So last week I somehow missed discussing the National Book Award Finalists, guess it was because a couple of my picks fell by the wayside. Today I would like to review who was left standing after the last cut.
•Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press/ Grove/Atlantic)
•Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner/ Simon & Schuster)
•Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press/ Penguin Group (USA))
•Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House)
•Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
So of my predicted pucks, only Emily St. John Mandel is still standing. I guess I shouldn’t go buy a lottery ticket, but her novel is still in the running and I still feel has the best shot at being this years National Book Award Winner. She has spent the year touring and her publisher has done a great job marketing the book. And if you haven’t read the book, here is what the New York Times had to say about it: “An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.” So I’m lobbying for it to be the winner, so check it out!
