All in Prize Winners & Finalists
I’m not sure if Night Watch flew under the radar for everyone, or if it was just my 2023 baby fog, but I completely missed this Pulitzer Prize winner last year. And I’m thrilled I managed to snag it from the library because it was a truly stunning, unique and heartbreaking novel.
Many of you will remember the glowing review my mother wrote of Edugyan’s novel Washington Black (read review here), which was one of my favorite books that year as well. So when I saw that an earlier book of hers had won the Giller prize, I scooped it up from the library immediately. A similarly sweeping historical drama dealing with race across several continents, Half-Blood Blues did not disappoint.
In all honesty, I must admit that I read Gilead years ago and couldn’t really understand its appeal. But, I decided to give it another read when I realized that it had won the Pulitzer Prize and President Obama awarded Robinson the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Also, Oprah chose the Gilead tetralogy as four consecutive book club selections. I can’t say for sure why this time through I loved it so much. But there is definitely something to be said for reading certain books at certain times in one’s life.
As I turned the last page of Five Little Indians, I honestly felt a sense of relief. My first instinct was to put it in one of the little free libraries near my house and be done. But over the next few days, I found myself thinking about the characters often and realizing that although their stories were brutal at times, they were also deeply affecting. Perhaps the book held more than I initially experienced.
Every year when the Giller Prize, one of Canada’s top literary awards, is announced, I buy the book. I finally got around to reading the 2022 winner, The Sleeping Car Porter. This book was engrossing and beautiful and I would never have discovered it if not for the Prize.
Rebecca Makkai has been writing books for a while, but she didn’t come onto my radar until she published The Great Believers in 2018. I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to pick the book up, but I’m glad I did.
Even before Hernan Diaz won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Trust, I knew I needed to read this book. My husband, Rufus, had read it before me and couldn’t stop talking about it. He was anxious for me to read it too so that we could discuss it. A request of this kind doesn’t come along often, so my interest was really piqued.
Shortlisted for the Booker prize, The Fortune Men, is gripping, harrowing and infuriating. Nadifa Mohamed was born in Somalia and has lived most of her life in London, so she no doubt has experienced extreme examples of racism in the United Kingdom similar to what she writes about in The Fortune Men.
I picked up No One Is Talking About This because it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year – a sure sign of a great book. Patricia Lockwood, who recently turned 40, won the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2022, given to young writers for literary excellence. She has previously published two volumes of poetry and a memoir. No One Is Talking About This is her first novel.
What Strange Paradise is an incredibly difficult read emotionally, but one I have to recommend for its tragic portrayal of the hope we all harbor as humans and what good can come from reaching out to one another.
Had I been familiar with Honoree Fannone Jeffers and known that she is a celebrated poet, I might have anticipated what a gorgeous book I was about to read when I opened The Love Songs of W. E. B. du Bois. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect—because of its title. Was it a collection of love songs by W. E. B. du Bois? It is not. Love Songs is an epic, multi-generational novel in which du Bois’ influence looms large.
Not at all what I expected from the title, this book reads almost like a diary of the year following the sudden and unexpected death of Didion’s husband.
Mother Daughter Widow Wife is another of this year’s Pen/Faulkner finalists for the fiction award. The novel is a tightly crafted story about a young woman, Lizzie Epstein, who wins a prestigious fellowship to the Meadowlark Institute, a multi-disciplinary lab working on memory research. In short order, Lizzie finds herself the favorite fellow of Dr. Benjamin Strauss, the Institute’s director.
Louise Erdrich is a prolific American writer who really hits her stride in The Night Watchman.There’s a reason that this gem won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Louise Erdrich has filled her novel with a cast of memorable characters who live on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota in 1953. Their stories will stay with you long after you finish the novel.
If you read only one collection of short stories this year, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies should be the one. This group of nine stories is Philyaw’s debut publication and deserves all of the accolades that it has received, including winning the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
I had never heard of this book until Kathleen, a friend of a friend and a reader of L & L, wrote my editor and me an email which included her favorite recent reads. It makes me so happy to hear from readers–and to get book recommendations. Please, keep them coming!
Although The Black Flamingo looks in format like a book of poetry, I would describe it as a novel in verse. And although it is marketed as young adult fiction, I can unhesitatingly recommend it to any reader who loves a good coming-of-age story.
Fifteen Dogs is one of the most entertaining books, with one of the weirdest premises, that I have ever read. Set in and around downtown Toronto, the story begins with a conversation in a bar between the gods Hermes and Apollo, who share a drink and make a wager. They debate whether the cause of human unhappiness is consciousness, and so decide to bestow human consciousness on a group of dogs so see if their lives are made happier by it.
When I read this book in March it felt painfully current. Sadly its relevance and timeliness have only grown over the past several months as we’ve seen police violence against Black Americans magnified a thousand-fold.
