In the past, I’ve been terrible about completing shortlist readings for literary prizes. Not because I wasn’t interested in the prizes themselves, but because I always found out about the shortlist right before the prize was announced. And I am really not a fast reader, as I explain in part in my post on living with adult ADHD.
This spring, however, I did manage to learn early on about the list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It does help that the final selection was postponed until September, which will hopefully give me time to read all the contenders (plus two extra novels, since one of the candidates is the third volume of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Cromwell, which I had yet to start).
I’m starting my reading this week, with Hamnet, by Maggie O’ Farrell, since I was recently given an ARC of the novel (under its alternate title, Hamnet and Judith). Below is the complete list, not necessarily in the order in which I’ll read them (although I’m probably leaving Mantel for last, so I can tackle the trilogy at once). The links are affiliated, and will take you to Bookshop.org, a great site that supports independent bookstores.
- Hamnet by Maggie O’ Farrell
- Dominicana by Angie Cruz
- A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes (No Bookshop.org link available at this time)
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
- Weather by Jenny Offill
- The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (the other novels in this trilogy are Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies).
