75 Books Challenge for 2011 : July TIOLI - Woman Authored Prize Winning Book

This is an off shoot of the main July TIOLI Challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/119773
There are so many good, thought provoking books listed for this challenge that I have to have a thread to talk about them. Some of the things I say will be spoilers, so I'll try to remember to indicate that. All the books I've listed have been Orange Prize winners and nominees, but I see there's also a Booker listed. Come discuss.

First off, I want to discuss Annabel. I gave the book only 4 stars because of a very inaccurate presentation of physical possibilities, but the more I think about the book, the higher my opinion of it. I think I'm going to have to raise it to 4.5, 4.75 if there were a way on the review site to do that. On the surface the book is about the dilemma of raising an intersex, sexually ambiguous child, and that topic in itself is worth examining; but I think overall the question is "how do you live in a world full of ambiguity?" Unless we live in a very strictly defined culture, I think that question applies to us all. From the beginning the book shows partially a strictly defined culture in a small town in Newfoundland, everyone works hard, the women keep the home fires burning and the men trap, hunt and fish to support the family. But the men are gone for months at a time. Women can't sit around waiting for the return of men to fix broken things or make day to day decisions. Women are both strictly defined and very independent in this culture. When Wayne is born with both male and female parts, Treadway decides with apparently little hesitation that only the boy part of his child will be nurtured, and that the girl part will be destroyed at every turn. That in itself seems like such a strange decision for him to have made. Treadway worships nature, for him to go against the nature of his child was such a wrenching decision, maybe that's what made him such a bad father. He was not true to himself, so he couldn't be true to his child. Those who have read it, what do you think?

The Outcast by Sadie Jones

Shortlist, 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction

This debut novel opens in 1957 London, as Lewis Aldridge, a 19 year old from the northern suburb of Waterford, is released from prison after serving a two year sentence. No one comes to greet him, and with no practical skills and nowhere to go, he chooses to return to the small town that has been distrustful of him since his mother's disappearance a decade earlier. Secrets abound in Waterford, where social appearances are far more important than genuine love and respect, and Lewis' reputation as a pariah and his continued troubles at home and in the community cause him to become progressively unrattled.

Lewis is befriended by Kit Carmichael, a younger girl who has always admired him. However, her father is Lewis' father's employer, a respected but abusive man who despises Lewis and threatens Kit and his older daughter, Tamsin, to avoid the wayward boy. As tensions build, Kit becomes the only person who can communicate with Lewis, whose own father adds to his increasingly unstable behavior.

The Outcast was a brilliant page turner for the first 2/3 of the book, with its realistic though disturbing portrayal of the lives and secrets in a small town community in postwar England, and the characters of Lewis, Kit and others were compelling. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 of the novel doesn't meet the same standard of excellence. However, this was still a very good novel, and one that I would strongly recommend.

Another book by a woman with a male central character. How does Sadie Jones do with that? I'm reading The Memory of Love and finding the male characters very authentic. I will get to The Outcast some time this month.

Uh...I just realized that I read this book for my "hot" author challenge, although it definitely applies to your challenge as well. I'll leave it here since I've already posted it, and post it to my challenge as well.

That's OK, I first put the book into my challenge then noticed you already had it, so moved it to yours. It does fit both places.

@ # 2:
I too, rated Annabel with 4 stars Joyce. I did love the book but I thought it had a couple too many hiccups to rate it higher and although I was very satisfied with the ending for Wayne/Annabel, I thought the author left a few tangles in the end. I would liked to have known some of the mother's closing thoughts and emotions as opposed to only the father's. I think it a fine book and I highly recommend it. With just those few changes/edits, I think I could have rated it a 5 star read.
belva

I also wondered why Jacinta was left out of the end of the story. It felt to me that she could have been headed for a career in art herself with her impressionist crocheting, or she could have just continued to be a typical village woman. I wonder why Kathleen Winter didn't continue with her story. Maybe she herself didn't know which direction to take her.

Just lurking! =) ~Jill

I seem to be the only person in the world who isn't thrilled by The Memory of Love. I find myself thinking up all kinds of stupid time wasting things to do instead of reading it. I started on Monday, and am only on page 159. The problem for me is that the flash backs show Elias Cole who doesn't respect women, doesn't even like them yet he becomes obsessed with Saffia from the first moment he sees her. Why would a person do this? To be fair, Elias doesn't seem to like or respect any of the men he knows either. Is Forna trying to show the irrationality and arbitrariness of life in Africa? I will continue reading, and all will be well, won't it?

Would Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale which won the 2005 Rita Awards Best Historical Novel work?

Is the Rita Award international, can authors from several countries be considered? If so, yes.

I just googled it. It looks like the Rita Award is only for American authors, so it wouldn't count, unless I have that wrong.

Heck if I can tell. While it's by the Romance Writers of America, the contest guidelines don't say anything about it having to be from America - only the English language translation.

Not a big deal, I found another book I can use.

> 9

Hi, Jill! I love having you lurk on Joyce's TIOLI thread! :)

The London Train by Tessa Hadley

Longlist, 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

The London Train consists of two linked stories, whose main characters each take a train from Cardiff to London. In the opening story, a writer travels to London in search of his daughter, who has withdrawn from university and only informs him of her whereabouts and condition, to the chagrin of her mother and his ex-wife. In the second half, a woman attempts to reestablish her life and balance in Cardiff as a librarian, after she leaves her husband, with whom she lived in London. During this portion the two characters meet, and a relationship of convenience results.

I found the first half of the book moderately interesting, but the second half was mind numbingly dull, and I sped through it to get to the end. The London Train would be best appreciated by those who like stories about relationships, particularly ones that are flawed, but would be of little or no interest to anyone else, in my opinion.

What can I say about The Memory of Love? I agree, it's a great book in it's discussion of war and the personal and societal aftermath. I loved the idea that a psychologist would think to go to Sierra Leone to help with PTSD. The scenes of the patients in the mental institution and even in the main hospital were chilling and hopeful. Chaining mental patients and drugging them into quietude, sending a paralyzed man home because there was no hope and no room for long term care then forgetting to talk to the family, wow. Beginning a book called The Memory of Love by talking about a stalker had me just about ready to chuck the book. I thought perhaps the author didn't realize the difference between obsessive need for possession and love, I was wrong. But the book comes down to a dynamic story of 3 men and a country with women, with few exceptions, being only victims and/or the object of desire, and/or the means of reproduction. I don't know why a woman would write such a book. Obviously she has had an affect on the world, and I'm willing to bet the women left behind in her native country do too. We can't fault a book for not being the book we wish it had been, so I gave it 4 stars, but can't help but wish Forna had done more with the women.

Grace Williams, a small misshapen woman, lead a small life which seemed to conspire to rip every small joy from her grasp. It wasn't until I'd finished Grace Williams Says it Loud that I found an article about Emma Henderson in which she says she based Grace's story on the life of her own sister who was institutionalized for 35 years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1281871/Emma-Henderson-talks-sister-...
Clare, the sister, and Grace, the fictional character, were both born small and developed slowly. Both had whatever small physical grasp they had on the world ripped from them at the age of 6 when they developed polio. Both were pronounced ineducable and the parents reluctantly caved to the pressure of caring for very difficult children by placing them in large, uncaring institutions. Both had a bratty, petted baby sister: Grace's was Sarah, Clare's was the author Emma herself. The picture that accompanies the article shows Clare sitting on a piano played by the feet of a fine looking boy. Could this be Philip Casterton Smelt, characterized as Daniel, the debonair armless bon vivant and love of Grace's life? Emma knew she hated visiting Clare in the institution, it stank, Clare stank, the atmosphere was noisy and oppressive. She couldn't give Clare back the years of her life lost to that institution, so instead she wrote, in lovely language, the way Clare may have seen the world. On the outside is a hunch backed, stiff limbed "spastic" from whose large mouth bow wows a large pink tongue; but her mind inside loves music, endures hardship and cruelty, and sees the world in its minute beauty. I hope, in her survivor's guilt, Emma made the institution more horrendous that it was. I'm sure much of the staff was uncaring or taunting, I'm sure many of Clare/Grace's belongings were stolen, but I so hope the sadistic doctor was just a boogie man nightmare. Hats off to Emma Henderson for writing about a life most of us have glimpsed only in passing but one that, with a different luck of the draw, could have been our own.

For whatever reason, this book is very difficult to get in the US so I'm including a little exerpt just to make you think you should make the effort to find it:
http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/images/shortlist/says_it_loud.pdf

I finished The Outcast by Sadie Jones, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008. It is a very good book, a very perceptive study of a boy rejected by one self centered member of his village after another, ganged up on by bullies thinking everything that is wrong in life is his fault, and being assured that that is true. His counterpart is a young girl from a wealthy family but with the same familial, though not societal rejection. The results of evil are demonstrated but not the cause. Why should Lewis's father reject him from the age of 7 onward, did war deaden his feelings or does the man have none? Why does Dicky Carmichael abuse only part of his family, and why does the family condone it? Why do people get so much more enjoyment from expressing hatred and conformity than love, individuality and humanity? Is it original sin? Can only religion answer these questions? Not in this book, religion comes off as equally self absorbed with the rest of the village. Sadie Jones doesn't discuss cause just effects. She does that well, but it's a mighty oppressive book. Probably I've just read too many Orange Prize nominees in a row. Can a book without evil be nominated? I don't know. After a while I'll read a few more and maybe find out.

Joyce,
In The Memory of Love, I felt that in Cole's interviews with Adrian, he felt challenged by Adrian and thought he had to take the stand he did. Just an aside there.

I'm sure you're right, Belva. I don't know how much Cole was self deluded and how much he was manipulative. It was a very complicated portrait of a pretty unlikeable character.