2021 Goldsmiths Prize General Discussion

[LindaJ^]

Nice. If it wasn't Assembly, glad it was Sterling.

[WndyJW]

I had them tied for first and would have been equally happy for either, although Isabel Waidner is such a cheerful, effusive person it’s hard not to root for her.

[Paul]

The book deserves to win on sheer literary merit alone. As I have been saying for some years, Waidner is by some distance the UK’s most exciting author and great to see that now being recognised.

But it is also wonderful to see a non-binary genderqueer author winning a major literary prize. Gender identity seems to be the one area where prejudice is still ingrained to the extent it is e.g. acceptable for major writers to be openly transphobic in a way that would not happen with race or sexuality.

That said there is still clearly significant implicit bias in the literary world in many other areas and historically at least the Goldsmiths has struggled with race (Isabel has previously commented on that to me as well)

I do hope Assembly goes on to win the Costa and/or Woman’s Prize as it is an equally brilliant novel, but unfortunately, unless the judges had done a 2019 Booker, there could only be one winner last night.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I thought it was fascinating (and not something we often see on prizes) to see that the chair of the judges actually indicated four books which did not make the shortlist but which she particularly enjoyed - she refers to other judges also having their favourites so the implication to me is these are books she personally would have championed to the other judges

She mentioned four

"The Tomb Guardians" by our very own Paul Griffiths (and of course tipped by us for the list)

"Lessons in Love and Other Crimes" by Elizabeth Chakrabarty (which does indeed sound also Goldsmiths worthy - albeit as an attack on racism in academia at London University would have been a brave/ironical choice for the prize)

"Blue Postcards" by Douglas Bruton - which sounds like the sort of fictionalisation of an artists life (here Yves Klein) that seemed to dominate the longlist a couple of years back

and

"How We Are Translated" by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

I have to say I am massively relieved this did not make it as otherwise it would have completed "Paul's Rule of Goldsmith Shortlists"

2. Gumble's Yard and/or Neil will have read at least one of the books in ARC, but failed to mention it as a contender, largely as it didn't seem that innovative

To be fair my reviews shows I did see the concept as very innovative - just that I felt the execution failed.

[Paul]

The Goldsmiths Prize Chair has done that at least once before - I remember Felix Culpa, which I had thought was a likely contender, mentioned in the 'almost' category. That was the odd year the judges rewrote the rules (https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...)

Glad they didn't pick the middle 2 as I had failed to add them to the Listopia. Both by small presses so perhaps RoC contenders although not the book I guessed from each publisher.

But yes the last one ought to have been nailed on given The Rule of Gumble!!

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

So interesting to see another judge (the New Statesman one) pick her books of the year in the New Statesman - not refer to the Goldsmiths list (*) but pick two books instead that we had fairly high on the pre-prize prediction listopia (the first we had noted that the judge - Johanna Thomas-Corr loved it)

It was a wonderful year for novels about ugly mother-daughter relationships. Gwendoline Riley specialises in savage emotional reckonings and in My Phantoms (Granta) we hear the story of Bridget, who has been keeping her perpetually disappointed mother, Hen, at arm’s length ever since she left home. The dialogue is superb – there’s always a tragi-comic gap between what is being said and what’s really going on. I love Riley’s merciless wit. Jeremy Cooper’s Bolt from the Blue (Fitzcarraldo) breathes new life into the epistolary novel, with postcards charting 30 years of fraught relations between an earnest artist and her estranged mother, who is “miles more interested in sex than art”. Very little actually happens in either book and yet I was gripped by the way each depicts the psychological battlefield of mother-daughter relationships.

Leo Robson (the main New Statesman Reviewer) and a previous Goldsmiths and Booker judge also picked "My Phantoms" as book of the year

(*) Worth saying that the judge was a huge fan of Isabel's book and explained why it won in an article in the magazine in the previous week which would I think explain why she did not mention it again (albeit I am surprised she did not reference the prize)

[Paul]

My Phantoms does feel a book that missed out on prizes

Although I think it is just Women's Prize eligible - 1st April publication. I should add to the Listopia