Sixth time lucky? Oddly, most of the novels on the Baileys Prize shortlist are their authors' sixth.
Look book: the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015 shortlistees Photo: Sarah Wood/Michael Lionstar
The Telegraph- 03 Jun 2015
The winner of the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is announced this evening, and among the six contenders is a handful of broadly familiar names and just one debutant: Laline Paull, whose novel The Bees (Fourth Estate) is set in a hive, as seen through the five eyes of one of its swarm.
Apart from the prestige of winning the prize, also up for grabs is a cheque for £30,000, and a bronze statue called "the Bessie" made by the artist Grizel Niven.
Apart from the prestige of winning the prize, also up for grabs is a cheque for £30,000, and a bronze statue called "the Bessie" made by the artist Grizel Niven.
The prize, until 2012 known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, is now in its 20th year, and is open to any woman of any nationality writing in English on any subject. This year the shortlist includes four British writers, one British/Pakistani writer and a single American: Anne Tyler, whose novel A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus) is her 20th.
None of those listed have won the prize before, though all but Paull have been previously shortlisted.
Oddly enough, Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests (Virago), Ali Smith’s How to be Both (Hamish Hamilton) and Kamila Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone (Bloomsbury) are each their author’s sixth book, which perhaps holds out some encouragement to those tyro authors who did not make the cut from the long list: they may be comforted to know it can take at least six novels before you hit your stride. Rachel Cusk's novel, Outline (Faber), is her eighth.
In time-honoured fashion, the Chair of the judges, Shami Chakrabarti, described the panel’s deliberations as "heart-rendingly difficult but always as warm and collaborative as they were robust".