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, 13:22, 13 March 2013Created page with "It used to be the Orange Prize for Fiction - now it's the Women's Prize for Fiction and these are the longlisted books: {{topten |author=Kitty Aldridge |title=A Trick I Learn..."
It used to be the Orange Prize for Fiction - now it's the Women's Prize for Fiction and these are the longlisted books:
{{topten
|author=Kitty Aldridge
|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but his life has been tough. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him, his step-father, a sofa-bound television make-over show addict and his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned to fend for themselves. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job though, it is here that he learns, ironically, about life and love, in the form of the delivery girl from the local florists.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Kate Atkinson
|title=Life After Life
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Ros Barber
|title=The Marlowe Papers
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak''
These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start of this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for his plays but also for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473024X</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Shani Boianjiu
|title=The People of Forever are not Afraid
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Gillian Flynn
|title=Gone Girl
|rating=5
|genre=Thriller
|summary= There’s a distressing moment in any long-term relationship where you realise that, in practice, happily ever after looks a lot like an eternity of small, snarling arguments about who forgot to buy food, who should take out the rubbish and who is responsible for that mouldering pile of clothes in the corner of the bedroom. Domestic bliss is often more like very polite guerrilla warfare between two people who love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives fighting about it. You and your partner are absolutely in each other’s pockets – but no matter how close you are, there’s always one last barrier you can’t break down. You aren’t them, and they aren’t you, and so you can never truly know what’s really going on inside that well-known head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753827662</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Sheila Heti
|title=How Should a Person Be?
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=A M Homes
|title=May We Be Forgiven
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083242</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Barbara Kingsolver
|title=Flight Behaviour
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571290779</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Deborah Copaken Kogan
|title=The Red Book
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844089177</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Hilary Mantel
|title=Bring up the Bodies
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Thomas Cromwell is now very far from his humble beginnings. He is Henry VIII's chief minister. Katherine of Aragorn is no longer Queen. The Princess Mary has been disinherited. Anne Boleyn wears the crown and has produced a daughter, Elizabeth. But there is no sign of a son and Henry is beginning to regret his secession from Rome. We pick up from [[Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel|Wolf Hall]] during the royal progress of 1535 and from there, we chart the destruction of the new Queen.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007315090</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Bonnie Nadzam
|title=Lamb
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary= David Lamb is anchored to his life by his career, his affair-ridden marriage and caring for his father. Over time, his wife divorces him, his father dies and his employers insist he takes a period of enforced leave. So what's left? There is just one constant remaining: his friendship with Tommie who, he feels, would be an ideal holiday companion. He suggests that they both take a short trip as it would do them both good and Tommie agrees eagerly. The adventure then begins in the form of a journey to a beautiful, remote cabin. David is 54 years old and Tommie? She's 11.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091944317</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Emily Perkins
|title=The Forrests
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809230</amazonuk>
}}
by Bloomsbury
{{topten
|author=Michele Roberts
|title=Ignorance
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Francesca Segal
|title=The Innocents
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Francesca Segal's debut novel, ''The Innocents'' is set in upper class, Jewish, North London. Adam is about to marry his childhood sweetheart, Rachel, and is working as a lawyer in her father's business. Into this romantic idyl though comes Ellie, Rachel's wayward cousin who has been forced to flee the US following an appearance in an 'art house' movie of dubious repute and, it turns out, further scandal. Ellie is everything that Rachel is not; a model, worldly, sexy and tempting. As Adam gets drawn into wanting to 'rescue' her and look after her, his whole future with Rachel is thrown into doubt and the story becomes a will they, won't they get together narrative.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186992</amazonuk>
}}
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple W&N
{{topten
|author=
|title=
|rating=
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
|amazonuk=<amazonuk></amazonuk>
}}
by Viking
{{topten
|author=Elif Shafak
|title=Honour
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Zadie Smith
|title=NW
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Fans of Zadie Smith have had a seven year wait since her last book ''On Beauty''. In ''NW'', Smith returns to more of the issues addressed in her brilliant debut novel [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith|White Teeth]]. Set in parts of London that should be obvious from the title, the book takes the lives of four people who grew up on a rough estate and looks at how they have moved on - or not. All four still live nearby the estate where they grew up. There's multi-cultural tension and the have and have nots of power and money and Smith looks at how much individuals are in control of their destiny and ability to rise out of their upbringing, and how chance encounters can bring you back to your past with a bump.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144140</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=M L Stedman
|title=The Light Between Oceans
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and country town of Partaguese. They have a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have children. Therefore, one day, when a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying baby, apparent salvation arrives too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>
}}
by Picador
{{topten
|author=Carrie Tiffany
|title=Mateship With Birds
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
}}
Corvus
{{topten
|author=G Willow Wilson
|title=Alif the Unseen
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= Alif lives under an alias and he has a good reason for that: he's a hakinista in an Arabian oil producing country that, to put it mildly, doesn't encourage free speech. He sells IT know-how and wizardy to any covert organisation that works against the government, their agenda unimportant as long as the aim is the downfall of their oppression. But all that's about to change as Alif falls in love and, as it's the wrong girl at the wrong time, is spurned. His response to this romantic let down is to create a computer programme that will identify her internet activity by her individual typing pattern. Unfortunately what works for him also works against him. It's captured by the notoriously dangerous government censor 'The Hand' who also wants Alif and his hidden network of colleagues. Now Alif runs to preserve his life and those who have trusted him, his only possession an ancient manuscript from his former love. Just a book, albeit one that's accompanied by myths and old wives' tales rendering it irrelevant a logical world. However, sometimes the most desperate of times requires more than logic and, sometimes, a mere book of stories may be more than it seems.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857895664</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Kitty Aldridge
|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but his life has been tough. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him, his step-father, a sofa-bound television make-over show addict and his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned to fend for themselves. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job though, it is here that he learns, ironically, about life and love, in the form of the delivery girl from the local florists.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Kate Atkinson
|title=Life After Life
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Ros Barber
|title=The Marlowe Papers
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak''
These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start of this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for his plays but also for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473024X</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Shani Boianjiu
|title=The People of Forever are not Afraid
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Gillian Flynn
|title=Gone Girl
|rating=5
|genre=Thriller
|summary= There’s a distressing moment in any long-term relationship where you realise that, in practice, happily ever after looks a lot like an eternity of small, snarling arguments about who forgot to buy food, who should take out the rubbish and who is responsible for that mouldering pile of clothes in the corner of the bedroom. Domestic bliss is often more like very polite guerrilla warfare between two people who love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives fighting about it. You and your partner are absolutely in each other’s pockets – but no matter how close you are, there’s always one last barrier you can’t break down. You aren’t them, and they aren’t you, and so you can never truly know what’s really going on inside that well-known head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753827662</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Sheila Heti
|title=How Should a Person Be?
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=A M Homes
|title=May We Be Forgiven
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083242</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Barbara Kingsolver
|title=Flight Behaviour
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571290779</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Deborah Copaken Kogan
|title=The Red Book
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844089177</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Hilary Mantel
|title=Bring up the Bodies
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= Thomas Cromwell is now very far from his humble beginnings. He is Henry VIII's chief minister. Katherine of Aragorn is no longer Queen. The Princess Mary has been disinherited. Anne Boleyn wears the crown and has produced a daughter, Elizabeth. But there is no sign of a son and Henry is beginning to regret his secession from Rome. We pick up from [[Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel|Wolf Hall]] during the royal progress of 1535 and from there, we chart the destruction of the new Queen.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007315090</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Bonnie Nadzam
|title=Lamb
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary= David Lamb is anchored to his life by his career, his affair-ridden marriage and caring for his father. Over time, his wife divorces him, his father dies and his employers insist he takes a period of enforced leave. So what's left? There is just one constant remaining: his friendship with Tommie who, he feels, would be an ideal holiday companion. He suggests that they both take a short trip as it would do them both good and Tommie agrees eagerly. The adventure then begins in the form of a journey to a beautiful, remote cabin. David is 54 years old and Tommie? She's 11.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091944317</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Emily Perkins
|title=The Forrests
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809230</amazonuk>
}}
by Bloomsbury
{{topten
|author=Michele Roberts
|title=Ignorance
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Francesca Segal
|title=The Innocents
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= Francesca Segal's debut novel, ''The Innocents'' is set in upper class, Jewish, North London. Adam is about to marry his childhood sweetheart, Rachel, and is working as a lawyer in her father's business. Into this romantic idyl though comes Ellie, Rachel's wayward cousin who has been forced to flee the US following an appearance in an 'art house' movie of dubious repute and, it turns out, further scandal. Ellie is everything that Rachel is not; a model, worldly, sexy and tempting. As Adam gets drawn into wanting to 'rescue' her and look after her, his whole future with Rachel is thrown into doubt and the story becomes a will they, won't they get together narrative.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186992</amazonuk>
}}
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple W&N
{{topten
|author=
|title=
|rating=
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
|amazonuk=<amazonuk></amazonuk>
}}
by Viking
{{topten
|author=Elif Shafak
|title=Honour
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=Zadie Smith
|title=NW
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Fans of Zadie Smith have had a seven year wait since her last book ''On Beauty''. In ''NW'', Smith returns to more of the issues addressed in her brilliant debut novel [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith|White Teeth]]. Set in parts of London that should be obvious from the title, the book takes the lives of four people who grew up on a rough estate and looks at how they have moved on - or not. All four still live nearby the estate where they grew up. There's multi-cultural tension and the have and have nots of power and money and Smith looks at how much individuals are in control of their destiny and ability to rise out of their upbringing, and how chance encounters can bring you back to your past with a bump.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144140</amazonuk>
}}
{{topten
|author=M L Stedman
|title=The Light Between Oceans
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and country town of Partaguese. They have a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have children. Therefore, one day, when a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying baby, apparent salvation arrives too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>
}}
by Picador
{{topten
|author=Carrie Tiffany
|title=Mateship With Birds
|rating=Unreviewed
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= We don't have a review of this book yet.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
}}
Corvus
{{topten
|author=G Willow Wilson
|title=Alif the Unseen
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
|summary= Alif lives under an alias and he has a good reason for that: he's a hakinista in an Arabian oil producing country that, to put it mildly, doesn't encourage free speech. He sells IT know-how and wizardy to any covert organisation that works against the government, their agenda unimportant as long as the aim is the downfall of their oppression. But all that's about to change as Alif falls in love and, as it's the wrong girl at the wrong time, is spurned. His response to this romantic let down is to create a computer programme that will identify her internet activity by her individual typing pattern. Unfortunately what works for him also works against him. It's captured by the notoriously dangerous government censor 'The Hand' who also wants Alif and his hidden network of colleagues. Now Alif runs to preserve his life and those who have trusted him, his only possession an ancient manuscript from his former love. Just a book, albeit one that's accompanied by myths and old wives' tales rendering it irrelevant a logical world. However, sometimes the most desperate of times requires more than logic and, sometimes, a mere book of stories may be more than it seems.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857895664</amazonuk>
}}
