Yesterday, the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its awards for books published in 2015.
Fiction
- The Sellout, by Paul Beatty
- Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
- The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
- The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories, by Anthony Marra
- Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh
Poetry
- Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, by Ross Gay
- How to Be Drawn, by Terrance Hayes
- Bright Dead Things, by Ada Limón
- Parallax and Selected Poems, by Sinead Morrissey
- What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Sanford, by Frank Sanford
Nonfiction
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard
- Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, by Ari Berman
- Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy
- Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic, by Sam Quinones
- What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing, by Brian Seibert
Autobiography
- The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander
- The Odd Woman and the City, by Vivian Gornick
- Bettyville, by George Hodgman
- Negroland, by Margo Jefferson
- H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald
Biography
- Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, by Terry Alford
- Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley, by Charlotte Gordon
- Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, by T.J. Stiles
- Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, by Rosemary Sullivan
- Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives, by Karin Wieland, translated from the Germany by Shelly Frisch
Criticism
- Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake, by Leo Damrosch
- The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson
- On Elizabeth Bishop, by Colm Tóibin
- The Nearest Thing to Life, by James Wood
I’m not too familiar with the fiction finalists (haven’t read a one), and I’m not right now finding any significant urge to fix that, other than the Luiselli and maybe Moshfegh. But! The BIOGRAPHY finalists all look fascinating! Also, I want to get Toibin on Elizabeth Bishop.
I have read all of the fiction finalists except the Beatty, which I think I may pick up at some point. I thought the Luiselli was interesting and very inventive, but I found that I admired it uniqueness more than I actually liked it. Moshfegh’s noir-ish novel was an entertaining read and I thought it a strong debut from a promising young writer. However, I was surprised to see it here as a finalist. Although an enjoyable read, I don’t feel it is quite deserving. I have friends who would probably disagree with me, having read and loved it. I would be interested to hear what others think. My favorite of the four I read was definitely Mara’s interlinked short story collection. Although the stories can stand on their own, together they read like a novel. It would be the book I would recommend from the list of finalists. For me, Mara is definitely a young writer to watch.
I also want to mention (since it isn’t listed with the finalists) that I was very pleased that the NBCC awarded Kirstin Valdez Quade’s excellent story collection “Night at the Fiestas” the John Leonard Prize for outstanding first books in any genre.
Marra, not Mara. I hate it when I submit something and go back and read my mistake, particularly when, as was the case here, it was the one author I was singling out with praise.
Thanks for mentioning Kirstin Valdez Quade, Will, and thanks for the insights on the fiction finalists! I haven’t read Marra at all, feeling without much basis that it wasn’t my type. I’ll look into this one!
No Jonathan Franzen for “Purity”? Hmm……