On the longlist, I’d read just four of the books when the nominees were announced, two last year and two this year.

For those who can forgive short stories for not being novels, Lisa Alward’s Cocktail will satisfy on many levels. She’s got the sharp observations of writers like Lauren Groff and Lorrie Moore, a poet’s focus on memorable images or scenes like Tracey Lindberg and Maxime Clair, and an affinity for women’s stories like Kali Fajardo-Anstine and katherena vermette.

I flagged passages in every single story and I warmed to the sense of an internal echo which seemed to pull a thread between the stories even though they aren’t technically linked. The title story, “Orlando 1974”, and “Bundle of Joy” resonated at a high pitch for me; I immediately thought of people with whom I wanted to share them.

“Don’t worry, he’d said, the grownups have it all under control, and even then, I’d known this for a lie. Yet when I was smashed, which was becoming more and more and more, those long fingers holding out the cherry seemed a hint of sweetness. And I wanted to suck every bit of sweet from my glass.”

Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood was a gift from Mr. BIP, who combed through Margaret Atwood’s tweets to find recent reading recommendations, which makes sense given its ecological themes and thinky-ness.

He’d forgotten that I’d dragged him (and oldest, then-somewhat-bookish step-kid) to a panel with Eleanor Catton when The Luminaries was everywhere. I’d forgotten how long The Luminaries was, which is also what made her feat of structure and her pleating of voices so impressive.

The beginning of Birnam Wood felt very long; I felt as though I’d be able to shop for every single character for their birthday gifts, so intricately were Catton’s characters established, developed. And, by beginning, I mean about 400 pages. I even queried a couple of bookfriends because I was starting to think I’d missed something. But, phew, after that point, there was no stopping me: I was smitten.

“Like all self-mythologising rebels, Mira preferred enemies to rivals, and often turned her rivals into enemies, the better to disdain them as secret agents of the status quo.”

Some of the ideas prominent in Birnam Wood are lurking beneath the surface of Catherine Leroux’s The Future (Trans. Susan Ouriou), a book I reviewed for prismInternational. This is the novel I was sure I would see on all the prizelists. [Edit: The review’s been published here.]

Leroux’s unconcerned with the details of what has already happened—a revolution and unrest, yes, and this is a post-industrial setting. It’s not quite our world, because present-day Detroit is Fort-Détroit in Leroux’s world and the idea of borders is just as hard to pin down as it was in the 19th century, when—as in our world—the French and English settlers fought for territory here disregarding the Indigenous inhabitants.

So it’s hardly relevant whether her ensemble cast is Canadian or American: everyone’s trying to survive in a world where resources are scarce so cooperation is essential.

“It’s one of those homes that forever brings vegetable stew to mind. The furniture, the rugs, the colour of the walls, everything hs a hint of stew, the very essence of stew. Comfort, force of habit, a certain blandness coupled with a feeling of safety.”

In The Future, Gloria arrives in Fort Détroit after her daughter’s been murdered, in pursuit of her granddaughters who have been missing since their mother’s death. Janika Oza’s A History of Burning has this kind of bold story driving it, and the story of inheritance also has nineteenth-century roots.

Oza’s style is rich and immersive, her storytelling sweeping. Her use of language and emotion is lavish and there were elements of this story which I absolutely loved.

Yet some aspects of her worldview are in-credible (i.e. not believable), usually circling around the idea of scale—what could/couldn’t have been felt back then as it is today, with our world now being made so small by technology. (A nineteenth-century boy in indentured servitude would not have had access to the images that constructed a dream of “reading beneath the polished white columns of a library somewhere, blundering with his friends in the mess halls” for instance.)

Nonetheless, whatever Oza writes next, I’ll be reading it, because with more experience (or a different kind of editorial support) she will be a real force.

“A railway the length of thousands of bodies, beneath it the ruins of other homes. The ashes of their ancestors united with the dirt, the land hatched with scars. The land—seized, unclaimable. Before them, somewhere waiting like a silent mouth.”

I was lucky to find copies of Anuja Varghese’s Chrysalis, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night, Claudia Dey’s Daughter, Mona Susan Power’s A Council of Dolls fairly quickly after the longlist announcement. And Mr. BIP found Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You for me when he gave me Eleanor Catton’s book.

So I’ll write about some of these next week before the shortlist is announced. And, if I’m able to find copies of the others, I’ll write about them too.