LIFE AFTER LIFE On Shortlist for Women’s Prize
Gillian Flynn’s huge best seller, Gone Girl, did not make the cut from the longlist to the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her name appears on the cover of one of the six finalists, however. In the single blurb on Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur), Flynn calls it “One of the best novels I’ve read this century.”
Two previous winners are on the list for their new books, Zadie Smith for NW (Penguin/Viking) and Barbara Kingsolver for Flight Behavior, (Harper).
The Guardian picks Bring Up the Bodies, (Macmillan/Holt) by British author Hilary Mantel as the one to beat, having already won two major UK awards this year, the Booker and Costa prizes. No book has won all three in one year.
Also on the list are Americans Maria Semple for Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Hachette/Little, Brown) and A. M. Homes for May We Be Forgiven (Penguin/Viking).
Previous prize winners include Madeline Miller last year for her debut novel, The Song of Achilles, (Harper/Ecco), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk about Kevin (Harper; 2005), Marilynne Robinson for Home (Macmillan/FSG; 2009) and Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (HarperCollins; 2002).
The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on June 5th.