http://books.guardian.co.uk/whitbread2005/story/0,16517,1677548,00.html
The winning books:
Novel: The Accidental by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
About
Astrid, 12, is stuck in a boring Norfolk holiday home with her
boring mother Eve, stepfather, Michael, and elder brother, Magnus.
In desperation, she begins videoing the dawn. Then a woman arrives
in a broken-down car and life livens up, socially and sexually.
What they say
The Guardian: A skilful exercise in free indirect style: the characters
are not first-person narrators, but lovingly distinguished third-person
points of view.
First novel: The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
About
Four people in Malaysia, with the rumblings of the second world war
in the background and the Japanese about to invade. The factory is
a shop used as a front for illegal businesses.
They say
Guardian: Like a bolt of raw silk, Tash Aw's debut can be a little
rough and transparent in places. But perhaps one ought to accept the
inconsistencies as integral to the effect.
Biography: Matisse the Master by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton)
About
The painter as he saw himself, with unprecedented and unrestricted
access to his voluminous family correspondence, and other new material
in private archives.
They say
Guardian: Since Spurling tells more of the life than of the art, we
learn of life's tormenting anxieties but little of what Matisse felt
in the creation of art.
Poetry: Cold Calls by Christopher Logue (Faber)
About Continues from a point nine years after the Greeks have
launched 1,000 ships to capture Helen of Troy.
They say
Guardian: Achilles delivers a speech that is overwhelming in its
icy clarity and mercilessness: "Do I hate him? Yes, I hate him.
Hate him./And should he be afraid of me? He should./I want to harm
him. I want him to feel pain."
This is remarkable stuff. We have swerved away from bitter comedy
and back into the central drama of the poem.
Children's book: The New Policeman by Kate Thompson (Bodley Head)
About
To save Kinvara from running out of time, J makes the transition to
Tir na n'Og, the land of eternal youth, where he finds that the fairy
people are also having a problem.
They say
Guardian: There is something hallucinatory, if not delirious, about
this stylish, magical book, the sensation of tenuous recognition, of
watching a dream slip away after waking.
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◆ From: 203.77.118.73
※ 編輯: goniker 來自: 203.77.118.73 (01/05 08:02)
※ 編輯: goniker 來自: 203.77.118.73 (01/05 08:03)
※ 編輯: goniker 來自: 203.77.118.73 (01/05 08:03)