Award season is hitting its stride, and this year’s National Book Award finalists have been announced. This year’s fiction list includes something of an invasion from overseas, with Peter Carey, surely the first Booker shortlister to also be a National Book Award finalist (but eligible for both because the Australian-born author is now a U.S. citizen), and Lionel Shriver, who, though a U.S. citizen is often more commonly associated with London, where she makes her home.
The nomination for Shriver validates a provactively titled piece that ran in these pages this year, Lionel Shriver: America’s Best Writer?, which suggested that she deserves far more critical attention. Rounding out the fiction list are Nicole Krauss, recently lauded as a New Yorker “20 Under 40” writer, and a pair of relative unknowns Jaimy Gordon and Karen Tei Yamashita, each writing for small indie presses, McPherson and Coffee House, respectively. Also notable, the fiction finalist number four women versus one male author, and Jonathan Franzen and his blockbuster literary novel Freedom are nowhere to be found.
The other big name to note is rocker Patti Smith, who earned a nod for her memoir.
Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (excerpt)
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
Great House by Nicole Krauss (excerpt)
So Much for That by Lionel Shriver (excerpt)
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (excerpt)
Nonfiction:
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (excerpt)
Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq by John W. Dower (excerpt)
Just Kids by Patti Smith (excerpt)
Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward by Justin Spring (excerpt)
Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War by Megan K. Stack (excerpt)
Poetry:
The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber (excerpt [pdf])
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (poem)
By the Numbers by James Richardson (poem)
One with Others by C.D. Wright (poems)
Ignatz by Monica Youn (poem)
Young People’s Literature:
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Dark Water by Laura McNeal
Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Any of these you would particularly recommend?
I haven't read any of them, yet, but if I were going to chose two to start it would be Black Swan Green (which is sitting on my "to be read" shelf) and Seven Lies because I loved James Lasdun's book, The Horned Man. I'd love to hear any informed opinions, though.
I thought Lasdun's was brilliantly good; Lasdun and Mitchell are the only 2 I've read. The two I'm most excited about reading next are Claire Messud and Sarah Waters; both on all accounts very good but the advance buzz on Messud is particularly enthusiastic.
I have read and enjoyed Black Swan Green, and The Secret River is in my to-be-read pile.
I loved David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, so Black Swan Green is on my list to read even though I hear it's completely different.
Everyone loves Peter Carey except for me – I don't hate him, I just find him pretty good, not great.
And yes, Mitchell did get robbed for the Booker with Cloud Atlas.
MacGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was one of the best books I read last year. I will certainly read his latest. And I'm reading Waters's Fingersmith now and can't wait to begin Night Watch