Peter Carey's Parrot and Oliver in America was short-listed for the 2010 National Book Award in the US and for the Man Booker Prize in the UK. It won neither. However, judging from the reviews, this 400-page book is well worth the read. Peter Carey, originally from Australia, is the only novelist to be nominated for Man Booker Prize and National Book Award in the same year.
The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize 2010
Howard Jacobson's novel, said to be a comic novel with a serious theme, was the surprise win of the 2010 Booker Prize. His main character, Treslove, is a gentile obsessed with Jewishness. As the Financial Times reviewer notes that Treslove, is "part Woody Allen, part Larry David, with a significant dash of Sigmund Freud, which should make for an entertaining novel. Sales for the novel increased 1,920 percent the week after the award was announced making it, immediately, a best seller in hardback fiction in the UK.
Room by Emma Donoghue was a Surprise Bestseller
Room is a novel about a five-year old and his mother who are the only inhabitants of a room from which they can't escape because they are held hostage while the boy's mother is raped by the hostage taker. Loosely based on the real-life story of Josef Fritzl, Donoghue, an Irish novelist living in Canada, says she wrote it from the perspective of the child because that was the whole concept – the child's eye view. It is much more about the relationship between mother and child than anything else and readers worldwide have been praising it as a wonderful novel.
Jaimy Gordon wins 2010 National Book Award with Lord of Misrule
For a mid-career novelist, winning the National Book Award with Lord of Misrule was a surprise for Jaimy Gordon, as the novel, her fourth, was the underdog. NPR's book editor, Rachel Syme, describes it as "a weird, magical tale about a dusty West Virginia town and its downtrodden racetrack." It "follows the lives of jockeys, loan sharks, metal smiths and other outcasts over the course of a year and four horse races." Jane Smiley, another best selling author, reviewed the book for the Washington Post saying, "Gordon has thought so thoroughly about her characters that each voice dips into racetrack lingo in a distinctive way. It is an impressive performance."
The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a Debut Novel, Topped the Bestseller List for 2009 and 2010
By the close of 2010 it's likely that The Help will be 100 weeks on the bestseller list as compiled by independent bookstores in the US. The novel takes place during the civil rights movement in Mississippi, where, according the book's blurb, "black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver." In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Stockett, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, says she wrote The Help because she regretted never having asked her beloved family maid "what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family."
Although few books become bestsellers, the novels that do go on to win literary awards, usually end up somewhere on the bestseller list. However, books like The Help, which do not win major awards, become so popular by word of mouth that they often end up topping the bestseller list and staying there, even two years running. Sometimes, word of mouth, is the strongest indicator of what makes a book worth reading.
- Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon is published in the US by McPherson
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett is published in the US by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
- Room by Emma Donoghue is published in the US by Little, Brown and Company
- Parrot and Oliver in America by Peter Carey is published in the US by Knopf
- The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson is published in the US by Bloomsbury
Christine Breen-Williams - Writer, Homeopath, Gardener Christine has a MA in Literature from University College, Dublin and is a published writer.
