Not all eyes are on the Prizes
By Noah Richler - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - 0 Comments
The reality of book awards is a crapshoot, but the crapshoot matters less and less
Gil Adamson’s The Outlander, Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Last Crossing, Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi—and, this year, Michael Crummey’s Galore. What a fabulous Giller list, a litany of some of the best (and bestselling) Canadian novels of the last several years—but not one of them shortlisted for the prize! Drat.
Instead we must debate these five—Kim Echlin’s The Disappeared, Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean, Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man, Colin McAdam’s Fall, and Anne Michaels’s The Winter Vault—and, if you’re into the game of it, whose choices they might be. Linden MacIntyre? An Alistair MacLeod pick, surely. Anne Michaels? Victoria Glendinning, chair of the Booker bunch that gave Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient half the prize, must have backed her floating prose, no? And Kim Echlin’s Cambodian romp—well, isn’t Russell Banks a fan of the Caribbean and other steamy, politically charged places? And who, tell me, is the one who cares for McAdam’s libidinous and truncated teen dialogue? Continue…
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Margaret Atwood didn’t kill me
By Rebecca Eckler - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - 9 Comments
