US novelist stops Mantel winning historic treble

US novelist A.M. Homes has won this year’s Women’s Prize for 
Fiction picking up a £30,000 prize and preventing Hilary Mantel from completing a treble that would have made history.
By The Newsroom
Published 6th Jun 2013, 02:00 BST

Mantel, who was the bookmakers’ favourite ahead of the announcement, had already won the Man Booker and the Costa prize for Bring Up The Bodies, but the judges declared Homes’s May We Be Forgiven the winner.

Actress Miranda Richardson, who chaired the judges, said: “Our 2013 shortlist was exceptionally strong and our judges’ meeting was long and passionately argued, but in the end we agreed that May We Be Forgiven is a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy – a subversion of the American dream.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“This is a book we want to read again and give to our friends.”

She described the judging meeting as a “sort of settling process”, adding that “everything was up in the air for some time”.

The actress said: “A couple of us thought we knew the way it was going and then surprised ourselves.”

Homes, who picked up her prize at an event at the Royal Festival Hall in central London, lives in New York and is the author of several collections of short stories, novels, and also writes for television.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

May We Be Forgiven is the story of two brothers, one a high-flying television executive and the other a quiet academic, whose life is turned upside by a succession of startling events.

Homes saw off competition from the other short-listed authors Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Atkinson and Maria Semple.

Waterstones’ spokesman Jon Howells said: “May We Be Forgiven is I believe the only book that could have beaten Bring Up the Bodies, for AM Homes’s breathless, chaotic yet utterly empathetic modern character study is the polar opposite of the classic prose of Mantel’s historical fiction. It’s a wonderful book, full of unforgettable characters and surreal set pieces. It’s her best novel to date – a darkly hilarious blast of fresh air.”

Richardson said the success of Mantel’s historic epic had not influenced the judges, saying: “It is like Barbara Kingsolver and Zadie Smith being previous winners, you just concentrate on the book itself.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The other judges include author Jojo Moyes and journalist Rachel Johnson.

The prize, which was sponsored by telecommunications firm Orange between 1996 and 2012, was privately supported this year.

From next year it will be sponsored by drinks firm Baileys for three years.