series of life changing decisions. The chain of events starts when Clara crashes her car into one containing a homeless family. At the hospital it is discovered that the mother of the homeless family is suffering from cancer. Feeling guilty (or just trying to be a good citizen?) Clara takes the three children and their grandmother into her home while the mother receives treatment for her cancer. Clara, used to living by herself, struggles to cope with with the sudden noise and complication of living with children, but she does her best to adapt to the difficult situation.

The book raises interesting questions about whether it is possible to be selfless, helping others just because you are a nice person; or whether there is always another motive. In this case Clara could be viewed as trying to obtain the family she has always wanted, secretly hoping that the mother will die so that she can adopt them. Clara’s true thoughts are kept cleverly hidden, leaving the reader to decide for themselves how virtuous she really is.

It is an interesting premise, but unfortunately I found the book far too long. The middle section really dragged for me and I felt that at least 200 pages of this 480 page book could have been removed without losing much. The writing was mainly dialogue, so it moved along at a reasonable pace, but this book had the distinct disadvantage of being read straight after Beside the Sea. The relationship between the children just didn’t jump off the page in the same way and I found their characters quite flat and lacking in emotion.

The ending was very well done, but I’m afraid this didn’t make up for the slowness of the rest of the book.

Overall, I recommend this to those who are looking to read a quiet book about some nice characters and anyone interested in what it means to be a good person.

 

The majority of people loved this book:

The book is so good I was surprised I hadn’t heard more about it. Compulsive Overreader

…a bit unwieldy and much too long. S. Krishna’s Books

….there is a quiet intensity about it that completely drew me in. She Reads and Reads

I drank in every word of this perfectly true-to-life (but never boring) book. The Writer’s Pet

Categories
2009 Orange Prize

A Gate at the Stairs – Lorrie Moore

 Short listed for the 2010 Orange Prize

A Gate at the Stairs is set in the American Midwest and follows twenty-year-old Tassie as she begins work as a child minder. She is hired by a glamorous couple who are about to adopt a mixed race child. The couple seem more interested in running their restaurant business than becoming a proper family and so Tassie has the complex task of keeping the peace in an increasingly chaotic home.

I was immediately struck by the beauty of the language in this book. Everything was described in detail, so I built up a vivid picture of their surroundings.

I woke up in a blaze of white sun. I had neglected to pull the shades and it had snowed in the night; the morning rays reflected off the snow on the sills and on the low adjacent roof, setting the room on fire with daylight.

For the first 50 pages I was happy with this scene setting, but I gradually began to crave a plot. Very little seemed to happen in the book and, on the odd occasion it did, the event seemed to drag on for far too long. I ploughed on through the beautiful text, but I’m afraid that the entire plot could be summarised in about 6 words (don’t worry I won’t spoil it for you!).

The main theme of the book is what it is to be a family. Discussions on adoption, working parents and mixed race relationships are all buried somewhere in the text, but you have to read a lot of waffle to find them.

This book reminded me of Digging to America by Anne Tyler (which I didn’t really like) but I think that A Gate at the Stairs is the better of the two books – just!

Overall I’m afraid that the lack of a real plot meant this book failed to entertain me.

Opinions on this book are very mixed:

Lorrie Moore’s writing is beautiful: lyrical but without ever detracting from the events of the story. Other Stories

…the different storylines and sections of the book were disjointed… I’m Booking It

I had the feeling that I was experiencing a very good writer not at her best. Kevin From Canada

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 Fantasy Other Prizes Science Fiction

The City & The City – China Miéville

 

Winner of the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, Short listed for 2010 Hugo Award

Last year I read Perdido Street Station and although I wasn’t a massive fan of his epic science fiction novel I was impressed enough to give Miéville a second try. I am really pleased that I did – The City & The City is one of the most original books I have ever read!

The City & The City begins like a typical police procedural crime novel, with the discovery of a dead body on waste ground. The book initially appears to be set in an Eastern European country, but we slowly realise that all is not as it first seems – it is set in a place where two cities co-exist. People in one city have to deliberately “unsee” the buildings and people from the other. There are special places where it is possible to step from one city into the other, but this is illegal and “breaching” these boundaries causes severe punishment. It can be hard to get your head around these metaphysical rules, but I loved trying!

It was true. A political irony. Those most dedicated to the perforation of the boundary between Beszel and Ul Qoma had to observe it most carefully. If I or one of my friends were to have a moments failure of unseeing (and who did not do that? who failed to fail to see, sometimes?), so long as it was not flaunted or indulged in, we should not be in danger. If I were to glance a second or two on some attractive passerby in Ul Qoma, if I were to silently enjoy the skyline of the two cities together, be irritated by the noise of an Ul Qoman train, I would not be taken. 

The descriptions of the cities were so vivid that I could picture them, despite the complexity of the physical world. It tested my spatial awareness, but it added a whole new dimension to the typical crime novel.

The book worked perfectly – it was fast paced, intelligent and gripping. I think it might be a bit bizarre for some, but if you are after something a bit different I encourage you to give it a try.

Highly recommended.

Everyone seems to love this book!

…this is one of the most powerful SFF books I have ever read. Floor to Ceiling Books

One thing that really impressed me about Miéville’s writing was the amount of emotional empathy he creates….  The Boston Bibliophile

I was dazzled by Miéville’s skill in creating such a realistic world… Ms. Bookish

Are you tempted to try something out of the ordinary?

Have you read anything written by China Miéville?