A novel with ambition that takes on the communist American witch-hunts of the 1950s as well as the Mexican revolution was named the recipient of the Orange prize for fiction.
The Lacuna, written by Barbara Kingsolver, received the reward along with £30,000, which is not bad for the author’s first novel since 2000.
The novelist beat out competition from Lorrie Moore for her novel ‘A Gate at the Stairs” and Hillary Mantel for “Wolf Hall.” The award is considered to be the biggest offered solely to women writers.
Chair of judges for the Orange award this year TV producer Daisy Goodwin, stated that The Lacuna was breathtaking and poignant and added that the winner was really only a competition between the three books making it a bit like trying to choose between one’s own children.
Goodwin stated that in the end everyone was happy with the final choice of The Lacuna as the winner although all three of the novels were some of the best that she has read in quite a while.
The Lacuna is composed of diaries, newspaper reports, memoirs, and congressional transcripts and is demanding of the reader in that it needs to be read properly in prolonged stints, instead of in bits and pieces as time allows. It also takes on large subjects that still resonate throughout society today including notably the obsession with celebrity.
Also on the shortlist were Rosie Allison’s “The Very Thought of You,” Attica Locke’s “Black Water Rising,” and Monique Roffey’s “The White Woman on the Green Bicycle.”
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