The Places You Will Go

Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist announced: Man Booker Prize news

Four first time novelists selected

26 July 2011

The longlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction - the ‘Man Booker Dozen' - is announced today, Tuesday 26 July. The 13 books on the list include: one former Man Booker Prize winner; two previously shortlisted writers and one longlisted author; four first time novelists and three Canadian writers. The list also includes three new publishers to the prize - Oneworld, Sandstone Press and Seren Books.

The titles were chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.

A total of 138 books, seven of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist. They are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

The chair of judges, Dame Stella Rimington, comments:

'We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our longlist, which emerged from an impassioned discussion. The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest, and includes four first novels.'

The four first time novelists on the list are Stephen Kelman, A.D. Miller, Yvvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness. Canadian author Alison Pick, like McGuinness, is a published poet and is joined by fellow Canadians, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan, on the longlist.

The list includes one former winner, Alan Hollinghurst, who won the prize in 2004 for The Line of Beauty. He was also shortlisted in 1994 for The Folding Star. Two previously shortlisted authors also make the list: Irish writer Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture, 2008 and A Long Long Way, 2005) and Julian Barnes (Arthur and George, 2005, England, England, 1998 and Flaubert's Parrot, 1984). Carol Birch was longlisted in 2003 for Turn Again Home.

The shortlist of six authors will be announced on Tuesday 6 September at a press conference at Man Group's London headquarters. The winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 18 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC.

The winner will receive £50,000 and each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their book.

The judges for the 2011 Prize are writer and journalist, Matthew d'Ancona; author, Susan Hill; author and politician, Chris Mullin and Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph, Gaby Wood. Dame Stella Rimington is the Chair. 

via themanbookerprize.com

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Fish Out of Water

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens, Star 2 on Sunday

I’M told that mermaids are the next big (floppy and wet) thing in YA fiction. A rather anatomically inconvenient mythological creature to write about if you ask me. The tail, of course, would be an excellent method of birth control. In fact, it would prohibit sexual intercourse altogether (wouldn’t it? My knowledge of aquatic vertebrate anatomy is practically non-existent) and this would surely meet with the approval of nervous parents and those who promote sexual abstinence among the young.

And what about the settings of these books? Mermaids have restricted mobility and any action would have to take place by the sea, on the sea or in the sea. I’m not sure if they need salt water to survive. If not, then at least these mermaid characters could also hang out in a swimming pool, or bath-tub. At a pinch they might also be propped up in a shower stall with the water running.

In The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, a mermaid manages to replace her tail with legs and feet, but at great cost. Every step she takes with her new feet, feels like she’s walking on sharp knives. I have always found this story really off-putting because of the extremes this little twit is willing to go through for a man.

What Love Means

It’s a question that fascinates this young adult fiction author — and her many teen fans.

By DAPHNE LEE

AND it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”

It was this bible verse (Genesis 6:1-2) that inspired Lauren Kate’s Fallen series. The books are about the romance between Lucinda or Luce, and Daniel, a boy whom she meets at a reform school. Daniel, it turns out, is a fallen angel with angelic looks to match.

“When I read the line from Genesis something about it struck me – that such a complicated, tragic sacrifice that could be made for love,” said Kate who was in Kuala Lumpur early this week as part of a world tour to promote the Fallen series. “It sounded like the start to a really interesting love story and made me wonder who that girl could be – why would an angel look down from heaven, see her, a mortal woman, and fall in love with her? Why would he give up so much for love?”

The Illustration Cupboard

via illustrationcupboard.com

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Salman Rushdie's Luka fires up animation imaginations | Children's books | guardian.co.uk

A children's novel by Booker prize-winning author Sir Salman Rushdie has inspired animation students at London's Kingston University to create short films based on the book.

Luka and the Fire of Life tells the story of 12-year-old Luka Khalifa who, along with his two loyal companions, a bear called Dog and a dog called Bear, is on a quest to steal the fire of life to revive his beloved storyteller father Rashid who has fallen into a deep sleep. The book was written by Rushdie as a gift for his son Milan on his 12th birthday.

It inspired students Han Byul Lee, Sam Falconer, Irsiz Heathershaw, So Hewi Lee and Dawn Smit to create this short film, which was judged the winner.

The Real Secret Garden - Telegraph

The Real Secret Garden

On the centenary of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s best-loved story, The Secret Garden, Helen Brown visits the corner of Kent behind the myth.

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The Rose garden at Great Maytham Hall, Kent. Photo credit: Andrew Crowley 

By Helen Brown

It is a sun-baked afternoon deep in the Kentish countryside which once left Frances Hodgson Burnett feeling “flower drunk”. Hollyhocks skirt the old brick walls, lavender nods beneath the weight of drowsy bees and the ivy-wreathed archway of my childhood fantasies is just one step ahead of me. It’s a step that children have dreamed of taking for 100 years. A step into a world of friendship, mysteries and magic. A step into The Secret Garden.

Malaysian Art, for Children

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, The Star, 10th July, 2011

ONE rarely meets a child who doesn’t like to draw. And one rarely meets a child who doesn’t draw spontaneously and effortlessly. Show me a child who fusses with perspective, setting and composition, and I’ll show you a child who’s very likely attending art class. At very least, I hope it’s not the sort of class where the teacher says the sky and sea must be coloured nothing but blue, and the trees and grass are always a non-negotiable green.

Are we all artists until we’re taught that we’re not? Do we need to be told what is good art? Is there such a thing as bad taste? Isn’t it just about personal taste? These are questions I’m constantly asking myself in relation to art and the arts.

The Child in Tomi Ungerer Remains Undimmed - NYTimes.com

An Author Embodies His Books’ Childlike Spirit

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

The illustrator and author Tomi Ungerer is experienceing a career renaissance. Several of his children’s books have been reissued and a documentary about his life will be released this fall. More Photos »

By PAMELA PAUL

Published: June 28, 2011

Book Review: The Rescuers | Hornbooks and Inkwells | The Great Bear

By MEGHAN COX GURDON

View Full Image

S.D. Schlinder

An illustration by S.D. Schindler from Hornbooks and Inkwells.

Margery Sharp's mouse-centric 1959 adventure, The Rescuers, has only been out of print for a decade, but it is well worth revisiting. For one thing, it has just been reissued in handsome hardback as part of the New York Review Children's Collection, with drawings by Garth Williams. For another, this new incarnation (149 pages, $14.95) prov des an excuse to rescue the story for a generation of children who might otherwise know only the animated 1977 Disney movie of the same name. As with most children's classics, Ms. Sharp's original work is much funnier and more interestingly textured than the high-fructose movie version.

Monstrously Wonderful

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag, 3rd July 2011

IN a radio interview, Patrick Ness said that he wept during the writing of A Monster Calls (Walker Books, 215 pages, ISBN: 978-1406334906). “If I’m writing anything that’s this difficult and I’m not upset, then I’m not doing it right,” he said. “If I’m not crying why would I think anybody else will be moved?”

When I received my review copy of the book, I read the last couple of pages and found myself simply blubbing. I then read the book all the way through and, at the end, I cried again. Ness has obviously done it right.

A Monster Calls was a book that the Irish author Siobhan Dowd wanted to write. She had made notes, had imagined the characters, planned the premise, written a beginning. But Dowd died before she could write the book. She had cancer and she was only 47.