The Love Letter was longlisted in 1996, the year that Helen Dunmore's The Spell of Winter won the Orange Prize. The idea intrigued me straight away, even before I saw the 1999 film of the same name: a love letter addressed and signed ambiguously, discovered by a 42-year-old
If I could add up all the hours that I spend deciding what to read, I'd've read through Proust and Ulysses and Melville and Barshetshire and Les Mis a million times. At least. So you can see why I've spent an untoward amount of time thinking about what
I spent a ridiculous amount of time touching this cover (and wishing the hole in the centre was actually cut) Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues Thomas Allen Publishers, 2011 In the opening pages of Esi Edugyan’s second novel, readers meet Heiro, Chip, Delilah and Sid, and are immersed in
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives Lola Shoneyin The Pleasure Seekers Tishani Doshi The Birth of Love Joanna Kavenna The Tiger's Wife Téa Obreht Room Emma Donoghue Swamplandia! - Karen Russell Great House - Nicole Krauss Whatever You Love - Louise Doughty Grace Williams Says it Loud -
Orange Prize Season began with figuring for me. It looked like this: 304+304+321+320+336+288+464+336+336+193+304+289+272+352+602+256+316+256+400+461= Reading the Orange List. And where to go from this string of figures? How to quantify the reading? Now that it's swollen with characters. And settings. And plots. And tigers. Maybe I should tabulate the number of
