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The Clarke Award asked for suggestions…

17th October 2012 / / 8 Comments

Tom Hunter from the Arthur C. Clarke Award has been asking for possible contenders that may not have been submitted so far. I take an interest in the fringes of sf and mainstream fiction, and was able to suggest quite a few. “These really all need to be in a blog post,” said Niall Harrison; so here they are, along with three that Niall suggested to Tom.

To be clear, I haven’t read all of these myself, and some of them will turn out in the reading not to be  classifiable as science fiction. But they all sound to me like books that should be on the Clarke’s radar at this stage, so the judges can have the opportunity to make that call.

(EDIT 18/10 — two more books, by Peter Carey and Ben Marcus, added to the list)

Alex Adams, White Horse (Simon & Schuster)

A post-apocalyptic tale of a pregnant woman journeying through a disease-ravaged world.

Juliana Baggott, Pure (Headline)

Another dystopian novel, this one for a YA audience.

Adrian Barnes, Nod (Bluemoose)

A third story of society transformed, this time as a result of near-total insomnia.

Peter Carey, The Chemistry of Tears (Faber & Faber)

A museum conservator explores the story of an extraordinary 19th century automaton.

Jennifer Cryer, Breathing on Glass (Little, Brown)

The personal and professional dramas of two scientists aiming to grow pure stem cells in the lab.

Carlos Gamerro, The Islands (And Other Stories)

One of their titles was shortlisted for the Booker; could And Other Stories also have a Clarke contender in this novel of the Falklands War and virtual reality?

Harry Karlinsky, The Evolution of Inanimate Objects (The Friday Project)

The biography of the fictitious Thomas Darwin, who applied his father’s theories to the development of everyday objects. Recently longlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

Torsten Krol, The Secret Book of Sacred Things (Atlantic)

More post-disaster fiction (the moon knocked out of orbit), set amongst a religious community.

Liz Jensen, The Uninvited (Bloomsbury Circus)

Children begin to attack their families at the same time as a spate of bizarre suicides occurs worldwide; an anthropologist tries to spot the patterns beneath it all. Reviewed by me here.

Russell Kane, The Humorist (Simon & Schuster)

A comedy critic with an intuitive understanding of humour, but no sense of empathy, discovers a formula for the ultimate joke – one that can make people laugh to death…

Alan Lightman, Mr g (Corsair)

Mr g creates the Universe – then has to grapple with the philosophical implications.

Evan Mandery, Q: A Love Story (Fourth Estate)

A man meets his ideal woman – and is then visited by his future self, ordering him to end the relationship. Reviewed by me here.

Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (Granta)

A new epidemic – children’s speech becomes literally toxic to their parents.

Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine (Simon & Schuster)

A woman faces the demands of domestic life while her astronaut husband is stranded in space after his ship is struck by a meteor.

Simona Sparaco, About Time (Pushkin)

A rich playboy without a care has to adjust when time begins to speed up for him.

Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles (Simon & Schuster)

A coming-of-age novel set at a time when the Earth’s rotation begins (and continues) to slow.

Juli Zeh, The Method (Harvill Secker)

A young woman seeks justice for her brother in a place where good health is enforced by law.

EDIT, 25/10 — More suggestions, from the comments:

Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars (Headline)
Lauren Groff, Arcadia (William Heinemann)
Mez Packer, The Game Is Altered (Tindal Street Press)
C.J. Sansom, Dominion (Mantle)
Sam Thompson, Communion Town (Fourth Estate)

Prize winners: Booker and beyond

16th October 2012 / / 0 Comments

The 2012 Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Hilary Mantel for her novel Bring Up the Bodies.

Now seems a good time to catch up on some of the other literary awards I’ve featured on here recently.

The BBC International Short Story Award went to Miroslav Penkov for ‘East of the West’

The SI Leeds Literary Prize went to Minoli Salgado for A Little Dust on the Eyes.

Congratulations to all!

September wrap-up

1st October 2012 / / 2 Comments

I read quite a  number of excellent books in September. M. John Harrison’s classic series Viriconium progressively destroyed the notion of fantasy literature as escape. In NW, Zadie Smith created a superb portrait of interlocking lives in north-west London. Scarlett Thomas’s Monkeys with Typewriters was a creative writing book with as much interest for reader as for budding writers.

I began a story-by-story review of Roelof Bakker’s anthology Still, a book of stories inspired by Bakker’s photographs of a vacated building. That project will continue into October.

I also reviewed: the fifth Bristol Short Story Prize anthology; Ryan David Jahn’s Low Life; Evan Mandery’s Q: A Love Story; Terry Pratchett’s Dodger; and Tarun J. Tejpal’s The Story of My Assassins.

In features, I blogged the first and second parts of a round-table discussion about State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. For Book Blogger Appreciation Week, I wrote about what book blogging means to me. I posted the shortlists of the BBC International Short Story Award, the SI Leeds Literary Prize and the Man Booker Prize.

There were three Sunday Story Society discussions, concerning Angela Carter’s “The Merchant of Shadows“, Alois Hotschnig’s “Two Ways of Leaving” and Krys Lee’s “Drifting House“.

BBC International Short Story Award shortlist

15th September 2012 / / 4 Comments

For the past couple of years, I’ve been following the BBC National Short Story Award (see my reviews of the 2010 and 2011 shortlists). This year, it’s the BBC International Short Story Award, and the shortlist has been doubled in size to ten stories. The nominees were announced last night; with descriptions taken from the press release, they are:

Lucy Caldwell – ‘Escape Routes’

Set in Belfast in the 1990s, ‘Escape Routes’ is told from the point of view of a child, whose friend and babysitter mysteriously goes missing. Delivered with the touching innocence of a child oblivious but not unaffected by the ideological and political strife plaguing Northern Ireland, the story is an oblique examination of a besieged Belfast.

Julian Gough – ‘The iHole’

‘The iHole’ playfully depicts the launch of the latest must-have gadget: a portable black hole. The media hype, the marketing, the industry competition and the consumer mania are laid bare in this satirical take on technology and consumerism in the 21st century.

M J Hyland – ‘Even Pretty Eyes Commit Crimes’

The adult narrator, who many years down the line still sees his father as somehow culpable for his mother’s departure, and tires of his father’s dependence on him, is forced to reassess his relationships, as it becomes apparent that his wife is leaving him too.

Krys Lee – ‘The Goose Father’

In a tale of loneliness, ambition and desire, a man sends his wife and children to America for a better life, while he stays behind in South Korea making a living as an accountant. Concerned with respectability and success, the man’s life is set awry when he takes in an endearing young tenant – along with his pet goose.

Deborah Levy – ‘Black Vodka’

In ‘Black Vodka’ a hunchbacked man goes on a date with the girl of his dreams. A subtle battle between shame and prurience ensues, as the man is crippled by thoughts of his own repugnance, and the girl is only intrigued by his appearance.

Miroslav Penkov – ‘East of the West’

Set in Bulgaria during and after the Cold War, ‘East of the West’ explores the difficulties of love, relationships and identity in a region ridden with conflict and sectarian violence. The narrator takes us from his childhood through to present day, ruminating on the loves and losses which both constrain and define his life.

Henrietta Rose-Innes – ‘Sanctuary’

This subtle but powerful story traces a nostalgic trip back to a childhood haunt in the South African bush. The narrator’s encounter with another family explores the experience of domestic violence and its consequences.

Adam Ross – ‘In the Basement’

Two couples meet for dinner and wind up discussing an old friend called Lisa. But their disparaging attitude towards Lisa’s lifestyle, choice of husband and treatment of their pet dog, unconsciously reveals more about their own relationships, insecurities, envy and brutality, than it does about Lisa.

Carrie Tiffany – ‘Before he Left the Family’

‘Before he Left the Family’ examines the jagged relationship of two brothers and their parents following a painfully wrought divorce; while one brother’s loyalty lies with the jilted mother, the narrator finds affinity with his father. Yet, in the maelstrom of resentment, sexual confusion and self-blame, Tiffany finds pathos and redemption.

Chris Womersley – ‘A Lovely and Terrible Thing’

A man encounters a stranger on the road when his car breaks down. Invited to the stranger’s house, he is further enticed by the promise of being let in on the family’s secret – a daughter with a miraculous ability. It’s an offer the man, who struggles to cope with his own daughter’s disability, can’t refuse.

The ten stories will be broadcast daily at 3.30pm (UK time) on BBC Radio 4, starting this Monday; they’ll then be available to download as podcasts. An anthology of the stories will be published by Comma Press on Monday.

The winner will be announced on Tues 2 October – and I’ve left a space in the Sunday Story Society schedule to discuss the winning story on 9 December.

Man Booker and SI Leeds Literary Prize shortlists

11th September 2012 / / 2 Comments

The Booker shortlist was announced this morning:

  • Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon)
  • Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories)
  • Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)
  • Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)
  • Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)
  • Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber and Faber)

I can’t really judge the quality of that shortlist, because I’ve read only two of them. I very much enjoyed The Lighthouse, so I’m pleased to see it on there (my review is linked above). I read Swimming Home last year and, though I didn’t warm to it personally, enough people have praised the book since that I feel inclined to revisit it at some point.

More generally, this shortlist is an enormous vote of confidence in British independent publishers – all three of the small presses on the longlist (Myrmidon, And Other Stories, and Salt) have made it through to the final six. I think that’s great news. This also seems a shortlist that’s in favour of unconventional approaches, which is interesting.

Which novel might win? The Mantel will probably be the favourite, but it looks to me like something of an odd one out on this list. I think the Self is a more likely front-runner – though actually I wouldn’t be surprised if the Levy or Moore books took the Prize. We’ll find out when the winner is announced on Tues 16 October.

***

I want to mention another literary award shortlist, which was announced yesterday. The SI Leeds Literary Prize is for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women. Its six shortlisted titles are:

  • Katy Massey, The Book of Ghosts
  • Emily Midorikawa, A Tiny Speck of Black and Then Nothing
  • Karen Onojaife, Borrowed Light
  • Minoli Salgado, A Little Dust on the Eyes
  • Anita Sivakumaran, The Weekend for Sex, and other stories
  • Jane Steele, Storybank: The Milkfarm Years

The winner will be revealed on Weds 3 Oct at Ilkley Playhouse, as part of Ilkley Literature Festival.

August wrap-up

1st September 2012 / / 0 Comments

August was the month when I discovered the work of Muriel Spark. I found The Driver’s Seat a powerfully unsettling piece of fiction – the story of a woman’s impending death, a woman who’s acting strangely, for reasons we don’t learn. I was wrong-footed by Spark’s book in the best possible way, and now want to read more of her fiction.

In The Uninvited, Liz Jensen viewed a world of children turning against adults through the eyes of a scientist tested by extremes of emotion. The latest title from Peirene Press, Pia Juul’s The Murder of Halland (tr. Martin Aitken), took a crime as the starting-point for a striking portrait of bereavement. Ewan Morrison combined fiction, anecdote and history to examine a ubiquitous modern institution, in Tales from the Mall.

I also reviewed P.Y. Betts’s superb memoir, People Who Say Goodbye; Alison Moore’s intense Booker-longlisted character study, The Lighthouse; William Wharton’s classic war story, Birdy; Christopher Coake’s tale of the dangers of believing in ghosts, You Came Back; J.R. Crook’s jigsaw of a novel, Sleeping Patterns; Manu Joseph’s story of a father investigating his son’s death, The Illicit Happiness of Other People; and two short story collections: Jon Gower’s Too Cold for Snow, and Tim Maughan’s Paintwork.

In features, I made a list of ten favourite books read during the lifetime of the blog; and posted a couple of personal book round-ups: of the books I bought while on holiday in Bath and Oxford; and a snapshot of my library loans. There were also two Sunday Story Society discussions: of “Bombay’s Republic” by Rotimi Babatunde, and “Atlantic City” by Kevin Barry.

Bookshop tourism

27th August 2012 / / 6 Comments

I’ve been away this weekend, to Bath and Oxford – which, as well as being two of England’s most historic and beautiful cities, are also two of its most literary. At a time when independent bookshops are struggling (and many UK towns and cities don’t have one at all), it’s heartening to me that there are still places wherre they flourish. The downside of visiting such bookshops is that there are altogether too many interesting books out there. Ah well…

Anyway, for the rest of this post, I’m going to talk about where I went and what I bought.

Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights – John Street, Bath

The winner of Independent Bookshop of the Year in 2011, and it’s not hard to see why. Mr B’s Emporium strikes me very much as a traditional bookshop with a contemporary outlook. You really get the impression that the people who work there know and care about what they stock. I came away with two books:

Sjón, From the Mouth of the Whale

The first time I heard of the Icelandic writer Sjón was when Scott Pack named The Blue Fox as his favourite read of 2009. I thought it was about time I tried something by Sjón, and I remembered Alex in Leeds reviewing From the Mouth of the Whale recently, so that was the one I chose.

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies

I was served at the counter by Mr B himself, Nic Bottomley. While I was there, I asked him to recommend a short story collection. He suggested a few, and I decided on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer-winning Interpreter of Maladies. Knowledgeable booksellers are valuable for just these sorts of recommendations, and for expanding what you read in unanticipated ways.

Blackwell’s – Broad Street, Oxford

Perhaps I’m stretching my definition of ‘independent bookshop’ here, seeing as Blackwell’s have over 40 branches around the country. But then again, most of them are on university campuses rather than high streets, and the Oxford shop was the first of all… and this is my blog post, so the shop will count as far as I’m concerned. I promised to limit myself to two books, but stretched to three in the end (and could have bought several more quite easily).

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, The Storyteller of Marrakesh

I just started browsing, and this was in front of me on the nearest table (a selection of writing from India and Pakistan). I recognised the author’s name from hearing about The Watch, a title which launched Chatto & Windus’ Hogarth imprint earlier in the year (see William Rycroft’s review, for example). I hadn’t heard of the novel before, but it concerns overlapping and contradictory stories (as a storyteller tries to uncover the truth about a couple’s disappearance), which is just the sort of thing that appeals to me.

Simona Sparaco, About Time

The adjacent table was of fiction in translation, which is something of which I want to read more. I’m always interested in reading books that use the fantastic in different ways; this novel is about a playboy who finds time speeding up for him, but no one else. I’d never heard of the book or its author (though the publisher, Pushkin Press, is a name I trust), but it interested me, so I went for it.

Richard Beard, Lazarus is Dead

This was on my list of ‘books I keep intending to buy, but never get around to’. It’s had plenty of praise (from John Self, for instance), and its promise of an idiosyncratic take on the Lazarus story had me intrigued anyway. I chose this novel narrowly over Svetislav Basara’s The Cyclist Conspiracy, a fact I record here partly as a reminder to myself not to forget about it!

If there’s a downside to buying interesting new books, it’s that there are also interesting old books to be read. But they’ll all still be there to discover again when the time comes. And so are the shops, which I’d heartily recommend you visit should you get the chance.

Borrowing

15th August 2012 / / 5 Comments
Photo credit: © Copyright Mark Anderson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
***
This building is Huddersfield Central Library. Strictly speaking, it’s not my local library (that would be a branch library, which I’m pleased still tohave); but it is the one I visit most often, and it’s where all my current loans are from. I don’t do that many library posts, but I thought it was a good time to go through what I’ve borrowed and why.
***

J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

I borrowed this because it’s the current monthly read of the NYRB Classics group on Goodreads, which I’d had recommended to me and wanted to join. OK, so the edition I borrowed was a Penguin one, but still… I’ve finished the book now, and rather enjoyed it: it tells of a soldier returned from the First World War, who takes on the job of uncovering a medieval wall-painting in a Yorkshire village church. Carr elegantly carries the theme of uncovering the hidden through to the novella’s relationships, and the whole is rather engaging.

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Another Penguin Modern CIassic, set in a bizarre retirement home. I saw it on the same shelf as the Carr, had never heard of book or author – but it looked interesting. ‘One of the most original, joyful, satisfying and quietly original novels of the twentieth century,’ says Ali Smith on the back cover – sounds worth a read to me.

M. John Harrison, Viriconium

It’s been my intention for some time now to read M. John Harrison, because I never really have. Now I’m going to do it: the Viriconium omnibus first, then the Kefahuci Tract trilogy by next spring – because chances are that Empty Space will be shortlisted for the Clarke next year.

Dorothy Whipple, High Wages

A number of bloggers speak very highly of Persephone Books, who republish ‘neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers’ (says their website). I’ve never read one of their volumes myself, so when I saw this in the library, I thought I’d give it a try. The book itself is a very nicely-produced object; and the story – an exploration of retail in 1920s Lancashire – is something I wouldn’t generally go for, so I’ll be interested to see what it’s like.

Banana Yoshimoto, Hardboiled & Hard Luck

Another book I picked up on spec. Yoshimoto was on my list of authors I wanted to read; this double novella was on the shelves; so why not? I mean, that kind of serendipity is one of the great things about libraries, isn’t it?

(Post cross-linked to Library Loot on The Captive Reader.)

Various Authors giveaway winners

3rd August 2012 / / 0 Comments

Thanks to everyone who entered to win a copy of Various Authors. I’ve pulled the names out of the hat (as it were), and the winners are:

  • Brionna
  • Ben Osborn
  • naomifrisby
  • Annoné Butler
  • Lois Bennett
  • HabibiBoo

I hope you all enjoy the anthology. If you weren’t lucky enough to win one yourself, though, you can buy Various Authors from The Fiction Desk, or take out a year’s subscription (highly recommended). And thanks once again to The Fiction Desk for kindly allowing me to give the books away.

July wrap-up

31st July 2012 / / 0 Comments

The most significant development on the blog in July was the Sunday Story Society. This is a book club for short stories, which I’m hosting here every two weeks. We’ve already discussed Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box”; this Sunday, we’ll start talking about Rotimi Babatunde’s Caine Prize-winning story “Bombay’s Republic“. Take a look at our schedule for the rest of the year.

One of my favourite reads this month – and of 2012 so far – was Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo, a Senegalese folktale extended and spliced with chaos theory. Gav and Simon of The Readers podcast invited me on to discuss it, and I also posted a review of the novel.

Another candidate for ‘book of the month’ – although completely different – was Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child. Where Lord’s novel revolves around storytelling, Ridgway’s is the opposite: an anti-detective novel that fragments as you read it, and where all attempts to impose narrative on the world fail.

Katie Kitamura’s The Longshot was a great debut: an intense study of a mixed martial artist and his trainer, pinning their hopes on one last fight. Other fine debuts came in the shape of Kerry Hudson’s coming-of-age tale, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma; and Katy Darby’s Victorian-set fusion of melodrama and social commentary, The Whores’ Asylum.

The Madman of Freedom Square by Hassan Blasim and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain were a couple of excellent books – one a story collection, one a novel – offering perspectives on different aspects of the Iraq War. I reviewed them in a double feature.

This month, I also reviewed Stuart Evers’ If This Is Home; Xiaolu Guo’s UFO in Her Eyes; Nikita Lalwani’s The Village; Toby Litt’s Ghost Story  David Logan’s Half-Sick of Shadows (at The Zone); Rosy Thornton’s Ninepins; and Benjamin Wood’s The Bellwether Revivals.

In addition, I blogged about the longlists of two awards: the Man Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize.

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