Annal:1997 Giller Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Giller Prize in the year 1997. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Barney's Version: A Novel
- 1997 Giller Prize winner
- Score: 10.47
When a sixty-seven-year-old Canadian rascal named Bernard Panofsky decides to write “the true story of my wasted life.” the result is Barney’s Version, Mordecai Richler’s wickedly funny blend of satire, social commentary, and brilliant introspection on the state of contemporary life.
Hoping to rebut the charges about him made in a rival’s autobiography Barney feels compelled to pen his account of events. From his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris to the fortune he amassed through his trashy TV company Totally Unnecessary Productions and…
Cereus Blooms at Night: A Novel
- 1997 Giller Prize shortlist
- Score: 6.47
Set on a fictional Caribbean island in the town of Paradise, Cerus Blooms at Night unveils the mystery surrounding Mala Ramchandin and the tempestuous history of her family. At the heart of this bold and seductive novel is an alleged crime committed many years before the story opens. Mala is the aging, notoriously crazy woman suspected of murder who is delivered to the paradise Alms House after a judge finds her unfit to stand trial. When she arrives at her new home, frail and mute, she is placed in the tender care of Tyler, a vivacious male nurse, who…
Where She Has Gone: A Novel
- 1997 Giller Prize shortlist
- Score: 6.47
Set in Toronto and Italy, this powerful sequel to In a Glass House explores the sometimes forbidden aspect of desire and one’s longing for what is unrecoverable.
Victor Innocente remeets his half-sister in Toronto, shortly after his father’s death. Uneasy with their new proximity in each other’s lives, they are at first restrained. But gradually what is unspoken between them comes closer to the surface, setting in motion a course of events that will take Victor back to Valle del Sole in Italy, the place of his birth. It is there, where the story had…
- 1998 Orange winner
- 1997 Giller Prize shortlist
- Score: 16.48
The San Diego Tribune called The Stone Diaries a “universal study of what makes women tick.” With Larry’s Party Carol Shields has done the same for men.
Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator’s perception, irony, and tenderness. Larry’s Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997, that seamlessly flash backward and forward. We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, and his interactions with his parents, friends, and a son.…
