Some very interesting nominations so far!
I looked around for two intriguing contemporary literary books that (a) haven't been nominated here before (in fact I don't even think either author has ever been nominated), (b) haven't already been marked as read by my lit club GR friends, (c) weren't already on my to-read lists and (d) were available in our various countries as ebooks. Here are the results. Oddly, both include cold, isolated islands, both are by female authors and feature women, and both are from 2013, though it was chance as I only realised these things while writing this post.
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, 2013
Miles Franklin Literary Award winner, European Union Prize for Literature UK winner, Costa Book Award for Novel nominee, among others
From
Goodreads:
Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, , and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wanted it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sets off a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. But there is also Jake's past—hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present.
With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, 2013
Man Booker Prize nominee, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction nominee, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction winner, among others
From
Goodreads:
On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl names Nao Yasutani. Ruth--a writer who finds the lunchbox--suspects that it is debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami. Once she beings to read the diary, Ruth quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of Nao's fate. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Nao, uprooted from her home in the U.S., bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster, has decided to end her life. But first, she wants to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary...