WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION | 2019 WINNER PREDICTIONS

We are now just a few days away from the announcement of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction winner. It’ll be announced on June 5th. This is the first year I’ve even come close to finishing the entire shortlist – and I’ve come very close. I’ve read five of the six books, and am halfway through the final book. Below I’ll share my thoughts on each (along with links to reviews where applicable – just click on the book cover) and discuss my choice for winner, and which book or books I think have the best shot at actually being selected. Here goes!

I listened to this on audiobook earlier this year, before it was selected for the prize, and felt like I’d hit an early high note in my reading for the year. What stood out most to me was the writing. There were many lines I pulled out my hard copy to mark, and even more that just had me nodding in wonder. There is a polish to the writing in this book, and a sense that no word is misplaced. It’s topical – dealing as it does with issues of race and wrongful incarceration in America – but also deeply personal. I particularly loved the narration, which brought the story and characters spectacularly to life. I’ve heard criticisms of the book – the characters aren’t always believable, their actions are sometimes not in keeping with their set up, there’s a lot of privilege here despite the circumstances, and the dual narration and partial epistolary style will either work for you or it won’t. But it worked for me. I can see why so much praise has been heaped on it.

This was the first book from the longlist I picked up to read. I’ll admit – it was mainly because it was short and easy. It’s a thriller, on the face of it, which makes it seem like it should fit into genre more than literary fiction. But after I finished it I could see the subtle thematic threads that are delicately woven into the story, and the depth that is there if you look for it. It still doesn’t have as much depth and impact as some of the other books on the list, but it definitely goes beyond what is normally found in a thriller. I loved the Nigerian culture and the complicated relationships that Braithwaite does such a good job of showing us. There’s a lot to recommend this book, and I definitely think that if you’re a thriller reader who likes a bit more creativity in your reads, this is one to pick up.

This is a hard one. I don’t think it’s objectively the strongest book on the list – it is overly detailed, it doesn’t evenly present its characters, it is a confused mixture of literary and gothic (possibly even fantastical) fiction and it presents a cast of vaguely unlikable characters. But it also represents what it is to be a mother, particularly an intelligent, driven one who has given up everything to stay at home with her kids, and how that decision can break so many parts of who she used to be. I identified so strongly with this book that I can tell it created significant bias. I don’t think it will win, and probably don’t really want it to, but I do think it is a very important book and should be widely read, particularly by new parents.

This was my first foray in to Greek mythology, and I didn’t expect much from it. I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed Miller’s choices and focus, I loved how she fleshed out her main character and how that character developed throughout the course of the book. There’s something for everyone here. Excellent character development, wonderful adventure stories, and of course the adherence to source material that will intrigue fans of mythology. Again, I didn’t think this book was perfect – I could see the constraints of the source material limiting Miller’s scope, and at times it felt like she was name dropping important characters from mythology for the sake of not leaving any out. But I loved Circe, flaws and all, and I will forever have a special place in my heart for her courage when it came to protecting those she loved.

Most recently finished on my list is this one. It’s another Greek re-telling, and having just read Circe under protest, I really wasn’t looking forward to it. I think that’s why it took me so long to get to it. But once I got into it I found it to be a fast-paced and easy read. I enjoyed the writing (for the most part) and didn’t find the war as off-putting as I expected to. I had issues with her choice to set up the narrative in places as if it were an interview, but without any explanation as to why that was, and I really didn’t see any point in switching to the third person view of Achilles for the odd chapter here and there throughout the book. These choices only served to interrupt the flow of the book and bring me out of it. But other than that I thought she did an excellent job of imagining the details of what life would have been like in a battle camp of an ongoing war, and the small horrors that would have entailed. I thought she made a smart choice placing us in the head of a slave who used to be a queen, because that perspective gave us the voice of the oppressed but one who understands what it is to be privileged and the contrast between the two.

This is the only book on the shortlist I haven’t yet finished. I am working on it, and if I do finish it before the 5th I will post my review and come back and add a link here (so if you’re reading this the day of the prize announcement, try clicking the cover image to the left!). But I’m halfway, which I think allows me to at least have an opinion on style and, to a certain degree, content. This has been a marmite book, and a book that will either work for the reader or won’t. It’s also one that has different assessments based on the reading experience and its success in accomplishing what it set out to do. It’s hard to read in hard copy if you don’t like dense prose – it’s written in a stream-of-consciousness style that, when combined with the Irish language patterns, can be overwhelming. That said, it is also very effective in creating a nearly physical sense of the claustrophobia of the setting (Ireland during The Troubles) and social situation of the main character. I highly recommend trying this on audiobook if you are struggling with it on the page – I am switching back and forth between the two and find hearing the inflection and tone of the language really helps me understand the flow of the prose.

It’s hard to decide which I want to win, let alone which I think will win. In terms of my enjoyment and admiration of these books, I think they’d go in roughly this order:

An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
Ordinary People – Diana Evans
My Sister the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
Circe – Madeline Miller
The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker
Milkman – Anna Burns

But if I were to rank them in terms of quality of writing and success in accomplishing what they set out to do, it’d look more like this:

Milkman – Anna Burns
An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
Circe – Madeline Miller
Ordinary People – Diana Evans
My Sister the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker

It’s hard to then predict which I think will win, since bias weighs so heavily into my own opinions of the books. If I had to guess, I’d think that Circe has a decent shot at it, as does Milkman. But I wouldn’t be surprised if An American Marriage were to edge out the competition, and it might even be my favourite to win. I’d like to see Ordinary People win because I think it deserves a wider audience, but I don’t know if it is as strong a piece of writing as the other three. So I think that An American Marriage and Milkman are my top picks in terms of quality, and Circe is a close third.

I’d love to hear your predictions – do you agree with my assessments? Which was your favourite? If you haven’t read them all yet, which are you most looking forward to picking up?