Who will win the Giller Prize? It's Washington Black's to lose.

I had really hoped to finish the shortlist before Monday's award show, but alas getting through the 600 page epic Songs for the Cold of Heart has taken longer than anticipated. That said, I am about half way through and feel confident that I can give a decent analysis of this year's short list and discuss who I think is likely to win.

For those new to the Giller (or who are non-Canadian Lit fans), this award was established 25 years ago by Jack Rabinovitch, in honour of his late wife Dorris Giller, who was a literary critic. Since then, it has established itself as the most lucrative ($100,000 Canadian for the winner) and arguably the most prestigious award for Canadian fiction. In addition to the prize money, a real commercial phenomena called "The Giller Bump" often results in significant sales for the book, especially for holiday shoppers eager to get their friends and family the "it" Canadian book of the year.

Past winning books have often used the award to propel themselves into the esteemed literary "CanLit" canon, becoming instant classics. Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace and Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing remain among my favourite books and have won over a large swathe of readers as fans.

Unlike the Man Booker Prize, whose focus on form and experimental structure is at times too obsessive, the Giller Prize tends to award much more reader friendly books whose strength are the themes explored and the profound emotional response they engender.  For that reason, those looking to give a Giller gift, the chances of the recipient actually reading and finishing the given book are pretty good.

As I have indicated in other posts, award predictions is a fun past time for many, but it's a difficult task when dealing with a relatively small jury of 5 people deciding what they think is the best book. It's not like larger membership bodies that award prizes (like the Oscars or Emmys) where more idiosyncratic tastes are often lost among the mass of voters. Here it is five writers or people with ties to the arts arguing in a room and deciding who they believe deserves Canada's most prestigious literary award. For that reason, take my prediction with a grain of salt.

This year, the shortlist feels quite strong. I enjoyed the four books I finished and am thoroughly enjoying Songs for the Cold of Heart. Anyone would be an acceptable, if not deserving winner (which is definitely not how I feel about other shortlists). That said, gotta make my picks. Here the books, in the order of least likely to most likely to win:


5. Patrick deWitt, French Exit (House of Anansi)

It has been a good year for deWitt. His breakthrough Sisters Brothers was turned into a very good movie. His new book has received plenty of critical acclaim and another shortlisting for the Giller Prize. This clever and witty story of an eccentric socialite woman and her too attached oddball son dealing with the drying up of their significant fortune is well done. It's an enjoyable and quick read, one that fans of his kind of humour will embrace. That said, it's definitely not as strong as Sisters Brothers and one wonders how necessary a book about the pratfalls of the rich really is. I just don't think the jury will feel inclined to awarding French Exit the title.

4. Thea Lim, An Ocean of Minutes (Viking Canada)

I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Following a young woman who time travels to the future to pay for her husband's medical treatment after a disasterous flu pandemic, Lim explores the consequences of making those decisions  andhow disaster strains and leaves in tatters the strongest bonds of love. In some ways, Lim tackles a topic that has been well explored before and the comparisons to Station Eleven are with some merit. But it still felt fresh and captivating and the writing is beautifully melancholic, perfectly capturing the mood required for such a story. That said, Lim is relatively young and this is her first novel. I think we are going to get better and even more substantial works from her that will be more worthy of the Giller.

3. Sheila Heti, Motherhood (Knopf Canada)

Heti is definitely one of the better known names on the shortlist, having written extensively, mostly essays and short stories that were widely read. Her How Should A Person Be was recently included as a top choice for a 21st Century literary canon by Vulture Magazine. In Motherhood she embraces the very popular fad of autobiographical fiction, exploring through a first person voice of a near-forty year old woman (also named Sheila) the thoughts and anxieties when confronting whether to have children or not. It is very profound and engaging and if the Giller jury decided to go in the direction of embracing the autofiction trend this may come out on top. I had some issues with it though, which I do with other examples of the subgenre, unable at times to really decipher the fictional elements in an execution that feels like a collection of introspective non-fiction essays rather than the kinds of story telling we associate with fiction. Heti's book is already a best seller and likely does not need this award to establish herself as a leading Canadian voice, but if the jury goes in this direction it will be a bold break from the kinds of books that have won the award.

2. Eric Dupont, Songs for the Cold of Heart (QC Fiction)

The one I have not finished yet, but that is no fault of the very skillful storytelling Dupont employs in this dense family epic that takes us from rural Quebec to the cities of Europe, exploring themes of changing social and cultural norms that transformed the province and its people during the post-War years. Those who love the prose of John Irving (with a dash of magical realism), falling into this book will be a pure joy (and even at the very slow pace I have attacked this text, I can say I am thoroughly enjoying the folksy charm of Dupont's writing). That said, the Giller Prize has never gone to a work in translation and this would be a departure. I think it would be a good one though. For a pan-Canadian prize to have effectively excluded the immense cultural products coming from the French speaking province is a shortcoming that a Dupont win will do a lot to overcome. However, the juggernaut that is the next book will likely keep that from happening.

1. Esi Edugyan, Washington Black (HarperCollins Canada)

When the shortlist initially came out, I would not have bet on Edugyan's third novel. She has already won the Giller for her 2011 Half-Blood Blues and only two other authors have repeated (Alice Munro and M.G. Vassanji). Washington Black is certain to be a best seller and already appeared to have received sufficient acknowledgment when it was shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. Edugyan's place as one of the leading literary lights in Canada is well established. If it had won the Booker, maybe the jury would feel less in need to award Edugyan. But since Anna Burns' Milkman upset Washington Black for that prize, the latter has added a plethora of award and critic acknowledgments. It is shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Prize for Fiction. It was both Amazon and Chapters/Indigo's top fiction choice for 2018. It has been on the Washington Post and Time Magazine Top 10 Fiction books of the year and is certain to make additional appearances in the lists about to appear across publications. It is one of the "it" works of fiction of 2018. If it were not to win the big national prize in Canada it would feel a bit odd.

In terms of the quality of the book, it also matches if not betters the others on the shortlist. Although at times inconsistent, with some clunky dialogue and questionable plot choices, for the most part the writing is extraordinary, finding myself lost in these beautiful passages that conveyed so much emotion. Additionally, Edugyan is doing something really interesting in her reinvention of the slave narrative, adding hints of adventure, but also exploring important themes of the erasure of black genius and how the past continued to haunt the freed. It is a hefty book with lots of gravitas (not to mention some really great cover designs--the UK cover is gorgeous and the Canadian and US editions are quite unique as well).

So for those wanting to skip all I have written, in conclusion:

Who will win: Washington Black

Who should win: Washington Black or Songs for the Cold of Heart

Darkhorse: Motherhood 

The Great Believers: Devastating and Beautiful account of 1980s AIDS Crisis

It's often dangerous to read a too hyped book, the fear being that the clamour among critics, award juries, and other readers sets the expectations way too high. Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers, a recounting of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago certainly brought the hype. Starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal in Fiction and certain to make dozens of year end lists for best book of the year and is a favourite to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction next April. Despite the praise, I'd put off picking it up until the time was right, and it certainly was when I finally did a few days ago. Makkai has delivered a heart wrenching account of what she describes as a war, with the casualties of the crisis scarring the survivors with emotional wounds that never will completely heal.

The story is told through the eyes of two protagonist in two time periods. The first being Yale, a thirty-something gay art gallery procurer recounting his life from the mid 1980s just after the death of a close friend, Nico, up until the early 1990s. Dealing with the emotional turbulence of death surrounding him, the constant paranoia of becoming infected, and surviving a political and cultural environment keen to dispose of him and his friends, Yale's story is an intimate depiction of someone eager for stability, for love, and some professional success, all things we all take for granted but for Yale things so hard to attain because of the AIDS epidemic. Yale's sections are emotional juggernaughts, providing us an insight into a war zone that Yale has to navigate through, with others but often alone.

The second storyline takes place in 2015, following a fifty-year old Fiona, Nico's younger sister who remained loyal to her brother when her parents exiled him and chose Nico's friends as her family after his death. Thirty years later, she is in search of her long estranged daughter and ends up in Paris reconnecting with old friends and the community she stood by during the bleakest periods of the 1980s. While trying to figure out what went wrong with the relationship with her daughter, Fiona must face up to the impact the death that filled her youth had on who she was and how she related to those she cared deeply for. Some have suggested that her storyline is less powerful than Yale's, but I found it both necessary (allowing the reader to catch their breath, Fiona's timeline giving us some distance from the harshest and saddest moments of the story) but also a valuable perspective of those who embraced allyship during the 1980s and investigating the toll that brought with it.

Filled with discussions of art, love, friendship, sexuality and with a  darkly sentimental reverence for a place and time that left so much carnage behind, Makkai delivers an emotionally devastating novel that while hard at times to take in, reads beautifully and fills the reader with the sense of loss that so many experienced during the period. Makkai delivers a book that is meticulously researched and is a worthy companion to other works of art and non-fiction that form the canon of gay and AIDS related depictions of the 1980s crisis.

One additional point I do want to bring up is the issue of allyship versus appropriation, that Makkai herself brings up in her acknowledgment. A few years ago, author Lionel Shriver launched a discussion about cultural appropriation, suggesting that writers were no longer allowed to write characters that shared their identities and that this amounted to censorship. She was, somewhat dishonestly, responding to legitimate criticisms of her book, The Mandibles, and racist tropes she resorted to in depicting African American characters. Most retorted (here and here) Shriver, noting that of course authors are able to write characters that did not share their identities or experiences, but when one does so writers must do their homework, research, be respectful and cognizant that you are voicing an experience and a story that is not yours.

In many ways, The Great Believers is an example of doing this right.  Makkai is a straight woman who is too young to have been in the middle of the crises. Yet she engaged in years of research, numerous interviews of those who were there, and used these first hand sources as readers to assure an authenticity to the story. The product speaks for itself, and shows what authors can do rather than repeat Shriver's dishonest laziness and faux outrage.

Anyways, this was a spectacular book and merits all the praise it has received. Hopefully with some award attention it will get the readership it deserves.