The Orange Prize longlist has just been announced, followed by the perennial hoo-ha over its right to exist. Is it sexist to have a prize just for women? Is sexism the reason why we need a prize just for women? Does anyone outside the comment boards on the Guardian website actually care? All it is, really, is a wheeze to sell more books, something it manages pretty well.
One problem with the Orange Prize is that the quality is often not that great. The shortlist and the winner sometimes seem like they’ve been chosen by a group of book publicists thinking, “Ooh, the media’s going to love this author’s interesting backstory!” or “Wouldn’t this novel be fab for bookclubs?!” The last two winners, the hugely overrated The Tiger’s Wife (Salman Rushdie with a hangover) and Barbara Kingsolver’s embarrassing Trotsky love-in, The Lacuna, had a suspiciously marketing-first feel about them.
Another thing that puzzles me is the women-only judging panel. I’m broadly in favour of the thinking behind the prize: I agree that female novelists aren’t always taken as seriously as men, and believe, on the whole, that women writers benefit from this extra recognition. But what makes me uncomfortable is how the prize ends up reinforcing the view that books by women are just for women. After all, the biggest problem female authors face is not prejudice from the book industry, but prejudice from male readers. What better way to solve this than by putting a couple of men on next year’s Orange Prize panel? It might even sell some more books.
Here’s this year’s longlist, of which I have read precisely nothing, so couldn’t possibly comment:
Island of Wings Karin Altenberg (Quercus)
On the Floor Aifric Campbell (Serpent’s Tail)
The Grief of Others Leah Hager Cohen (The Clerkenwell Press)
The Sealed Letter Emma Donoghue (Picador)
Half Blood Blues Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail)
The Forgotten Waltz Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape)
The Flying Man Roopa Farooki (Headline Review)
Lord of Misrule Jaimy Gordon (Quercus)
Painter of Silence Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury)
Gillespie and I Jane Harris (Faber)
The Translation of the Bones Francesca Kay (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
The Blue Book A L Kennedy (Jonathan Cape)
The Night Circus Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker)
The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury)
Foreign Bodies Cynthia Ozick (Atlantic Books)
State of Wonder Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury)
There but for the by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard (Alma Books)
Tides of War by Stella Tillyard (Chatto & Windus)
The Submission by Amy Waldman (William Heinemann)
Anna Baddeley is editor of the Omnivore.
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