I finished reading Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and liked it very much. I hope to write about it in the next few days. So, one Baileys title down . . . not sure how many more I will read before the shortlist is announced April 13th, which is not far away at all (is the year speeding up all of a sudden or is it just me?). I am currently reading Lissa Evans's Crooked Heart (it was already on my wishlist, but when I saw its inclusion on the longlist it got bumped up and ordered), which I also like very much. Such a very different story but Evans is another very good storyteller. It is set during WWII and is about an evacuee, but this story has something of a twist, which I think nicely done.
Is it greedy to think about already lining the next book up? Crooked Heart seems to read quite fast and it is my current gym book which means it gets a solid hour or so of daily reading, so a little advance planning is definitely in order. I have been leaning towards The Bees by Laline Paull. It does look interesting--a story told from the perspective of a bee! I tend not to read books like this, but isn't reading from the list all about reading outside your comfort zone?
Already on hand I have Ali Smith's How to be Both (and I see it has been and is up for all sorts of awards so I will read it in any case at some point) and Sarah Waters's The Paying Guests, so they are both on the reading pile. I had thought to wait a bit on both as they seem like extra attention is needed in each case, but maybe that is my own weird perception? Added to the 'must-have' pile was the Evans and Aren't We Sisters by Patricia Ferguson, which came in the mail a few days ago. It's set in Cornwall in 1933 and sounds like something of a thriller or mystery--"no one guesses, of course, that there's a killer quietly at work in Silkhampton; that one way or another all three women are in danger . . . ".
Did you notice that there are two books on the longlist that are short story collections--granted they are marketed as novels but the chapters are interlinked stories. By the nature of the genre (you know I love short stories) I feel like I should read both The Shore by Sara Taylor and I am China by Xiaolu Guo. The latter is also made up of letters. I only mention it is short stories (though maybe it isn't?) as the subject heading in the book is 'short stories'. Hmm, publishers don't like to let on that a book is short stories, do they? I have to say that the Taylor has the most creative author description I've come across in a while:
" . . . a socially anxious product of rural Virginia and the home-schooling movement. She traded her health for a BFA from Randolph College and her sanity for an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Following her MA supervisor and refusing to let her leave, so she remains at the UEA to chip away at a double-focus Phd in censorship and fiction. She spends an unprecedented amount of time on delayed trains between Norwich and her husband's house in Reading and tends to get lost, rained on, and chased by cows with unsettling frequency".
Why do I feel like she has some great stories to tell?
The other interesting-sounding (at the moment--ask me in a few days and I am sure my choices would be shifting!) read is Rachel Seiffert's The Walk Home. I'm not sure exactly what it is about the story that is appealing to me at the moment. The setting of Glasgow? Or the book description: "the risk of love, and the madness and betrayals that can split a family". I think I just want something very different than Station Eleven (as much as I loved the book I need something with a very different tone and setting).
Happily the library where I work has ordered the books from the longlist and they have started to arrive. With each new book that crosses my desk, I think . . ."yes, this is the one I am going to read next . . .". I've not had a proper chance to really peruse all the books and flip through, read a page or two, but I hope as I process the books and pay for them I'll be able to have a good look at them.
This year's longlist seems an especially good one to me. So many books I want to investigate and hopefully read sooner than later!