Books I Haven't Read Yet: Orange Prize 2006

The longlist for the 2006 Orange Prize was announced today,
which reminds me - I still haven't read last year's winner...

We Need To Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

Not that I needed any more reminding: Lionel Shriver was the guest on yesterday's Bookclub on BBC Radio 4, and the discussion convinced me that maybe I should give it another try. "...convinced me that maybe..."? You see how I'm backsliding already? I started reading it last year but didn't get very far - I found Eva Khatchadourian's convoluted sentences rather clunky. Who speaks, or rather writes letters, using phrases like: "flimsy pressboard cabinetry", "impervious for codswallop" or "cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions"?

The Orange Prize is open to "any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality". As a matter of balance I feel there ought to be a Lemon Prize for the worst full-length novel written in English by a man - although I suppose it would be difficult for anyone to beat Jeffrey Archer.

Anyway this year's Orange longlist includes two titles from last year's Booker Prize shortlist: the only one that I haven't read yet - On Beauty by Zadie Smith; and The Accidental by Ali Smith which won the Whitbread Novel Award in January. Of course The Booker Prize is restricted to citizens of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, whereas the Orange Prize is open to the rest of the world: so Marilynne Robinson has to regarded as a strong contender with Gilead which has already won the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion (worth $200,000 - almost four times as much as the Orange Prize), the Unitarian Universalist Association's Melcher Book Award, the US National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction no less!