Annal:2008 Orange Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Orange Prize in the year 2008. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- <–2007
- Orange Prize
- –end–
The Road Home: A Novel
- 2008 Orange winner
- 2007 Costa-Novel shortlist
- Score: 16.58
In the story of Lev, newly arrived in London from Eastern Europe, Rose Tremain has written a wise and witty book about the contemporary migrant experience.
On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving…. Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to Eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter.
Readers will become totally involved with his story, as he struggles with the mysterious rituals of “Englishness,” and the fashions and fads of the London scene. We see the road Lev travels through Lev’s eyes, and we share his dilemmas: the intimacy of his friendships, old and new; his joys and sufferings; his aspirations and his hopes of finding his way home, wherever home may be.
- 2008 Orange shortlist
- Score: 6.58
Sol is a highly gifted six-year-old; his adoring mother believes he is destined for greatness. Yet he is also unsettling, chillingly un-childlike. He bears the same birthmark as his father, grandmother and great-grandmother had before him. When Sol and his family make an unexpected trip to Germany, terrible secrets start to emerge.Narrated by children in each generation of the family, “Fault Lines” traces their history back through the years, from California to New York, from Haifa to Toronto and Munich. As dormant family secrets are awakened, shock waves reverberate from a hidden past into a fragile present.Domestic in focus and epic in scope, “Fault Lines” is a vibrant, richly drawn and captivating piece of storytelling. It shows what can happen when past and present collide. Birthmarks are not all that can be passed down through a family line…
Lottery: A Novel
- 2008 Orange shortlist
- Score: 6.58
Perry L. Crandall knows what it’s like to be an outsider. With an IQ of 76, he’s an easy mark. Before his grandmother died, she armed Perry well with what he’d need to know: the importance of words and writing things down, and how to play the lottery. Most important, she taught him whom to trusta crucial lesson for Perry when he wins the multimillion-dollar jackpot. As his family descends, moving in on his fortune, his fate, and his few true friends, he has a lesson for them: never, ever underestimate Perry Crandall.
Lullabies for Little Criminals: A novel
- 2008 Orange shortlist
- 2007 Governor General's finalists
- Score: 12.58
At thirteen, Baby vacillates between childhood comforts and adult temptation: still young enough to drag her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase yet old enough to know more than she should about urban cruelties. Motherless, she lives with her father Jules, who takes better care of his heroin habit than he does of his daughter. Baby’s gift is a genius for spinning stories and for cherishing the small crumbs of happiness that fall into her lap. But her blossoming beauty has captured the attention of a charismatic and dangerous local pimp who runs an army of sad, slavishly devoted girls—a volatile situation even the normally oblivious Jules cannot ignore. And when an escape disguised as betrayal threatens to crush Baby’s spirit, she will ultimately realize the power of salvation rests in her hands alone.
The Outcast: A Novel
- 2008 Orange shortlist
- Score: 6.58
It’s 1957 and Lewis Aldridge is travelling back to his home in the South of England. He is straight out of jail and nineteen years old. His return will trigger the implosion not just of his family, but of a whole community.
A decade earlier, his father’s homecoming casts a different shape. The war is over and Gilbert reverts easily to suburban life, but his wife and young son resist the stuffy routine. Lewis and his mother escape to the woods for picnics, just as they did in wartime days. Nobody is surprised that Gilbert’s wife counters convention, but they are all shocked when, after one of their jaunts, Lewis comes back without her.
Not far away, Kit Carmichael keeps watch. She has always understood more than most. Lewis’s grief and burgeoning rage are all too plain, and Kit makes a private vow to help. But in her attempts to set them both free, she fails to predict the painful and horrifying secrets that must first be forced into the open.
The Outcast is an unforgettable story of transgression and redemption from a powerful new writer.
When We Were Bad: A Novel
- 2008 Orange shortlist
- Score: 6.58
Claudia Rubin is in her heyday. Wife, mother, rabbi, and sometime moral voice of the nation, it is she whom everyone wants to be with at her older sons glorious February wedding. Until Leo becomes a bolter and the heyday of the Rubin family begins to unravel. Leo’s calm, married, more mature sister, Frances, tries to hold the centre together, but the stresses force her to re-examine her own middle way and lead to a decision as shocking in its way as Leo’s has been. Meanwhile, Claudia’s husband Norman has, uncharacteristically, a secret to hide—a secret whose imminent unveiling he can do nothing about. A warm, poignant, and true portrayal of a London family in crisis, in love, in denial, and—ultimately—in luck.
- <–2007
- Orange Prize
- –end–
