• Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • The Ship
  • Press & Reviews
  • Events
  • Contact

Antonia Honeywell

Writer

  • Blog
  • Publication & Beyond
    • Countdown To Publication
  • My Reading & Reviews
    • Baileys Prize 2015
    • Bailey’s Prize 2014
    • Man Booker Prize 2014
    • Man Booker Prize 2013
    • Other Reading
  • Any Other Business
    • Advent 2018
    • Advent 2016
You are here: Home / Blog / My Reading & Reviews / Baileys Prize 2014 / My post-Bailey’s prize reading

My post-Bailey’s prize reading

11th June 2014 By Antonia Honeywell 3 Comments

So we know know that the Bailey’s Prize went, not entirely unexpectedly, to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half Formed Thing. I loved that the prize went to a new novel that had difficulty finding a publisher. A Girl is a Half Formed Thing is a bleak, desperate novel that reads as though James Joyce turned feminist and discovered plot. I also love that my copy is the original Galley Beggars Press edition, because the prize is a triumph for Galley Beggars too, and a vindication for small presses everywhere. And it’s quite fun seeing The Guardian Review section falling over itself to applaud Eimear McBride, after its two-page hagiography of Donna Tartt just days before the result was announced. But enough. I’m not the only reader whose faith in book prizes has been restored by the result. Tartt got the Pulitzer, Adichie sold her film rights, Lahiri’s been on two major shortlists, Magee and Kent both had huge boosts for their debuts, and McBride won. Good call, Baileys Prize. Good call.

But bleak. So bleak. I had to reread Cold Comfort Farm and The Diary of a Provincial Lady before I could read anything else, which didn’t do much for my TBR pile (although they both do wonders for my spirits). When I did, it was Carys Bray’s A Song for Issy Bradley (Hutchinson, 19th June). Issy is the youngest child in a Mormon family and the novel is the story of the family recovering – or not recovering – from her death. It’s beautifully told and absorbing but its main attraction for me was the glimpse into the Mormon way of life. Eve Harris’ The Marrying of Chani Kaufmann, longlisted for the Man Booker prize last year, held a similar fascination.

Emily St John Mandel’s Station 11 is due out in September. Mandel is an American writer; Station 11 is her fourth published novel but the first to be published in the UK. As readers of The Ship will know (or will find out), I love speculative fiction. Not science fiction per se, but the kind of novels that push our current world to its very edges and examine the results. In Station 11, the characters’ relationships and the images of America at the end of civilisation are linked by a group of travelling players who perform Shakespeare as Shakespeare would once have been performed (I found myself thinking of Geoffrey Trease’s classic children’s novel A Cue for Treason); the idea alone is worth the price.

Maybe it was the thought of my childhood reading that sent me back to John Christopher. His Tripods trilogy made a huge impression on me when I was ten/eleven. In A Wrinkle in the Skin, the world’s been changed by a huge earthquake; in The Death of Grass, a mysterious virus is killing off all the grasses, including the cereal crops. Like John Wyndham, John Christopher was writing at a more confident time. The Triffids, the Kraken, the earthquake, even the virus, happen to humanity. Humanity doesn’t cause them, but triumphs over them. It’s a treat to revel in a world where, y’know, the good human beings are really super. But the casual misogyny (the novels were originally written in the 50s and 60s) jars horribly. We’re destroying the planet, but some things really are getting better.

I loved Katharine McMahon’s The Woman in the Picture (W&N, 3rd July); Laline Paull’s The Bees (out now) deserves all the accolades it’s had for sheer originality; every child in the land should own a copy of Katherine Rundell’s Rooftoppers (out now). And I finally read Wolf Hall. Enough said.

Filed Under: Baileys Prize 2014, Blog, My Reading & Reviews

Comments

  1. hastanton says

    11th June 2014 at 12:12 pm

    I really want to read Station 11 ( and The Ship obvs!) love dystopian fiction. I have read Issy too ….a great debut which I am planning to review soon . What did you think of WH ??

    Reply
    • antoniahoneywell says

      9th July 2014 at 2:00 pm

      It was very, very long. I didn’t want to notice how long it is (Middlemarch is very, very short, as is Anna Karenina). But I did.

      Reply
      • hastanton says

        9th July 2014 at 3:20 pm

        I thought of you when reading an interview with Emma Straub ( the vacationers). She said she has 4 copies of Middlemarch scattered about her house as you never know when you might need Dorothea. So true !!!

        Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Follow Antonia

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Latest Tweets

  • I wrote a book once, y’know x https://t.co/Fif2FADXck 25th March 2023 10:56 am
  • ‘What I found, when I mustered enough courage to look back, was that many parts of my childhood were worse than I’d… https://t.co/Nd9ZPLTtZ5 25th March 2023 9:38 am
  • Look! Look! Some good news! https://t.co/9FPtNfIbTD 24th March 2023 12:12 pm

Most Recent Posts

  • An invitation to my birthday 2nd May 2021
  • An alternative vigil for Sarah Everard 17th March 2021
  • Decompression Day 19th June 2019
  • Arriving in Entebbe 5th June 2019
  • Out of Office – Uganda 4th June 2019
  • Writing and failure 9th April 2019
  • Andy Murray Is Not Dead 11th January 2019
  • Day 24 24th December 2018
  • Day 23 23rd December 2018
  • Day 22 22nd December 2018

Categories

  • Blog
  • Publication & Beyond
    • Countdown To Publication
  • My Reading & Reviews
    • Baileys Prize 2015
    • Bailey’s Prize 2014
    • Man Booker Prize 2014
    • Man Booker Prize 2013
    • Other Reading
  • Any Other Business
    • Advent 2018
    • Advent 2016

Copyright © 2023 · Antonia Honeywell
Joanna Craig Website Design