These are not necessarily my own picks, just what I think might get up, on what I think will be the standard shortlist of five: Brian Castro's The Bath Fugues, David Foster's Sons of the Rumour and Glenda Guest's Siddon Rock plus two of the following: Sonya Hartnett's Butterfly, Alex Miller's Lovesong and Tom Keneally's The People's Train. I don't expect Peter Carey to make the cut and I'm guessing Alex Miller might not either, but I'm not as much of a Miller fan as most people so I might be off base there.
Foster the incomparable to win.
I say this having read none of the books (blushing, but in my defence it's not that easy to get your hands on Australian novels from here)...but I reckon Sonya Hartnett would be in with a good chance.
ReplyDeleteGiven the example set by the judges of the Wynne Prize I also felt emboldened.
ReplyDeleteEmboldened to enter my recently completed great Australian novel "The Chant of Odysseus' Tax Collector", a magnum opus devoid of punctuation bar for the cliff hanging ellipses marking the end of each chapter, an oeuvre which references but never slavishly copies that great Dutch master Jacobje Joyce.
I like the phrase "work for the bread of beauty," and if that photograph were just a little flatter and had a few less trees, it would look very much like my territory, so far away.
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