[sun surfer]

All right, I'm going to post my nominees all at once and the update the list and get the vote started.

All my nominees ended up being Booker nominees, but I really did look at nominees from other prizes! My longlist was very long and I slowly winnowed to four and then three, and it just happened that they all ended up being Booker nominees (even the fourth that I'm not nominating). Oddly enough, since I tend to notice little things like this afterwards, these books also didn't have many or any other nominations from other awards, while most on my longer list had multiple nominations each from different awards. Also oddly, of the final four I had narrowed to, one was published in 1970, one 1980 and one 1990 (the other breaking the mould being published 2016). For anybody curious I'll mention here rather than at the end that the book that I had to decide on not to nominate was The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark from 1970, nominee for the (Lost) Man Booker Prize, something of a thriller, a 'whydunnit' so to speak, about a woman who suddenly decides to rather drastically change herself over and fly south, where something bad will happen. Anyway, onto my actual nominees!


-Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

This was nominated for the Booker and the Goldsmiths Prize. It's about an adult daughter and mysteriously partially paralysed mother who travel together to the coast of southern Spain for a 'last stand' of sorts to see a famous but strange doctor to try to cure the mother. Goodreads, 220 pages, 2016, South Africa & England

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She's frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and Rose travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant, Dr. Gomez—their very last chance—in the hope that he might cure Rose's unpredictable limb paralysis, but Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Rose's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia's role as detective—tracking Rose's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain—deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.

-Lies of Silence by Brian Moore

This was nominated for the Booker. It's about a man who, during the Troubles, is ordered to park his car at a Belfast hotel carpark. There is a moral dilemma in that he believes the car contains a bomb that will kill many people at the hotel if exploded, but he is warned that if he doesn't do it his kidnapped wife (whom he was on the verge of leaving for another woman) will be killed. Goodreads, 230 pages, 1990, Northern Ireland, Canada & the U.S.

When Michael Dillon is ordered by the IRA to park his car in the carpark of a Belfast hotel, he is faced with a moral choice which leaves him absolutely nowhere to turn. He knows that he is planting a bomb that would kill and maim dozens of people. But he also knows that if he doesn't, his wife will be killed.

-Pascali's Island by Barry Unsworth

This was nominated for the Booker. It's a book about paranoia set on a small Greek island in 1908, the waning days of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. A man, Basil Pascali, has lived there for 20 years working as a spy, regularly sending updates to Constantinople but never hearing a peep from anyone there regarding his mission, or anything else for that matter. He begins to become worried the villagers might have found him out, and in the midst of this a charming Englishman arrives on the island and becomes entangled with the woman that Pascali pines for. This all leads to a 'complex game' being played out. Goodreads, 192 pages, 1980, England

The year is 1908, the place, a small Greek island in the declining days of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. For twenty years Basil Pascali has spied on the people of his small community and secretly reported on their activities to the authorities in Constantinople. Although his reports are never acknowledged, never acted upon, he has received regular payment for his work. Now he fears that the villagers have found him out and he becomes engulfed in paranoia. In the midst of his panic, a charming Englishman arrives on the island claiming to be an archaeologist, and charms his way into the heart of the woman for whom Pascali pines. A complex game is played out between the two where cunning and betrayal may come to haunt them both.