Without fail every year at least one new favourite book of mine comes from reading books from the longlist of the Women’s Prize for fiction.
This year’s longlist is looking just as promising, you can see the whole list here:
Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2018
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Sight by Jessie Greengrass
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
So far I have only read one on the list, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and I would highly recommend it to seniors! Two more sound particularly interesting to me, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, and H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker (this one because it sounds dystopian and I have a soft spot for dystopian fiction!)
ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE
Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life. Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely anything is better than…fine?
THE IDIOT
Elif Batuman
Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, teaches ESL and spends a lot of time thinking about what language – and languages – can do.
Along the way, she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses over Ivan, a mathematician from Hungary. The two conduct a hilarious relationship that culminates with Selin spending the summer teaching English in a Hungarian village and enduring a series of surprising excursions. Throughout her journeys, Selin ponders profound questions about how culture and language shape who we are, how difficult it is to be a writer, and how baffling love is.
H(A)PPY
Nicola Barker
Imagine a perfect world where everything is known, where everything is open, where there can be no doubt, no hatred, no poverty, no greed. Imagine a System which both nurtures and protects. A Community which nourishes and sustains. An infinite world. A world without sickness, without death. A world without God. A world without fear.
Last year there was Hagseed by Margaret Atwood and The Power by Naomi Alderman which went on to win it!
In 2016 we The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara, and The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerny which was the winner that year.
And in 2015 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and The Bees by Laline Paull.
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