It’s that time of year again! The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 longlist was announced earlier today. The list is surprising and vast in subject matter. These 20 novels were chosen from a list of 150 books which the judges read and narrowed down between themselves. There are some oldies and some debut novels too. On the longlist of 20 titles there are approximately 8 that I’m interested in reading and one of those 8, I already started to read last year, A Little Life. I got to page 200 and quit. There are actually two I’ve already read. Now that’s a first for me: Ruby and The Green Road. I was happy to see three black women on the list: Ruby a debut novel by Cythinia Bond which I read in 2014 at its release, Pleasantville by Attica Locke which is the second thriller, starring the lawyer Jay Porter from her first award winning Black Water Rising, and lastly The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean author.
Sci-fi lovers will be happy to see The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which has been getting oodles of love everywhere since its release in 2014. Now what I’m a little surprised at are the novels on the list that were released in 2014. I thought the majority of the list would contain books from 2016 and January 2015 at the latest. I’m a little disappointed that Jam on the Vine (2015) by LaShonda Katrice Barnett didn’t make it to the longlist. So since books from 2014 can be nominated as well, let’s just hope A Little Life doesn’t cast a shadow over the newer books. It’s obvious it will make its way onto the shortlist because of it enormous popularity. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll definitely let you know if and when I finally finish it. 😉
The shortlist will be announced Monday, 11 April and there will be a shortlist reading and discussion event on the eve of the announcement of the winner, 7 June. The winner will take home £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’ on 8 June 2016 in the Royal Festival Hall in London. This year’s presiding Chair of Judges is Margaret Mountford, a lawyer and businesswoman accompanied by judges Laurie Penny, award-winning author Elif Shafak, singer-songwriter and author Tracey Thorn and broadcast journalist, Naga Munchetty.
Good luck and may the best books go on to the shortlist!
Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 longlist:
A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson
Rush Oh! – Shirley Barrett
Ruby – Cynthia Bond
The Secret Chord – Geraldine Brooks
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding – Jackie Copleton
Whispers Through a Megaphone – Rachel Elliott
The Green Road – Anne Enright
The Book of Memory – Petina Gappah
Gorsky – Vesna Goldsworthy
The Anatomist’s Dream – Clio Gray
At Hawthorn Time – Melissa Harrison
Pleasantville – Attica Locke
The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney
The Portable Veblen – Elizabeth McKenzie
Girl at War – Sara Nović
The House at the Edge of the World – Julia Rochester
The Improbability of Love – Hannah Rothschild
My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
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