Orange Prize

Books written by women and judged for literary merit by women. Sounds ideal? Well June 3rd there are three American women who are shortlisted for the $43,000 Orange Prize. Whoever the winner is also gets a statue, "Bessie", for a year.

Marilynne Robinson was nominated for her novel called Home. She is very well known for her novels Housekeeping (review by NYT ..."So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield." and Gilead.

Also nominated was Ellen Feldman for Scottsboro. I remember her for The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank: A Novel I didn't know much about her. Found this on her website:

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published articles on the history of divorce, plastic surgery, Halloween, the Normandie, and many other topics, as well as numerous book reviews.

The third American is Samantha Hunt for the Invention of Everything Else. I really like all that I have read by Marilynne Robinson and Ellen Feldman. I have never read anything by Samantha Hunt. I am looking forward to reading her short-listed book. It is a fictional account of Tesla ... a weirdly wonderful scientist.