Brian Bethune looks at the intriguing list — 11 novels and two short-story collections
Stack of books
A high-profile jury–Margaret Atwood, 2011 Giller winner Esi Edugyan and American writer Jonathan Lethem–picked an intriguing 13-book long list for the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, which was announced Monday morning in Vancouver.
The two short-story collections—Lynn Coady’s Hellgoing and How To Get Along With Women by Elisabeth De Mariaffi—stand out, not least because of the praise in the jurors’ brief explanation: “Some of the short stories exhibit a scope and breadth one would normally associate with a novel.”
Among the 11 novels to get the nod, noteworthy is Dennis Bock’s Going Home Again, which has brought him reviews reminiscent of his Ash Garden, which was ignored by the Giller jury in 2001. Joseph Boyden, the 2007 winner, is back with The Orenda, joined by other prominent writers—including David Gilmour, Wayne Grady and three Newfoundland authors, Wayne Johnston, Lisa Moore and Michael Winter—on a list with fewer unknowns than last year’s.
The early betting may well coalesce around Moore. She is a writer of exquisite short fiction and the jury, after praising the actual short stories, added “some of the novels on this list have the distilled intensity one expects from short fiction.” Moore is also a two-time previous nominee. There will also be buzz around Wayne Johnston, one of the few major Canadian writers of his generation to not (yet) win the Giller, despite two short list and two long list appearances.
Then there’s simple arithmetic: a Newfoundlander, after all, has a 23 per cent chance of winning.
The long list of nominees:
This is the 20th anniversary of the Giller Prize. The cash prize is the largest award for fiction writers in Canada.
The finalists will be announced at an event in Toronto on Oct. 8.