Tag: Orange Prize Shortlist

The Accidental by Ali Smith

Gilbert1 Comment

About the book

The Accidental is Ali Smith’s dazzling novel about a family holiday and a stranger who upends it. Arresting and wonderful, The Accidental pans in on the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family one hot summer. There a beguiling stranger called Amber appears at the door bearing all sorts of unexpected gifts, trampling over family boundaries and sending each of the Smarts scurrying from the dark into the light.

Reviewed by Bridewell Beauties

The narrative didn’t flow. Virginia Woolf did it better. As a group we did not enjoy the book. A disappointment.

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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

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About the book

Set in 1860s London, this is the story of Susan, a pickpocket who is persuaded to pose as a lady’s maid and infiltrate the house of a young heiress. This novel explores the nature of identity and what people do with disguise.

Reviewed by Hayling Readers Group

Nominated for both the Orange and Booker prizes in 2002 this dark, compelling read set in Victorian times tells the story of two young women. Though brought up in very different circumstances their lives become firmly linked and with secrets slowly unfolding the reader is held spellbound by the sheer inventiveness of the author. with a wealth of characters the plot twists and turns but is it always believable and the reader is treated to often shocking revelations along the way.

Star rating: none given

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Burnt shadows by Kamila Shamsie

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About the book

In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.

Reviewed by Enjoying Books

This was a novel that encompassed major events in the world’s history – from the Japanese A bombs to modern problems. We enjoyed the first half better but we learnt much about modern history.

Star rating: ***

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The White woman on the green bicycle by Monique Roffey

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About the book

This novel tells how when George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. George eventually finds out that Sabine has been keeping secrets from him.

Reviewed by CC Readers Group

Most people greatly enjoyed this once they had “got into it”. The characters, landscape abd political and racial setting were described vividly. It was not an “entertaining” book but on many levels fascinating and illuminating.

Star rating: ***

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The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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About the book

‘When I was born my mother named me after every girl in a book my father gave her called The History of Love. . . ‘
Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother’s loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn’t know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . .

Reviewed by The Non-Book Club

Intriguing, confusing, enigmatic, beautiful book of profound loss, a puzzle worth unravelling. Like peeling an onion. The excerpts from ‘The History of Love’ were entrancing.
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