Quote:
2010 Giller Prize Longlist
The 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize jury announced its longlist on Monday, September 20. This is the 17th year of the prize and the second year that the prize has featured two non-Canadians as jurors. The jury panel - Canadian broadcaster and journalist Michael Enright, American author and professor Claire Messud, and award-winning UK writer Ali Smith – chose 13 titles out of nearly 100 books.
The jury read solidly for almost six months as submission after submission made its way to the UK (Ali), Cambridge, Mass., then Berlin (Claire) and Toronto as well as a small Newfoundland fishing village Michael calls home during the summer. Conference calls were held, books were read and re-read, e-mails flew back and forth.
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Go here to see the
longlist.
The short list contains five finalists:
The Matter with Morris by David Bergen
Phyllis Bruce Books/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Jury citation (excerpt): David Bergen's most accomplished novel yet is an unforgettable story with a vitality and charm and intelligence all its own. Bergen proves once again that he is one of our finest writers, dazzling us with his wit and touching us with his compassion.
Available as an ebook from:
kobobooks amazon sony
Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod
Biblioasis
Jury citation (excerpt): Alexander MacLeod’s debut story collection ... are a careful marriage of the lyric and the narrative: each unfolds around a resonant, ineffable moment, replete with history and emotion, a Gordian knot comprised of all the strands that lead up to and away from it. Sensitive and subtle, MacLeod is a writer through whose deliberately partial and quotidian pieces shimmers life’s unspoken complexity.
Available as an ebook from:
kobobooks amazon sony
This Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky
Thomas Allen Publishers
Jury citation (excerpt): Story after story in this resonant and quietly apocalyptic collection deliver a sharp analysis of contemporary surreality and the madness of modern homogeneity. Its stories are tender, broken, deceptively unassuming then unexpectedly breathtaking. It holds its delicate oppositions - numbness and understanding, smartness and tragedy - with discipline and flair, and marks the arrival of a gifted writer.
Available as an ebook from:
kobobooks amazon sony
The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud
Gaspereau Press
Jury citation: The Sentimentalists charts the painful search by a dutiful daughter to learn - and more importantly, to learn to understand - the multi-layered truth which lies at the moral core of her dying father’s life. Something happened to Napoleon Haskell during his tour of duty in Vietnam that changed his life and haunted the rest of his days. At the behest of his daughters, he moves from a trailer in North Dakota to a small lakeside town in Ontario where his family can only watch as his past slips away in a descending fog of senility. The writing here is trip-wire taut as the exploration of guilt, family and duty unfolds.
Available as an ebook from:
kobobooks amazon sony
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
House of Anansi Press
Jury citation (excerpt): "Annabel" is a beautifully told, fully-realized tale of a mysterious child gifted or cursed by a rare condition at birth. Though his name is Wayne, he is neither fully boy nor girl. ... An examination of human nature abounding with insight into the nature of gender, the spare, elegant prose compels the reader to engage utterly with the material. It is a startling first novel that is by turn touching, inventive and ultimately brave.
Available as an ebook from:
kobobooks amazon sony
A pity so few of the titles are available as e-books; and most aren't even in print in the US, at least based on amazon.com.
A live televised gala event from the Toronto Four Seasons Hotel, will be held Tue Nov 9 on Bravo and
CTV to announce the winner.
UPDATED: All five titles on the shortlist are now available as e-books; I have updated the kobobooks links.