Beim Man Booker Prize handelt es sich um den wichtigsten britischen Literaturpreis, der seit 1969 jedes Jahr an den besten im Vereinigten Königreich veröffentlichten englischsprachigen Roman verliehen wird. Preisträger bisher waren unter anderem Yann Martel, John Banville, Margaret Atwood, Eleanor Catton, Julian Barnes, Richard Flanagan und Marlon James (der letztes Jahr als Preisträger hervorging).
Die Shortlist wird am 13.09.2016 bekannt gegeben. Verliehen wird der Preis am 25.10.2016.
Die ersten 6 Bücher der Longlist habe ich bereits in diesem Beitrag unter die Lupe genommen.
THE BOOKS (No. 7-13)
Wyl Menmuir: The Many
Timothy Buchannan buys an abandoned house on the edge of an isolated village on the coast, sight unseen. When he sees the state of it he questions the wisdom of his move, but starts to renovate the house for his wife, Lauren to join him there.
When the villagers see smoke rising from the chimney of the neglected house they are disturbed and intrigued by the presence of the incomer, intrigue that begins to verge on obsession. And the longer Timothy stays, the more deeply he becomes entangled in the unsettling experience of life in the small village.
Ethan, a fisherman, is particularly perturbed by Timothy’s arrival, but accedes to Timothy’s request to take him out to sea. They set out along the polluted coastline, hauling in weird fish from the contaminated sea, catches that are bought in whole and removed from the village. Timothy starts to ask questions about the previous resident of his house, Perran, questions to which he receives only oblique answers and increasing hostility.
As Timothy forges on despite the villagers’ animosity and the code of silence around Perran, he starts to question what has brought him to this place and is forced to confront a painful truth. (Inhaltsangabe: Salt)
Erster Eindruck: Abandoned house. Isolated village. Obsession. Unsettling experience of life in the small village. Und dazu die See bzw. das Meer und das auffällige Cover. Will ich sowas von lesen!!
~oOo~
Ottessa Moshfegh: Eileen
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s carer in his squalid home and her day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a handsome prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings. (Inhaltsangabe: Penguin)
Erster Eindruck: Klingt richtig, richtig toll und ich finde, das Cover hebt sich mit seinem Filmposterdesign positiv ab. Manchmal ist weniger mehr. Auf jeden Fall steht Eileen ganz oben auf meiner Leseliste, ob es denn nun auf die Shortlist kommt oder nicht.
~oOo~
Virginia Reeves: Work Like Any Other
Placing itself perfectly alongside acclaimed work by Philipp Meyer, Jane Smiley and J M Coetzee, this debut novel charts the story of Roscoe T Martin in rural Alabama in the 1920s.
Roscoe has set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the 20th century: electricity. It becomes his training, his life’s work. But when his wife Marie inherits her father’s failing farm, Roscoe has to give it up, with great cost to his pride and sense of self, his marriage and his family. Realising that he might lose them all, he uses his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness on a farm recently falling to ruin. Even the love of Marie and their son seems back within Roscoe’s grasp.
Then everything changes. A young man is electrocuted on their land. Roscoe is arrested for manslaughter and – no longer an electrician or even a farmer – he must now carve out a place in a violent new world. (Inhaltsangabe: Scribner UK)
Erster Eindruck: Klingt auf jeden Fall nicht schlecht, aber wäre jetzt nicht ganz oben auf meiner Leseliste. Könnte sich ändern, sollte es das Buch auf die Shortlist schaffen. Aber zunächst einmal ist es kein Must-Read.
~oOo~
Elizabeth Strout: My Name Is Lucy Barton
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of her life: her impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, her escape to New York and her desire to become a writer, her faltering marriage, her love for her two daughters.
Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable. In My Name Is Lucy Barton, one of America’s finest writers shows how a simple hospital visit illuminates the most tender relationship of all-the one between mother and daughter. (Inhaltsangabe: Penguin)
Erster Eindruck: Es klingt auf jeden Fall interessant und der Fakt, dass sich das Buch auch auf der Longlist des BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction befand, ist ein weiterer Pluspunkt. Einen näheren Blick darauf werfen werde ich auf jeden Fall.
~oOo~
David Szalay: All That Man Is
Nine men. Each of them at a different stage of life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving – in the suburbs of Prague, beside a Belgian motorway, in a cheap Cypriot hotel – to understand just what it means to be alive, here and now.
Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are – ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing. And as the years chase them down, the stakes become bewilderingly high in this piercing portrayal of 21st-century manhood. (Inhaltsangabe: Penguin)
Erster Eindruck: Hatte mich in der Mitte des zweiten Satzes der Inhaltsangabe. Ich mag ja solche Geschichten, die das Leben ihrer Figuren über einen längeren Zeitraum begleiten. Klingt definitiv interessant.
~oOo~
Madeleine Thien: Do Not Say We Have Nothing
In Canada in 1991, ten-year-old Marie and her mother invite a guest into their home: a young woman called Ai-Ming, who has fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests.
Ai-Ming tells Marie the story of her family in Revolutionary China – from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao’s ascent to the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and the events leading to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. It is a story of revolutionary idealism, music, and silence, in which three musicians – the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, the violin prodigy Zhuli, and the enigmatic pianist Kai – struggle during China’s relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to. Forced to re-imagine their artistic and private selves, their fates reverberate through the years, with deep and lasting consequences for Ai-Ming – and for Marie. (Inhaltsangabe: Man Booker Website)
Erster Eindruck: Klingt interessant genug um das Buch im Auge zu behalten. Lesen wollte ich von Thien so und so irgendwann einmal ein Buch. Vielleicht ein Zeichen? ^^
Zwischen den Seiten: Bücher und Anderes 