What else would I do for her? Or, what would I not do for her? I knew then – but how can I be sure that was the moment, there was so much more to come? – we were on our way down. I closed my eyes against the stomach-clutching descent. – from In the Time of the Feast of Flowers, page 68 -

Abby Newman is a teenager growing up in a small Florida town in the mid-1970s. She comes from a good family. She is smart. She has her whole future in front of her. But, then there is Dana, Abby’s best friend, a girl who lives life on the edge of disaster and tests the boundaries of good behavior. Dana comes from a home which includes a series of questionable step-fathers and a permissive mother. As Abby and Dana’s friendship grows ever closer, they begin to break in to local homes, slipping through windows in the dark of night, rummaging through other peoples’ hidden lives, and taking small items as souvenirs. Abby’s relationship with Dana becomes more than a friendship – she falls in love with this wild girl who dares to break the rules, and the two teens become secret lovers. As their world begins to spin out of control, the dark secrets of their lives will teach both of them lessons about betrayal, loyalty and the consequences of impulsive decisions made in a split second.

Tina Egnoski’s award winning novella, In the Time of the Feast of Flowers, is a sensitive coming-of-age story. Egnoski writes with authority not only about life in a small town, but about a generation growing up during the socially progressive years of the 1970s. Feminism took on a prominent role in the decade of the 70s, and Egnoski’s novella explores issues of sexual exploration and women’s rights through the eyes of two female characters. Abby’s struggle with her sexuality – gay or not gay? – and her crush on an English teacher, provide much of the internal conflict in the book.

Another strong theme is that of searching for one’s identity and the feeling of moving away from one’s parents and becoming more autonomous. Abby, who has been raised to follow the rules and who is expected to go on to college and a profession, finds her time with Dana thrilling and empowering.

How do I describe the heightened thrill of standing in an empty house, adrenaline pumping in my chest and at my temples? Both invincible and invisible, I left behind my cautious self and became, even if for only a few minutes, someone else, as if by turning the doorknob and stepping inside – zip, flash, bang – I was confident and stealthy, in charge. – from In the Time of the Feast of Flowers, page 27 -

Egnoski’s writing is poetic and her characters ring true. The complex relationship between Dana and Abby drives the plot, and although I was not completely surprised by the turn of events toward the end, there was enough tension to keep me turning the pages. Ultimately, despite some personal tragedy for the characters, the novella delivers a hopeful message that we can survive our deepest mistakes and move forward into a satisfying future.

I graduated from High School in 1978, and related to many of the references in this book. Egnoski includes the music, dress, attitudes and technology of a time that helped form the woman I became, making this a novella which felt meaningful to me on a personal level. Readers who enjoy novellas, coming-of-age stories and books which explore complex themes, will find In the Time of the Feast of Flowers an intriguing read.

In the Time of the Feast of Flowers won the 2010 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize.

Recommended.

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FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher/author for review on my blog.

Readers wishing to purchase this book from an Indie Bookstore may click on the book link below to find Indie sellers. As an Indiebound Associate, I receive a small commission if readers purchase a book through this link on my blog.

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If you stretch a spring long enough, far enough, the metal will fail and the spring will snap. The same with a human body. The same with a human heart. The same, even, with a country. – from Running the Rift, page 231 -

There are many horrific events in the historical record. The Rwandan Genocide which occurred in 1994 and resulted in the deaths of more than 800,000 people (or close to 20% of the country’s population) is, perhaps, one of the most tragic. The violence took place over a 100 day period, although there were small outbreaks of violence in the years leading up to the tragedy – episodes which pointed to a build up of rage and misunderstanding between two ethnic groups: the Hutu and the Tutsi. The long-standing tension between these two groups escalated in part due to agitation by political and military leaders. The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians occurred while the rest of the world looked on and did nothing.

It is this heartbreaking episode of genocide which informs Naomi Benaron’s affecting novel Running the Rift. Benaron opens her story in 1984, ten years before the tragedy, with a young Tutsi boy named Jean Patrick and his family. Jean Patrick loves to run and he has dreams of going on to college despite the difficulty which the Tutsi people face in attending secondary schools. As the chapters unfurl, the years slip past and Jean Patrick comes of age. He is a dreamer, an extraordinary athlete, and a young man with a generous heart. He loves his tight-knit family and clings to the memory of his father. Eventually he finds himself training to become an Olympic runner. He falls in love with a beautiful Hutu woman named Bea who is smart, fiery, and on the path to becoming an activist on the heels of her journalist father. But behind the hope which Jean Patrick holds in his heart, is an uncertain future. There are ominous signs that all is not right in Rwanda. There is the rumble of civil war. There is the hatred toward the Tutsi people being fanned by an outspoken Hutu militaristic government. And, eventually, the day will come when everything Jean Patrick holds dear, including his life, will become threatened.

Running the Rift is a heartbreaking, character-driven novel about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable horror and loss. Benaron builds her story slowly, taking time to develop the characters and unveil their simple lives against the backdrop of the stunning Rwandan countryside. Jean Patrick lives and breathes on the page, as does his counterpart, Bea. The reader begins to care deeply about these characters and worry for them seeps in as the novel progresses.

I turned the final hundred pages of Running the Rift with my heart in my throat and tears in my eyes because at its heart, this book is about individuals. It is not about an historical event. It is about the people, the families, the individual lives which were destroyed or forever changed during those fateful days in 1994. It is unimaginable. It is horrifying.

I remember when the Rwandan Genocide happened. I was living in California and I remember the news footage of people laying slaughtered in the streets. I remember asking myself how this could happen and why no one stopped it. What Benaron’s novel does so exquisitely is to get beneath the headlines and examine the daily lives of the people living in Rwanda in the years leading up to the tragedy. She uncovers the tensions and the complexities of a country in flux and how misunderstandings between ethnic groups can grow into something so hate-filled that neighbors and friends can turn on each other.

Benaron explores themes of forgiveness and redemption in her novel which I found hopeful. The author has worked with Rwandan genocide survivors and visited Rwanda where she has an adopted son, so her insight into the aftermath of the genocide feels authentic.

Running the Rift won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction and it is well deserving of this literary award which recognizes “fiction that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships.” This is a novel which is sublimely crafted and highly recommended.

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FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher as part of BOOK CLUB. Follow the discussion here.

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Readers to my blog will know by now that I loved Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, a book which won the 2011 National Book Award (read my review). This is not an easy book to read, but it was so incredibly written, so honest, and so powerful that I have continued to want to share it with other readers who love literary fiction.

When I saw that NPR was interviewing Ward about the novel, I was excited to listen to her speak. This interview gives terrific insight into Ward’s work on the book, and so I wanted to share it. A transcript of the interview may be found on NPR’s site here.

I don’t usually make these kinds of announcements on my blog because, well, most of the time everyone knows the results of an award before I do for some reason.

BUT, I was so excited to see that Jesmyn Ward took the top award for fiction this year at the National Book Awards – and not just because she is a young, uber talented author, but because I read her book earlier this year and was blown away by it (read my review).

I have not yet read all the books short listed in the fiction category, but I had hoped that Ward would win because her novel is original, raw and so beautifully written that it is unforgettable. You’ll see me gushing more about this book because it will undoubtedly be on my Best Books of 2011 list.

Have you read Salvage the Bones yet? If so, what did you think? If not, is it in your to-be-read stack?

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My grandfather never refers to the tiger’s wife by name. His arm is around me and my feet are on the handrail, and my grandfather might say, “I once knew a girl who loved tigers so much she almost became one herself.” Because I am little, and my love of tigers comes directly from him, I believe he is talking about me, offering me a fairy tale in which I can imagine myself – and will for years and years. – from The Tiger’s Wife, page 4 -

Natalia and her friend, Zora, are both doctors and traveling to an orphanage by the sea in the former Yugoslavia to deliver medications, when Natalia learns her grandfather (also a physician) has died. Although his death is not a surprise (she knew he was ill), what shakes her is that he did not die in his home but far away in an isolated village and apparently he was on his way to see Natalia. Confused and grieving, Natalia continues on to her destination determined to understand her grandfather’s death through the stories of her childhood. She remembers her days at the Citadel with her grandfather, outside the tiger’s cage, listening as her grandfather reads from his worn copy of The Jungle Book. But there are other stories, some her grandfather has told her, and one that he has not.

The Tiger’s Wife is a sprawling, beautiful novel that unfolds gracefully as the narrative moves back and forth in time, revealing the life of a man through the stories he has shared with his granddaughter. Place is very important in this novel set in the Balkans. Although Tea Obreht uses fictional towns, the history of the region bleeds into the narrative. The presence of war looms throughout – including the Nazi invasion, and the Yugoslav Wars.

People must have seen him, but in the wake of bombardment he was anything but a tiger to them: a joke, an insanity, a religious hallucination. He drifted, enormous and silent, down the alleys of Old Town, past the smashed-in doors of coffeehouses and bakeries, past motorcars flung through shopwindows. He went down the tramway, up and over fallen trolleys in his path, beneath lines of electric cable that ran through the city and now hung broken and black as jungle creeper.  – from The Tiger’s Wife, page 94 -

This novel is full of symbolism, the most obvious being the tiger himself – a graceful, powerful predator who brings beauty and fear to a small mountain village in the wake of the Nazi invasion. The tiger of the novel is the physical embodiment of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book – a fictional character who comes to life for Natalia’s grandfather one cold and magical winter. Tigers are gorgeous, they are stealthy, and most certainly they remind us that we are mortal and death may only be a paw swipe away. Obreht explores the idea of death and spirituality in The Tiger’s Wife. There is the story of the deathless man, a man who is able to cheat Death, who passes through her grandfather’s life like a shadow. And when Natalia arrives in the seaside village with Zora, she discovers a group of people digging in the vineyard, searching for a body whose spirit, they believe, is sickening their children.

But it would be wrong to assume that The Tiger’s Wife is only about our understanding and coming to terms with death. It is so much more. This is a novel about prejudice and fear, how stories shape who we later become, and our connection to family through the stories of our childhoods. This is a book about superstition and magic fused with reality. For me, the most satisfying part of the novel was the power of story. Obreht introduces the reader to the rich history of folklore and storytelling in the Balkan region – a region filled with diverse culture and religion, and one whose history is as complex as its people.

Obreht brings to life dozens of characters who weave through the stories within the story, adding depth to the narrative. Perhaps the most troubling and curious character is the village apothecary who looms larger than life for Natalia’s grandfather.

Standing under the counter, one sock lower than the other, my grandfather would look up at the shelves and shelves of jars, the swollen-bottomed bottles of remedies, and revel in their calm, controlled promise of wellness. The little golden scales, the powders, the herbs and spices, the welcoming smell of the apothecary’s shop, were all things that signified another plane of reality. And the apothecary – tooth puller, dream interpreter, measurer of medicine, keeper of the magnificent scarlet ibis – was the reliable magician, the only kind of magician my grandfather could ever admire. Which is why, in a way, this story starts and ends with him. – from The Tiger’s Wife, page 104 -

I loved this book – its sprawling, nearly dreamlike, narrative; its incredible description of place; and its fantastic characters. Tea Obreht excels as a storyteller. The best tellers of tales are those who are able to immerse their audience in the texture, taste, smell and feel of the story. Tea Obreht does this effortlessly. I was riveted to The Tiger’s Wife and carried along through its pages by the spellbinding voice of a very talented writer.

The Tiger’s Wife won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction – and I believe it earns its place there. This is a memorable novel, a magical novel, one that had me dreaming of tigers and snow capped mountains and a man who cannot die. Readers will be thrilled and swept away by this book…one of the best of the year.

Highly recommended.

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Orange July will be here very, very soon (if you don’t know what this is, then go check out the details over on Jill’s blog), and I need to make some tough decisions.

In going through my stacks of unread books, I have found more Orange books than I could possibly read in one month. So, I’m being a bit selective and looking at more recent books that have won or been nominated.

Here is what I am thinking about reading in July (starred items are MUST reads which may be the only ones I manage to read…but, we’ll see):

• The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (2011 Short List)
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter (2011 Short List)
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (2009 Short List)
• *Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch (2011 Long List)
• *The Long Song by Andrea Levy (2010 Long List)
• *The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin (2011 Long List)
• *The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (2011 Winner)
• The Personal History of Rachel Dupree by Ann Weisgarber (2009 Long List AND 2009 Winner of Orange Award for New Writers)
• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (2010 Winner)
• *Swamplandia by Karen Russell (2011 Long List)
• The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff (2008 Short List for New Writers Award)
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (2011 Long List)
• This Is How by M. J. Hyland (2010 Long List)
• Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman (2009 Short List)

Are you joining Orange July? If so, what is on YOUR must read list?

The sky over Wyalkatchem is hotter and bluer than any other place, and the winds are stronger, the thermals rising tens of thousands of feet straight up, lifting the litter of the desert in its embrace: shards of quartz and shale and flakes of limestone, spinifex, the lost tails of geckoes, scraps of paperbark, the hot smell of the red dirt, the taste of the sky like salt from the sea, cracked pieces of pottery, parrot eyes, wedge-tailed eagles looking for prey, the broken hearts of men and women, the souls of the children who died in that great isolation, sadness, unwillingness, anger, strands of horse hair, nuts and bolts, chicken feathers, sand. – from The Paperbark Shoe, page 24 -

Gin Boyle, an albino woman, has been saved from a life in a mental hospital by marrying Toad and moving to Wyalkatchem, a small town in Australia on the edge of the desert. Gin’s past is muddy and sad, and her future is not that much better. She and Toad eek out their existence among the rabbits and dust, raising their two young children and living side by side in a loveless marriage. But then, in the middle of World War II, eighteen thousand Italian prisoners of war arrive in Australia – men who are imprisoned by their nationality even though Mussolini has surrendered and they are technically no longer the enemy. Antonio and John arrive on the Toad’s farm, exiles and oddities, and everything will change.

We had depended on one another. Nothing more. He had bred the sheep, found the water, lifted the things too heavy to bear. I had prepared food for him, strips of wrinkled bacon, the folded grey nodules of sweetbreads. I had made his clothes, his children, his bed. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t love. But it had been tolerable, so long as there was nothing else. – from The Paperbark Shoe, page 241 -

Goldie Goldbloom’s breathtaking first novel  is narrated in the cynical, observant and damaged voice of Gin, a woman who has lived with rejection her entire life due to her albino condition. She is swamped by poor self worth, and feels ugly and unlovable until Antonio turns his foreign eyes upon her. The Paperbark Shoe is a love story, but it is also a story of what it means to be isolated and searching for identity. It is a story of war, of disconnected lives, of the division between cultures and countries, of bigotry, of loss, and of survival. This novel is remarkable for its depth and for its vivid and striking language.

We are isolated, but we do not invite isolation; every stretch of road has its markers for the lost. And the roads themselves have local names, friendlier than the ones given them by government workers who have never seen a fly-blown sheep. There’s the Pig Slurry Stretch and Metholated Mavis’s Gully and Kickastickalong. Every farm has its kerosene tin wedged between two stumps, or its Coolgardie safe on top of a Model T, and the people here say swing left at the kero tin or turn in at the motor and everyone knows what they mean. Antonio has hung a green milking stool from a stringy-bark at our turn-off. Toad’s stool. Toad’s tool. Toadstool. – from The Paperbark Shoe, page 180 -

Goldbloom’s imagery is disturbing and at times grotesque. Like watching a train wreck, I found myself unable to look away even while wanting to cover my eyes. Goldbloom’s prose cuts deep, exposing alienation and the far-reaching impact of war. Her characters are survivors. They are largely unlikable. Even the children are deeply flawed. And yet, despite its grim observations and bizarre characters, The Paperbark Shoe is extraordinary.

Perhaps most striking, are the characters who people the book. These are misfits, oddities, and outcasts. Toad is short-statured, and struggles with his sexuality while collecting women’s corsets. Despite his weirdness, he is an oddly sympathetic character. Antonio is perhaps the most complex character even though he initially appears one-dimensional. I found myself wondering, does he love Gin? Or is she simply a plaything to make his life in captivity more bearable? Gin’s desire for acceptance is palpable. Her albinism sets her apart from others and she endures ridicule with a hard-edged cynicism.

Jouncing past the scalloped fences and the sheep’s skulls nailed to stretcher posts and the long lines of trees planted by the first settlers, I remind myself that God made the land and men made the cities but the devil made small country towns. – from The Paperbark Shoe, page 220 -

Goldbloom uses these characters to symbolize those who are different and misunderstood in our society. It is perhaps this theme, of fitting into society vs. being rejected from it, which resonates the loudest in The Paperback Shoe.

[...] we are trained from the time we are small to hate the things that are different from us. – from The Paperbark Shoe, page 240 -

I found myself deeply entrenched in this novel. It is sad, disturbing and strange…and yet it is beautifully wrought. Goldbloom’s writing in The Paperback Shoe is nearly flawless. Her language is original and imaginative. I challenge anyone to read this novel and not be moved. I turned the final page and audibly sighed. I found myself thinking of the story, mulling over the characters, hours after I finished reading. Many readers will wonder where the beauty is in this novel among the scarred and damaged characters, and the dry and desolate countryside, but I think those most observant will discover that the beauty lies in how the story is told – its honesty and its acute examination of what it means to be different in a society where uniqueness is often perceived as negative.

I loved this book. It is one which will stay with me. Goldie Goldbloom is a young author to watch.

Highly recommended.

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FTC Disclosure: This book was sent to me by the publisher for review on my blog.

Readers wishing to purchase this book from an Indie Bookstore may click on the link below to find Indie sellers. I am an Indie Associate and receive a small commission if readers purchase a book through this link on my blog.

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Watching Judah emerge from the whale’s guts, King-me felt the widow was birthing everything he despised in the country, laying it our before him like a taunt. Irish nor English, Jerseyman nor bushborn nor savage, not Roman or Episcopalian or apostate, Judah was the wilderness on two legs, mute and unknowable, a blankness that could drown a man. – from Galore, page 77 -

Michael Crummey’s fantastical family saga begins in the latter part of the 18th century, around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, in the fictional town of Paradise Deep, Newfoundland. A whale beaches itself and the townspeople are shocked to discover a man in its belly who they christen Judah. Judah’s skin is pale, and he emits a strong odor of fish – a smell that never goes away. Mute and odd, Judah is viewed alternately as a curse and a good luck charm. It is Judah’s story which weaves through the novel, connecting two families and symbolizing the importance of family lore and history.

Galore is, at its heart, a tale of family connections and the power of storytelling. The two families in the book (the Devines and the Sellers) descend from Devine’s Widow, an elderly woman whose powers suggest witchcraft to many, and King-Me Sellers, a gruff business man who has never forgiven the Widow for her rejection of him.

There was nothing to the woman but sinew, her body like a length of hemp rope. But she’d brought most of them into the world and delivered their children as well. She sat with the dying and washed and laid out the corpses. She seemed a gatekeeper between two worlds whose say-so they were helpless to carry on without. – from Galore, page 25 -

Crummey takes his readers along a crooked and convoluted journey over the course of more than 100 years, introducing a multitude of unique and quirky characters. A helpful family tree is provided at the beginning of the novel which keeps all the connections straight – but, it is the folklore and rumor, and the personalities of the characters which drive the narrative. There is a feeling of other-worldliness to the novel – a sense that life is circular, that history repeats itself, that family stories go on and on, replaying themselves, and becoming more fantastical, that they are part of who we are and who we become.

Crummey’s skill at character development is evident from the beginning. Despite their oddness, his characters are believable, intriguing, and very real. So many of these characters were memorable. Two of my favorites were the Trim brothers – Obediah and Azariah – who are the keepers of the history of all the families of the town. They know all the connections, and can recite all the stories – their knowledge of the townpeople’s genealogy “biblical in its detail.”

They were practical and serious and outlandishly foreign. They described the deathly ill as wonderful sick. Anything brittle or fragile or tender was nish, anything out of plumb or uneven was asquish. They called the Adam’s apple a kinkorn, referred to the Devil as Horn Man. They’d once shown the doctor a scarred vellum copy of the Bible that Jabez Trim had cut from a cod’s stomach nearly a century past, a relic so singular and strange that Newman asked to see it whenever he visited, leafing through the pages with a kind of secular awe. He felt at times he’d been transported to a medieval world that was still half fairy tale. – from Galore, page 156 -

Galore is sprawling, rich, and delightful. It is not surprising that it has been short listed for several literary awards and has won both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Fiction. I loved this book for its tall tales, its surprising twists, and the characters which people its pages. Crummey understands the value of a good story and the lore and fantasy which are at the heart of family histories.

Readers who want to lose themselves in a book, and who wish to immerse themselves in a family saga rich in folklore, will be well served by picking up a copy of Galore.

Highly recommended.

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Other reviews of this book may be found through the following links:

Devourer of Books
House of the Seven Tails
Indie Reader Houston
Linus’s Blanket
Picky Girl

Join the discussion of this book on BOOK CLUB here.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher for review on my blog.

Readers wishing to purchase this book from an Indie Bookstore may click on the link below to find Indie sellers. I am an Indie Associate and receive a small commission if readers purchase a book through this link on my blog.

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People are collapsed at the base of the monument and around them a dung heap of cigarette butts, peels and paper; on the corner people are storming the run-down buses that become lost in dust clouds as they head to the shantytowns; a policeman is arguing with a street vendor and the faces of both are hateful and discouraged and their voices seem to be curled by a hollow exasperation. - from Conversation in the Cathedral -

Conversation in the Cathedral by Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa is set in Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odria. The primary character is a man named Santiago, who runs into a man from his past named Ambrosia and they re-connect. I didn’t get very far in this book, sadly. I read to page 63 before quitting in frustration. There were several reasons I did not finish this book:

• The writing is almost stream of consciousness and there are no quotation marks delineating when dialogue begins and ends. I found this very confusing as the characters move back and forth from speaking to “thinking” and I was never sure when actual speech was happening, not to mention who was actually speaking.
• There are many references to the political problems in Peru. Most are subtle, yet the plot seems to rely on the reader having some knowledge about the government and history of the country. I don’t have any knowledge of the time, place or historical references…and so I felt lost early on.
• There are numerous characters who seem to go by more than one name. Within 30 pages, I had no idea who was who and how they were related. I kept paging back, trying to see if I had missed something which could give me direction, but I was still a bit confused.
• Within 10 pages a dog is beaten to death at the animal pound. I am aware that this probably does go on in some countries…but the detailed description just made me ill and I was afraid there was going to be more of this kind of thing throughout the book.

The back of the book reads: “Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and oral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it.” I think the emphasis should be on the word “complicated.”

I really wanted to read this book because I have heard great things about Llosa. But, I am afraid this one was well over my head and thus felt like work rather than enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a book that makes me think…but this one just left me feeling like I didn’t have a clue what was going on.

Unrated.

Some of you may already know that I co-host The Orange Prize Project which celebrates the books nominated each year for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and Award for New Writers. Anyone interested in reading and reviewing “orange” books can join the project by emailing me and asking to be invited to the group blog. Jill from The Magic Lasso helps me with the project and also administrates the Facebook Page for Orange July/January which is wonderful (and actually is pretty active even in other months).

So, I am always excited in March when the Orange Prize judges announce the long list. I have four of the nominees on my physical TBR shelf which I cannot wait to get to (highlighted in brown), and have read one which was one of my top reads in 2010 (follow the link below to read my review). There are several more on this list I am very excited to read. Here is the full list:

• Lyrics Alley, by Leila Aboulela
• Jamrach’s Menagerie, by Carol Birch
• Room, by Emma Donoghue (read my review)
• The Pleasure Seekers, by Tishani Doshi
• Whatever You Love, by Louise Doughty
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
• The Memory of Love, by Aminatta Forna
• The London Train, by Tessa Hadley
• Grace Williams Says it Loud, by Emma Henderson
• The Seas, by Samantha Hunt
• The Birth of Love, by Joanna Kavenna
• Great House, by Nicole Krauss
• The Road to Wanting, by Wendy Law-Yone
• The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht
• The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer
• Repeat it Today with Tears, by Anne Peile
• Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
• The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, by Lola Shoneyin
• The Swimmer, by Roma Tearne
• Annabel, by Kathleen Winter

Out of the twenty nominated titles, there are fourteen which I want to talk a little about (and which are high on my list of “to reads”):

Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (Grove Press – March 2011) is “the evocative story of an affluent Sudanese family shaken by the shifting powers in their country and the near-tragedy that threatens the legacy they’ve built for decades.” This is Aboulela’s third novel. I read her novel The Translator way back in March 2007 and loved it. I found Aboulela to be a controlled, meditative writer who wove a deeper meaning into what was, on the surface, a love story (read my review).

Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese playwright and author who was born in Cairo, Egypt. She has written three novels and published one collection of short stories.

Jamrach’s Menagerie, by Carol Birch (Canongate Books – February 2011) is an epic novel set in 1857 which “brings alive the smells, sights and flavors of the nineteenth century, from the docks of London to the storms of the Indian Ocean. This great salty historical adventure is a gripping exploration of our relationship to the natural world and the wildness it contains.” I really love sagas, and this one sounds especially intriguing.

Carol Birch is a prize winning British novelist who has authored ten previous novels. Turn Again Home (2003) was longlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also won the Geoffrey Faber Award and the David Higham Award for Best First Novel.

Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty (Faber & Faber – April 2011) revolves around a woman who seeks her own justice when her nine-year-old daughter is killed. Described as “a heart-wrenching novel of revenge, compulsion and desire,” this novel looks spellbinding. Read an interview with the author about the book. Whatever You Love was also shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Novel Prize.

Louise Doughty is the author of six novels and one book of non-fiction. She also writes radio plays, is a journalist, and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 4, as well as teaching for the Faber Academy. She lives in London. To learn more about Doughty and her work, visit the author’s website.

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Atlantic Monthly Press – January 2011) is set in Sierra Leone at the turn of the twenty-first century a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with terrible secrets to keep. The novel “seamlessly weaves together the lives of three men to create a powerful story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, at the end of it all, the very nature of love.” Listen to the author talk about the book on The Diane Rehm Show. The Memory of Love is also the winner of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa)

Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow and raised in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. She is also the author of Ancestor Stones, a novel, and The Devil That Danced on the Water, a memoir of her activist father, and her country, Sierra Leone. In 2002 Aminatta helped to build a primary school in her family’s village of Rogbonko. The building of the school was the first step in what would become known as the Rogbonko Project: a community effort to create an escape route from poverty through multiple initiatives in the spheres of education, agriculture, infrastructure and health. In 2007 Aminatta was named by Vanity Fair as one of Africa’s most promising new writers and her work has been translated into ten languages. Read more about Aminatta and her work, by visiting the author’s website.

The London Train by Tessa Hadley (Harper Perennial – May 2011) is a novel in two parts which are connected  around a single moment. It is described as “a vivid and absorbing account of the impulses and accidents that can shape our lives, alongside our ideas; about loyalty, love, sex and the complicated bonds of friends and family.” Published in January in the UK, this novel has been getting amazing reviews and is called “haunting” and “brilliant.”

Tessa Hadley teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University College. Her first novel, Accidents in the Home was longlisted for The Guardian’s First Book Award. She lives in Cardiff, Wales.

The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna (Metropolitan Books – April 2010) is set in 1865 and tells three stories spanning centuries to “explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression.”  The novel is about “the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.”

Joanna Kavenna grew up in various parts of Britain, and has also lived in the USA, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States. Her second novel, Inglorious, received the  Orange Award for New Writers, while The Ice Museum, a work of travel writing, was short-listed for the Ondaatje Prize. Kavenna’s writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony’s College, Oxford and St John’s College, Cambridge. She lives in Oxford, England. Read more about Kavenna and her work by visiting the author’s website.

Great House by Nicole Krauss (W. W. Norton & Company – October 2010) is a novel about a stolen desk that contains the secrets, and becomes the obsession, of the lives it passes through. “As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.” Great House is also a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Fiction. Read an excerpt from the book.

Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestseller The History of Love (W. W. Norton & Company 2005) which won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes.  In 2007, she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and in 2010 The New Yorker named her one of the 20 best writers under 40. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Read more about Krauss and her work by visiting the author’s website.

The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone (Vintage Books USA – April 2011) features Na Ga, a woman in search of a better life. But now she sits, alone, in a hotel room in Wanting, a godforsaken town on the Chinese-Burmese border. How long can Na Ga belong nowhere and with no one?

Wendy Law-Yone was born in Mandalay, Burma, and grew up in Rangoon, where her father founded the leading English-language daily, The Nation. She was exiled to the United States where she published two novels, The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango, before she moved to the UK. She lives in London and Rye.

Watch this video interview with the author:

Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile (Serpent’s Tail – August 2011) centers around Susanna, a secretive child, obsessed with the father she has never known and determined that one day she will find him. When, as an adolescent, she finally discovers her father’s address and seeks him out, she conceals her identity, beginning an illicit affair that can only end in disaster. Reviewers all agree this is a controversial novel which is tender and elegantly written.

Anne Peile was born in London. She has lived in the South West and Belfast and worked as a cook, writing emails for the BBC and in educational support. She works for a London bookstore. Repeat it Today With Tears is her first published novel.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin (William Morrow – June 2010) is “a perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria.” This debut novel is set against the background of contemporary Africa and explores the comedies, tragedies and secrets of Baba Segi’s life with five wives and seven children.

Lola Shoneyin was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, but spent most of her childhood at boarding school in Edinburgh, Scotland. She studied English at Ogun State University and lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where she teaches English and drama at an international school. She is married to Olaokun Soyinka, the son of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. They have four children and four dogs. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is her first published novel.

Watch this entertaining video where Shoneyin introduces the novel:

And here are the books which I already have on my shelves…and so will be the first from the list which I’ll dip into:

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House – March 2011) is set in a Balkan country mending from years of conflict. “Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.” In the stories of her grandfather, Natalia will find the answer she is looking for.

Tea Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York. Read more about Obreht and her work by visiting the author’s website.

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Knopf; First Edition Hardcover – 2010.  Vintage; Reprint edition – January  2011) is a grand love story set against the backdrop of Budapest and Paris, an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are ravaged by war, and the chronicle of one family’s struggle against the forces that threaten to annihilate it.

Julie Orringer is a 1996 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a two-year Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford from 1999-2001, and was Stanford’s Marsh McCall Lecturer in Fiction from 2001-2003. Her short story collection, How to Breathe Underwater, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Northern California Book Award; it was a San Francisco Chronicle and LA Times Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. Orringer’s stories have been published in The Yale Review, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Zoetrope All-Story, and the Washington Post Magazine. Orringer is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. Read more about Orringer and her work by visiting the author’s website.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Knopf – February 2011) is set in the Florida Everglades and centers around a young heroine by the name of Ava Bigtree and her family who make up an alligator-wrestling dynasty called Swamplandia! Filled with quirky characters and completely original, Russell’s novel is being lauded as “brilliant,” “dazzling,” and “lavishly imagined.” Author Emma Donaghue writes: “Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization,this novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades. ”

Karen Russell is a native of Miami and has been honored on The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and received the 2009 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation. She is currently a writer-in-residence at Bard College.

Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Grove Press, Black CatOut of  – January 2011) was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2010 Governor General’s Awards. The novel centers around Wayne, born into the rural landscape of Labrador, Canada, in 1968 as a hermaphrodite. His father decides to raise him as a male. Only Wayne’s parents and their friend Thomasina Baikie, also present at his birth, are aware of his gender duality. The two women are against Wayne’s father’s gender assignment. As Wayne grows older, he struggles with who he really is while his father tried to steer Wayne away from his feminine side, and his mother mourns the loss of her female child. Described as “a simple yet eloquent coming-of-age tale,”  this debut novel challenges our assumptions about gender.

Read this piece by Kathleen Winter about the setting for Annabel.

Kathleen Winter won both the Winterset Award and the Metcalf-Rooke Award for her short story collection boYs. Although she lived for years in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she now resides in Montreal. Annabel is her first novel.

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What about YOU? Are you planning to read any books from the Orange Prize for Fiction long list?

And, in case you’re wondering…here is the timeline for selection of the short list and winner:

• Shortlist Announcement: 12 April 2011
• Orange Prize Shortlist Readings at the Southbank centre: 6 June 2011
• Awards Ceremony: 8 June 2011