Stella Prize Winner 2022

The winner of the Stella Prize was announced this week with Goorie-Koori author Evelyn Araluen awarded the prize for her debut collection, Dropbear. 

Using a mix of poetry and essay, Araluen critiques a nostalgic view of Australia. She explores language and identity, inviting readers to adopt a different perspective.  The judges report that 'Araluen's brilliance sizzles when she goes on the attack against the kitsch and the cuddly: against Australia's fantasy of its own racial and environmental innocence.' She bears witness to the present, and hopes for a decolonial future. 

The Chair of the Judging Panel, Melissa Lucashenko, said:

"When you read Evelyn Araluen's Dropbear you'll be taken on a wild ride. Like the namesake of its title, this collection is simultaneously comical and dangerous. If you live here and don't acquire the necessary local knowledge, the drop bear might definitely getcha! But for those initiated in its mysteries, the drop bear is a playful beast, a prank, a riddle, a challenge and a game. Dropbear is remarkably assured for a debut poetry collection, and I think we can safely say it announced the arrival of a stunning new talent to Australian literature." 

Araluen received the award and its $50,000 prize money. She will be a guest at the upcoming Sydney Writers' Festival.

Women's Prize Shortlist 2022

The 2022 Women's Prize shortlist has been announced!  The six titles on the shortlist are:

• Sorrow and Bliss - Meg Mason
• The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak
• Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead
• The Book of Form and Emptiness - Ruth Ozeki
• The Bread the Devil Knead - Lisa Allen-Agostini
• The Sentence - Louise Erdrich

When the Longlist was announced in March, I predicted that Edrich, Shafak, Ross and Shipstead would be on the shortlist. Leone Ross missed out for This One Sky Day, but I was right about the others. Not bad guess work when there were 16 excellent titles on the longlist!

I have started Great Circle, and have The Sentence, The Island of Missing Trees and Sorrow and Bliss on my bedside waiting their chance to be read.  I have the others on order with my local library, but won't likely get them for a while.

To learn more about these shortlisted titles, there is a summary on each book on my blog, and the judges have released a short video announcing the shortlist below. You can also read interviews with the authors on the Women's Prize website.

The winner will be revealed on 15 June 2022. Better get reading!

The Social Network

In 2010 Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for her remarkable novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. It was unlike anything I had ever read. Egan cleverly played with form and style, creatively writing with wit and intellect. Each chapter was its own short story, with memorable characters who appear in each other's narratives. Linking these stories were themes of music and the passage of time. The sheer delight I experienced reading (and re-reading) Goon Squad was profound, a high I have been searching for ever since. 

My cravings have been satisfied with Egan's latest novel The Candy House (2022). While not exactly a sequel to Goon Squad, it is more like a companion piece. Written in the same non-linear way, the interlinked chapters reconnect readers with beloved characters, woven in a tight tapestry that is only fully visible when you zoom out at the end. 

Instead of the backdrop of music, technology is the temptation of The Candy House. Bix Bouton, founder of social media giant Mandala, has developed a new product called 'Own Your Unconscious' where you can download your entire memory bank to a cube and review past events you may have forgotten or not registered at the time. If you choose, you can upload all or parts of your memory to the 'Collective Consciousness' where others can view it. Even if you choose not to engage, you may appear in other people's memories of shared experiences. While some characters engage willingly with these tools, others (like Chris Salazar and his company Mondrian) are 'eluders', fighting against this loss of privacy, endeavouring to disrupt invasive technology. While this may sound like a dystopian sci-fi story, it is actually a tautly written meditation on human connection.

Egan has an incredible ability to write in a diverse range of styles. One chapter is written as a series of emails between a number of different characters. Another is as an instruction manual to a field agent on a mission. We learn of the 'algebraization' of people's experiences, and the way in which human behaviour can be counted, predicted and compartmentalised. We learn about language, the 'word-casings' of overused words that have lost all meaning. While some styles and chapters worked better for me than others, I loved becoming reacquainted with characters like Sasha, La Doll, Lulu,  Lou, Lincoln and more, as we explored the near future in the digital age. 

Readers do not need to have read A Visit from the Goon Squad to enjoy The Candy House, but your reading experience will definitely be enhanced by reading both. It takes some time to get used to the way these novels work, but an open-mind and a willingness to experiment will definitely reward readers. 

My review of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad is also available on this blog.

To Have and Have Not

I first heard about Miranda Cowley Heller's debut novel, The Paper Palace (2021) a few weeks ago when it was longlisted for the Women's Prize. Reading a brief synopsis, it sounded like it was the story of a love triangle, which didn't really interest me. But then I read a rave review, so I decided to read the first chapter and see if it was worth my time. I am so glad I did as The Paper Palace is a wonderfully engrossing novel. 

Eleanor 'Elle' Bishop seems to have the perfect, privileged life. She is fifty years old, married to a devoted husband, and has three lovely children. She lives in New York but holidays at her family's rustic cottage/camp at Cape Cod, known as the Paper Palace. The book opens with Elle taking an early morning swim on the lake and reflecting on her actions the night before. Last night she had sex with her oldest friend Jonas, while both of their partners were nearby, unaware. Over the next 24 hours, Elle must choose whether to stay with her husband Peter or upend her life to pursue Jonas, her childhood love. In order to understand the choice that Elle eventually makes, the reader is taken back over the past fifty years to learn about Elle's life and her relationship with each man.

The Paper Palace features richly drawn, complex characters. Elle's standoff-ish older sister Anna is hardened by their early life. Their opinionated mother Wallace is a fascinating woman, unlikable yet delightful. Their absent father fails the girls repeatedly, henpecked by his partners. The odious step-brother Conrad and his unobservant father Leo. The uxorious Peter, brooding Jonas and so many more. Elle herself is complicated and contradictory and as the narrator of this tale, her recollections of the past shape her present and the decisions she makes for the future. 

This novel was so much more than it first appeared, shocking the reader with each reveal of family secrets buried deep. There are dark themes in this novel, but each flashback is mercifully short, written in punchy prose.  I was swept away by the story, keen to find out what happened next. The writing is strong, evoking a sense of time and place, especially of the deep woods of the Paper Palace.  I also loved the ending of the story, which I shall not reveal here. 

This is a strong debut by Miranda Cowley Heller and I look forward to seeing what she does next. I am delighted to learn that this novel has been optioned for a TV series.