I’ve now read the last two Women’s Prize for Fiction winners that I had remaining (one, Larry’s Party, I’d technically read before, but I remembered so little about it I decided to start from scratch). This means I have officially finished the #ReadingWomen challenge! I’ll be posting my ranking of all twenty-five Women’s Prize for Fiction winners before the 1st November, when the Women’s Prize will announce their Winner of Winners.
So, what did I think of the last two on the list?
I read Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection, which won the Orange Prize in 2001, as a buddy read with Rebecca at Bookish Beck. It tells the story of two misfits, Douglas and Harley, who meet in the tiny Australian town of Karakarook. Douglas is an engineer who has been sent to demolish the town’s rickety bridge; Harley is a museum curator who has been sent to preserve the region’s rural heritage. Both strangers in the community, single and lonely, they are set on a personal as well as a professional collision course. Grenville is brilliant at making the most mundane moments feel incredibly tense, whether it’s Douglas’s inability to break social convention by speaking up when he’s being driven far too fast through the outback, or Harley’s very quiet confrontation with a local storeowner who won’t sell her a bucket. The Idea of Perfection really gets into the second-by-second tick of social anxiety, with both the protagonists agonising over doing the correct thing. On the surface, this is a funny and light read, but like the patchwork that Harley puts together, Grenville is adept at balancing out the light and the dark, with the darkness in the novel largely to be found in the backstories of the two protagonists. However, The Idea of Perfection also includes a subplot about local housewife Felicity Porcelline, who is determined to be a model to everybody else but ends up being tempted by adultery, and I felt this really detracted from the novel as a whole. Felicity is a very familiar caricature and her story distracted from the warmer thread of Harley and Douglas’s growing bond. Because of this wasted page-time, the novel seemed too long, but also wrapped up too quickly; there didn’t seem to be enough space in the final chapters to really feel for our protagonists. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the quirky originality and clever observations of The Idea of Perfection, and liked it better than the only other Grenville I’ve read (The Secret River).
The cover of Larry’s Party I originally read, L, and my current edition, R. I love how green all editions of Larry’s Party are!
Carol Shields’s ninth novel, Larry’s Party, won the Orange Prize in 1998. The novel follows the life of an ‘ordinary’ Canadian man, Larry Weller, through a series of chronological vignettes that focus on specific years in his life, culminating in a dinner party he holds in his late forties. Shields’s purpose only really becomes clear in this long final chapter, when all the women who’ve been significant in Larry’s life debate the role of men in the late 1990s, and whether they are now redundant! Certain flashes of Larry’s life felt more freshly observed to me than others; I found the very first chapter particularly memorable, when Larry strolls delightedly through the streets wearing a wrong but better jacket than the one he put on that morning. It reminded me of Michel Faber’s brilliant short story ‘Vanilla Bright Like Eminem’, which similarly captures a moment of unexpected joy in the middle of an ordinary day. Larry’s journey through Annunciation paintings with his second wife, Beth, an academic who is by far the most interesting character in the novel, also stuck in my mind, as did his first wife’s callous destruction of the hedge maze he lovingly builds in his garden. Finally, Shields writes hilariously and accurately about Larry’s brief midlife crisis when he turns forty: ‘and then a dazzling thought comes at him sideways – by August he will be forty-one! No longer forty, with forty’s clumsy, abject shoulders and sting of regret, but forty-one! A decent age, a mild, assured, wise and good-hearted manly age.’ However, although I liked the novel a lot, I didn’t think that it brought anything particularly new to discussions of masculinity at the turn of the twenty-first century, although it’s refreshing to see a male protagonist who is fundamentally not a bad sort. I also found the twist at the end both disappointing and frankly, unbelievable, given its minimal seeding. It allows Shields to deploy a satisfying maze metaphor but for me, negatively coloured my final impression of this solid Orange Prize winner.
***
Both these novels made me reflect on how rarely I read novels that are older than a couple of years, and what I might be missing out on by focusing so closely on contemporary fiction. I also suspect that I might have been much more impressed by both these books had I read them in my late teens or early twenties, when, for whatever reason, I felt much more drawn to these kind of quiet, character-led narratives. Nowadays, as my Women’s Prize winner ranking will reveal, I am much more enthusiastic about books that make me think, and especially to books that incorporate speculative elements, whether that’s hard SF or something with just a hint of magic. I feel like this reverses some stereotypical ideas about what you like in your teens versus your thirties, but never mind!
Has reading older novels made you reflect on your present reading preferences?
I’m very intrigued to see what your final ranking will be!
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Unsurprisingly, ranking 25 books I read over the course of about 15 years was a bit challenging, but I was surprised by how clearly I remembered almost all of them!
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Looking forward to seeing your rankings, I must admit that I loved Larry’s Party, even thought it is a bit tricksy.
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I liked it a lot more than I expected to! (I didn’t get on with Unless, and have avoided Carol Shields ever since).
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I finished the Grenville on Sunday and wrote up my thoughts this morning to post tomorrow. We were very much on the same page with it, yet don’t overlap too much in the particulars we discuss, which is always good 🙂 I have a copy of The Secret River to try sometime.
I’m glad you enjoyed revisiting Larry, though I can see why you didn’t care for the ending. It took me by surprise as well. (I pretty much always forget what happens at the end of novels.)
We seem to be on opposite trajectories, as I feel like I appreciate quiet, character-driven stories much more these days.
I have rankings of all the winners ready as well! I have a feeling ours will be wildly different. I can guess what your top 4-5 will be…
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Look forward to reading your thoughts on the Grenville!
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Pingback: Completing the Women’s Prize Winners Reading Project and Voting | Bookish Beck
Enjoyed both of these novels, and am a fan of both authors. But neither gets my vote for the overall prize!
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Same! I think they’ve both ended up somewhere about a third of the way down my overall ranking, if that makes sense.
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This is interesting, I still read more older novels than I do modern ones myself! I’m looking forward to your ranking.
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I definitely want to make more time for them, especially through re-reading.
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I come across lots of appealing older fiction when I’m shelving in the rolling stacks (not on public access) at the library. I often think, I should borrow more from in here instead of from the Bestsellers shelves! And yet I never seem to find the motivation unless I’m reading towards a particular challenge.
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I know, I have completely failed at re-reading this year.
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Pingback: Ranking All 25 Winners of the Women’s Prize for Fiction #ReadingWomen | Laura Tisdall
Great reviews! I’ve not seen many reviews for either of these, though Larry’s Party seems to pop up favorably here and there- in any case, it’s nice to see such balanced takes. Neither premise quite grabs me (to be honest I’m not sure if I’ve ever particularly gravitated toward quiet, character-driven novels- I keep thinking maybe someday when I’m older I’ll lean more that way), but it is encouraging to see you found positives to both, even if they aren’t quite standouts.
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I thought they were both worth reading, especially Larry’s Party which has some brilliant set-pieces. I was pleased to have a much better experience with Shields after disliking Unless.
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