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Awards
We recommend…A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize and #1 international bestseller, The Sense of an Ending is a masterpiece.
The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes’s new novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world’s most distinguished writers.
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they swore to stay friends forever. Until Adrian’s life took a turn into tragedy, and all of them, especially Tony, moved on and did their best to forget.
Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a marriage, a calm divorce. He gets along nicely, he thinks, with his one child, a daughter, and even with his ex-wife. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove. The unexpected bequest conveyed by that letter leads Tony on a dogged search through a past suddenly turned murky. And how do you carry on, contentedly, when events conspire to upset all your vaunted truths?
Man Booker Prize Short list 2011
Julian Barnes — The Sense of an Ending (winner)
Carol Birch — Jamrach’s Menagerie
Patrick deWitt — The Sisters Brothers
Esi Edugyan — Half Blood Blues
Stephen Kelman — Pigeon English
A D Miller — Snowdrops
Scotiabank Giller Prize Short List 2011
Coady, Lynn – The Antagonist
deWitt, Patrick – The Sisters Brothers
Edugyan, Esi — Half-Blood Blues (Winner)
Gartner, Zsuzsi – Better Living Through Plastic Explosives
Ondaatje, Michael – The Cat’s Table
Winner of the Orange Prize 2011
“Deftly walks the line between the realistic and the fantastical…In Obreht’s expert hands, the novel’s mythology, while rooted in a foreign world, comes to seem somehow familiar, like the dark fairy tales of our own youth, the kind that spooked us into reading them again and again…[Reveals] oddly comforting truths about death, belief in the impossible, and the art of letting go.” – O: The Oprah Magazine
“Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years.” —Colum McCann
“A novel of surpassing beauty, exquisitely wrought and magical. Téa Obreht is a towering new talent.”—T. C. Boyle
“A marvel of beauty and imagination. Téa Obreht is a tremendously talented writer.”—Ann Patchett
Orange Prize Previous Winners
Previous winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction are Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002) Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk about Kevin (2005), Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), Rose Tremain for The Road Home (2008), Marilyn Robinson for Home (2009), and Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (2010).
Trevor Cole wins Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour 2011
“A jaw-dropping, near-perfect satire.”
— Chatelaine
“Practical Jean should be a starred pick for every book club. . . . [A] biting and black comedy of middle-class mores gone murderously wrong [that] combines diamond-cut social satire with thoughtful contemplations of friendship’s burdens, meaning and purpose. . . . This wise and funny writer finishes off his latest novel with an epilogue whose closing words will leave you laughing (or shuddering and laughing) for days.”
— The Globe and Mail
“Funny and dark and occasionally surprising. . . . A darkly comic look at friendship and the sometimes dubious values of practical thinking.”
— Edmonton Journal
“Wickedly funny. . . . This has to be one of the darkest comedies written by a Canadian in my memory. Every page has a droll surprise, a laconic statement of absurdity, a deadpan wink at the world.”
— SunTimes (Owen Sound)
“A clever and timely novel with plenty of bite.”
— Telegraph Journal (St. John)
“[A] rare thing — a novel that tackles a deep, dark philosophical question through seemingly banal events and leaves the reader pondering for days after reading the last page. . . . Thought-provoking.”
— Vancouver Sun
Charles Foran’s Richler biography wins Charles Taylor Prize
The nominees for the Charles Taylor Prize were:
Mordecai: The Life & Times by Charles Foran
On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women by Stevie Cameron
Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven by Ross King
The Geography of Arrival: A Memoir by George Sipos
The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das by Merrily Weisbord
For more information visit the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction site.
We've listened in for years, but this year CBC Books turned the spotlight on Blue Heron Books, naming it the Independent Bookseller for the month of January.
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