Guardian First Book Award shortlist

Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest has made it on to the shortlist of 5 for the Guardian First Book Award.  (Matthew Thomas’ We Are Not Ourselves, which we reviewed here, missed out). No, we aren’t Fiona McFarlane’s agents – it’s just a very good book. You can read Fiona’s own comments about the book here, for a much-needed balance to the peculiar Sydney Morning Herald piece we linked to in our Barbara Jefferis post.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/15/first-book-award-the-shortlist

The other books are:

Colin Barrett: Young Skins (short stories)

Henry Marsh: Do No Harm ( a neurosurgeon’s life)

Evan Osmos: Age of Ambition (reportage about China)

May-Lan Tan: Things to make and break (short stories)

The winner will be announced on November 26th. Any bets?

Matthew Thomas: We are not ourselves*

This is the story we like to hear: a modest, hard-working writer who takes ten years to write his first novel, and hits the big time with it. The book earned a million-dollar advance and has been longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

Warning: spoilers all the way. Don’t read this if you don’t want to know what happens in this book!

Guardian First Book Award

Fiona McFarlane’s unforgettable The Night Guest has been longlisted among 6 works of fiction and  5 of non-fiction for The Guardian First Book Award 2014. Among the others Gert will be looking out for are the novel We are not ourselves, by Matthew Thomas, and the non-fiction works The Iceberg by Marian Coutts and Do no harm by neurosurgeon Henry Marsh.

The full list is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/08/guardian-first-book-award-2014-super-furry-animals