Books by and for independent women

Orange Prize Shortlist Readings

On Monday, the six authors shortlisted for this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction convened on the stage of the Southbank Centre‘s Queen Elizabeth Hall to read, chat and answer questions from the audience ahead of tonight’s awards ceremony.

With Emma Donoghue‘s Room hotly tipped as the bookies’ favourite to win (with the odds probably increasing further after yesterday’s announcement that the Orange Prize Youth Panel had chosen the controversial novel as their winner), chair Bettany Hughes was swift to squash any inkling that there might be some significance to the authors’ seating arrangements; apparently it was all done alphabetically (honest, guv’nor).

“Women’s writing is in rude health,” said Bettany Hughes in her introduction, describing the deluge of submissions as “an embarrassment of riches.” And the six shortlisted authors certainly showcase the diversity of contemporary fiction written by women.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the six contenders for the award are (in alphabetical order, natch): Emma Donoghue for Room, Aminatta Forna for The Memory of Love, Emma Henderson with Grace Williams Says It Loud, Nicole Krauss with Great House, Téa Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife and Kathleen Winter with Annabel.

As well as showcasing the writing by each author, the readings also allowed the audience an insight into their personalities too; Emma Donoghue‘s reading was bouyant, warm and enthusiastic, capturing the uplifting resilience of her imprisoned characters (she later described Jack as “the hero of his own fairytale“).

Nicole Krauss was coolly captivating, while the youngest shortlisted author, Téa Obreht, was the one who won my heart with her bold, dramatic reading from The Tiger’s Wife.

Kathleen Winter, despite choosing a passage from Annabel which did not have the same poetic magic as other parts of the book, was the most memorable for her playful performance at the podium, including stripping off a pair of bright orange lacy undercrackers and tying them round her head.

They were a nod to the award’s sponsor, she said, as well as the far-flung isolation of communities like Labrador, where Annabel is set, explaining their obsession with pop culture despite limited access to the latest fashions and trends. “Ever since the wedding, we’re fascinated by fascinators, so this is an improvised equivalent.”

She also explained her decision to set Annabel in Labrador, where gender roles are still binary and women are less valued than men: “Labrador is a strong and amazing landscape, and one I was familiar enough with to be able to imagine to experience of the real-life intersex children who lived there.”

Talking about the methodology of writing their books, both Emma Donoghue and Emma Henderson said that the research for their novels had been more upsetting than the writing.

Emma Henderson explained that Grace Williams Says it Loud is autobiographical to the extent that her sister Clare had been the model for the novel’s narrator, but added that the events in the book combine both memory and imagination; “it’s not a chronicle.”

Aminatta Forna confessed that while writing her male central characters, she had done several things as a way of getting into a male mindset, including learning to pee standing up and lying to her mother (“I thought to myself, what would a man do?”).

“A novel at its very best is a conversation,” said Nicole Krauss in a response to a question about readers’ and critics’ response to Great House, although she did admit: “in my own life I’m not fetishistic about objects, so I break out in a rash when I hear Great House described as stories connected by a desk. It was a musical improvisation, with the stories and voices echoing off each other, so I never expected others to interpret it as a narrative puzzle.”"

A recurring theme of the readings and of the authors’ answers to the audience afterwards was the use of literature to record and articulate the endurance and resilience of the human spirit, with Téa Obreht summarising the our compulsion for storytelling: “We make myths out of everything. It’s how we tell ourselves to the people who come after us.”

Who’s your favourite to win?

Jane Bradley