Debut Novelist Johanna Skibsrud Wins Giller Prize

Before she hit the Giller Prize longlist, Johanna Skibsrud had only sold a couple hundred copies of her debut novel, The Sentimentalists, published by a very small press. Now, after winning the $50,000 award last night, she has the #3 spot on Amazon.ca, behind Keith Richards and a former US president.

Emma Donoghue's Room [Kindle] somehow was not nominated for the Giller, but it is a finalist for the Governor's General Award next Tuesday. In fact the Giller and Governor's General lists are completely different except for one title they share: Kathleen Winter's novel Annabel [no Kindle yet]. In 1968 in a tiny village on the Labrador coast, the new parents of a hermaphrodite decide to sew shut the infant's female genitalia and raise their baby as a boy. Wayne "struggles to live up to the manly standards imposed by his well-meaning if curmudgeonly father, but when adolescence rolls around, Wayne's body reveals a number of surprises and becomes a battleground of physiology, identity, and sexual discovery." The book pubs here January 4.

Comments

[Amy]

Annabel was one of the best books I've read all year and I'm very not surprised to see it on both lists! I'm only sad that it didn't win the Giller. Also... the Canadian cover is so much prettier, and really matches the story so much better, I think. Because it's not all about the body and what it looks like. It is a story of a place and a time, of a family, and of Wayne and Annabel.