Award Winning Books
U.S. National Book Award For Fiction 2009- Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
New York, August 1974. A man is walking the sky. The city stands still in awe. Between the newly bulit Twin Towers the man is striding and making his way through the air. One hundred and ten stories below him, the lives of eight strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical, passionate Irish monk working in the Bronx with a clutch of prostitutes; Claire, a delicate housewife reeling from the death of her son in Vietnam; her husband Solomon, a cynical judge; Lara, a young artist struggling with a spiralling drug addiction and a doomed marriage; Fernando, a thirteen-year-old photographer chasing underground graffiti; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life; and Jazzlyn, her beautiful, reckless daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the high-rises of New York. Set against a time of sweeping political and social change, from the backlash against the Vietnam War and the lingering spectre of the oil crisis to the beginnings of the Internet - these disparate lives will collide in the shadow of one reckless and beautiful act, and be transformed forever. "Let the Great World Spin" celebrates the effervescent spirit of an age and the small beauties of everyday life. It is a lyrical masterpiece from a storyteller who continues to use the wide world as his canvas.
Impac Dublin Literary Award 2009- Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
A beautifully written, insightful first novel, Man Gone Down is about a young black father of three in a bi-racial marriage, trying to claim a piece of the American Dream he has bargained on since youth. On the eve of the un-named narrator's thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year old child. He's been getting by working on construction jobs, though he's known on the streets as "the professor", as he was expected to make something out of his life. Alternating between his past, in inner-city Boston, he was bussed to the suburbs as part of the doomed attempts at integration in the 1970s- and the present day in New York City where he is trying to keep his children in private schools; we learn of his mother's abuses, his father's abandonment, raging alcoholism and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America.
Costa Novel Award 2009: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibin
In a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So, when a job is offered in America, it is clear that she must go. Leaving her family and home, Eilis sets off to forge a new life for herself in Brooklyn.
Young , homesick and alone, she gradually buries the pain of parting beneath the rhythms of a new life - days at the till in a large department store, night classes at Brooklyn College and Friday evenings on the dance floor of the parish hall - until she realizes that she has found a sort of happiness. But when tragic news summons her back to Ireland and the constrictions of her old life unexpectedly give way to new possibilities, she finds herself facing a terrible choice: between love and happiness in the land where she belongs and the promises she must keep on the far side of the ocean. "Brrooklyn" is a tender story of great love and loss, and of the heartbreaking choice between personal freedom and duty.
In the character of Eilis Lacey Colm Tóibin has created a remarkable heroine and in "Brooklyn" a novel of devastating emotional power.
Orange Prize for Fiction 2009: Home by Marilynne Robinson
Following on from the magnificent Gilead, Home takes up the story of the wayward son Jack who, after decades away, edgily and uneasily, but finally, returns home. He is the prodigal son and his family believe against all evidence, that if they love him enough, if they welcome him back, that he will change and he will stay. But, of course, that is not how life really goes...Marilynne Robinson's understanding of the human heart, of how families operate, of how and why we continue to forgive and to hope, cuts right to the soul. She writes with wisdom, intelligence and generosity.
Galaxy Book of the Year 2009: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
It is midnight on June 30th 1860 and all is quiet in the Kent family's elegant house in Road, Wiltshire. The next morning, however, they wake to find that their youngest son has been the victim of an unimaginably gruesome murder. Even worse, the guilty party is surely one of their number- the house was bolted from the inside. As Jack Whicher, the most celebrated detective of his day, arrives at Road to track down the killer, the murder provokes national hysteria at the thought of what may be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy,loneliness and loathing. This true story has all the hallmarks of a classic gripping murder mystery; a body, a detective, a country house steeped in secrets and a whole family of suspects- it is the original Victorian whodunnit.
Man Booker Prize 2009 -
The winner of the Man Booker prize 2009 is Hilary Mantel for her novel "Wolf Hall"
Shortlist was as follows ( announced September 8th 2009)
A.S Byatt: The Children's Book
J.M Coetzee: Summertime
Adan Fould: The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer: The Glass Room
Sarah Waters: The Little Stranger