This month, Kate Christensen trounced Annie Dillard (The Maytrees), David Leavitt (The Indian Clerk) and others to win the PEN/Faulkner award for Fiction. The Great Man, an art world satire, is her fourth novel.
The women-only Orange Prize longlist was announced last week–with more than a third being first-time authors–and A.S. Byatt had something to say to the U.K. Times about it:
The novelist A. S. Byatt told The Times that the Orange was a sexist prize, saying that she was so critical of what it stands for that she forbids her publishers to submit her novels for consideration. “Such a prize was never needed,” she said, noting that many works of literature were by women.
I agree, but I’m still hoping Booker-winner Anne Enright takes it home in June…
I’ve seen The Maytrees in the bookshops and browsed through it but haven’t bought it – yet. Didn’t realise it had been in line for an award.
Of the Orange longlist my favourite of the few I’ve read is Charlotte Mendelson’s When We Were Bad. If you don’t know, I’ve posted about it on my blog.