[Rund ums Buch] BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 – Shortlist

Der Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (Link zur Webseite) ist einer der angesehensten Literaturpreise Großbritanniens und wird seit 1996 jährlich an eine Schriftstellerin verliehen, deren Roman im vorangegangen Jahr erschienen ist. Zum 20. Geburtstag des BWPFF sitzen Margaret Mountford, Laurie Penny, Naga Munchetty, Tracey Thorn und Elif Shafak in der Jury. Verliehen wird der Preis am 8. Juni 2016. Wer sich einmal mit den Gewinnern der letzten Jahre auseinander setzen möchte, für den hat der BWPFF einen Reading Guide zusammengestellt.

Ziel und Sinn dieses Posts:
Ich selbst habe vor zumindest die Bücher der Shortlist zu lesen, auch wenn die Longlist selbst auch einige interessante Bücher bereit hält – allerdings müssen die einfach mal noch ein bisschen warten. Ein Buch habe ich schon (A Little Life), die anderen habe ich sehr günstig bekommen (für insgesamt 10 €), bis auf eines, aber bei dem handelt es sich (glücklicherweise) um das Buch, das mich am wenigsten interessiert.

~oOo~

Cynthia Bond: Ruby

Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East-Texas town. For Ruby Bell, Liberty was a place of devastating violence from which she fled to seedy, glamorous 1950s New York. Years later, pulled back home, thirty-year-old Ruby is faced with the seething hatred of a town desperate to destroy her. Witnessing her struggle, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy. (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: Das Buch stand ja auch schon auf der Liste des Oprah Winfrey Book Clubs – und die Inhaltsangabe macht es auf jeden Fall zu einem interessanten Werk.

Anne Enright: The Green Road

The children of Rosaleen Madigan leave the west of Ireland for lives they never could have imagined in Dublin, New York and various third-world towns. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: Auf Youtube habe ich so einiges an Lob für das Buch gehört, die wesentlichen Plotpunkte – Abschied, Verlust, das Verlieren des Elternhauses obwohl man es eigentlich ja schon längst verlassen hat – haben Potential.. auch ein Muss. ^^

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies

Georgie is a prostitute whose willingness to feign a religious conversion has dangerous repercussions, while Maureen, the accidental murderer, has returned to Cork after forty years in exile to discover that Jimmy, the son she was forced to give up years before, has grown into the most fearsome gangster in the city. In seeking atonement for the murder and a multitude of perceived sins, Maureen threatens to destroy everything her son has worked so hard for, while her actions risk bringing the intertwined lives of the Irish underworld into the spotlight… (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: MUSS. ES. LESEN. Ganz einfach. Lesen.

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Meet Veblen: a passionate defender of the anti-consumerist views of her name-sake, the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen. She’s an experienced cheerer-upper (mainly of her narcissistic, hypochondriac, controlling mother), an amateur translator of Norwegian, and a firm believer in the distinct possibility that the plucky grey squirrel following her around can understand more than it lets on. Meet her fiancé, Paul: the son of good hippies who were bad parents, a no-nonsense, high-flying neuroscientist with no time for squirrels. His recent work on a device to minimize battlefield trauma has led him dangerously close to the seductive Cloris Hutmacher, heiress to a pharmaceuticals empire, who is promising him fame and fortune through a shady-sounding deal with the Department of Defence. What could possibly go wrong? (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: Eichhörnchen, schräge Charaktere und die Zeile „What could possibly go wrong?“ machen richtig Lust auf das Buch. Denn wenn eine Geschichte so vorgestellt wird, geht garantiert eine ganze Menge schief.

Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel painter pursuing fame in the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented lawyer yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by a degree of trauma that he fears he will not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever. (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: Schon seit längerem auf meinem Stapel ungelesener Bücher. Ein Buch, dass die Leser spaltet. Entweder man liebt es, oder man hasst es. Ein dazwischen scheint es nicht so recht zu geben. Ich bin gespannt. ^^

Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love

When lovelorn Annie McDee stumbles across a dirty painting in a junk shop while looking for a present for an unsuitable man, she has no idea what she has discovered. Soon she finds herself drawn unwillingly into the tumultuous London art world, populated by exiled Russian oligarchs, avaricious Sheikas, desperate auctioneers and unscrupulous dealers, all scheming to get their hands on her painting – a lost eighteenth-century masterpiece called ‘The Improbability of Love’. Delving into the painting’s past, Annie will uncover not just an illustrious list of former owners, but some of the darkest secrets of European history – and in doing so she might just learn to open up to the possibility of falling in love again. (Inhaltsangabe: BWPFF)

Thoughts: Leider das Buch aus der Liste, welches mich am wenigsten interessiert. Was aber nicht heißen muss das es schlecht ist. Lesen und ihm eine Chance geben werde ich trotzdem.

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