Kathy Hamilton The Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist has been announced and with it comes the surprising news that this year is made up of entirely first-time nominees! In a year when the publishing industry flourished, it’s exciting to see a shortlist filled with new nominees. So, which exciting books made the cut?
What Is the Women’s Prize for Fiction?
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award celebrating and honouring fiction written by women. The inspiration for the award came in 1991, when the Booker Prize failed to shortlist a single book by a woman, despite more than half of the books published that year being by female authors. Each year the winner of the prize receives £30,000 and a bronze sculpture called Bessie.
Although the prize has drawn its fair share of criticism over the years. Not least for the fact it excludes male authors. I do believe that ‘the more awards the better’ is the right approach. Of course, it would be fantastic to believe that great books are able to shine on their own merit, but that’s not the case. I love the fact that The Women’s Prize is increasingly interesting in championing the incredible diversity of women’s writing in English and this year’s shortlist really reflects that aim.
Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2021
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.
Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
What The Critics Are Saying
A much-anticipated second novel from the award-winning author of Homegoing. Transcendent Kingdom charts the experiences of a Ghanaian immigrant family in modern America. A searing story story of love, loss and redemption, and the myriad ways we try to rebuild our lives from the rubble of our collective pasts.
How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
In Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, Lala’s grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers. For Wilma, it’s the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result.
When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope – of life after losing a baby in the most terrible of circumstances and marrying the wrong man. And Mira Whalen? It’s about keeping alive, trying to make sense of the fact that her husband has been murdered, and she didn’t get the chance to tell him that she loved him after all.
What The Critics Are Saying
How the One-armed Sister Sweeps Her House is the powerful, intense story. One of three marriages, and of a beautiful island paradise. Where, beyond the white sand beaches and the wealthy tourists, lies poverty, menacing violence and the story of the sacrifices some women make to survive.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
A woman known for her viral social media posts travels the world speaking to her adoring fans, her entire existence overwhelmed by the internet – or what she terms ‘the portal’. Are we in hell? the people of the portal ask themselves. Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: ‘Something has gone wrong,’ and ‘How soon can you get here?’ As real life and its stakes collide with the increasing absurdity of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
What The Critics Are Saying
Irreverent and sincere, poignant and delightfully profane. No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the infinite scroll and a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ story lines intersect?
What The Critics Are Saying
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family. From the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides which thunder up staircases, the clouds which move in slow procession through the upper halls.
On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food and waterlilies to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
What The Critics Are Saying
Weaving a rich gothic atmosphere, the author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell mines a darkly fantastical vision with a tale of a very singular house and its mysterious inhabitants.
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?
Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.
But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world, even as their mother’s secrets begin to unravel, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.
What The Critics Are Saying
Unsettled Ground is a heart-stopping novel of betrayal and resilience, love and survival. It is a portrait of life on the fringes of society. That explores with dazzling emotional power how we can build our lives on broken foundations, and spin light from darkness.
Who Will Win The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021?
“We did want to champion books that introduced the reader to little-told stories.”
– Bernardine Evaristo, Chair of Judges
This year is the first time since 2005 that the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist is made up of first time nominees. Why is this important? Well, in a strange year full of upheaval it is interesting the look at the way the Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist is seeking to champion fresh voices and new ideas. The common thread of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist seems to be the duality of our lives. The multi-faceted, generational traumas that we all carry within us and the impact and fallout they can have on life. In the midst of this Piranesi seems to stand apart and was describes as making the shortlist because of its complete originality in style.
Last year, it felt that Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell immediately stood out as a potential winner. For me, this years shortlist is a lot more nuanced, it genuinely feels as though each of the six books could be a winner. Though, if I had to guess, I’d say that Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendant Kindgom feels timely and fresh enough to emerge on top. Don’t put any bets on it though, because this years Women’s Prize for Fiction feels full of surprises.
