The Color Orange - Update on the Orange Prize and Your Monthly Dose of Vitamin C

Damn you Orange Telecom.  Although philanthropists such as Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope have stepped in to privately fund this year's women's prize for fiction until new sponsorship can be found, they are also renaming the prize to . . . well, The Women's Prize for Fiction.   While there are limited rhyming possibilities, the Orange Prize did allow for other plays on the prize name such as the two in the title of this post.  The Women's Prize for Fiction?  Not so much. 

I can only hope that another corporate sponsor is found soon, in part to keep the prize going and support women writers, but also because I'll need another name to work with in the future.  (Calling Richard Branson.  I wonder what kind of conversations would emerge from having the Virgin Women's Prize for Fiction????)

Until a new sponsor and name come along, however, I will continue to post monthly reviews of Orange Prize nominees as Your Monthly Dose of Vitamin C.  So without further to do . . .

This is How by M. J. Hyland
What can I say about Patrick Oxtoby, the narrator and central character in Hyland's novel?  Ostensibly, he's a young man trying to make his way in the world.  The problem is, the way he sees the world and the way the world sees him are at odds with each other.  The reader doesn't necessarily realize this at first but the more I read Patrick's words and actions, the more I came to realize that something is off.  He thinks he's noble, others just think he's kind of creepy. 

I think that's part of Hyland's brilliance in developing the character of Patrick. Is he just clueless? Or is it something more, a diagnosable pathology such as personality disorder or a form of autism? Whatever his diagnosis, I found myself pitying Patrick-- as he tried to woo the waitress in the local diner, as he struggled with his feelings for the owner of the seaside boarding house where he lived (is she a mother figure or a potential Mrs. Robinson?), as he tried to fit in with the other lads who lived in the boarding house and, most keenly, after a rash decision has dire consequences. 

It quickly becomes apparent that Patrick doesn't have the emotional or cognitive capacities to fully understand the cause and effect of his actions and it's this realization that moved me from mere pity and feeling uncomfortable, and at times amused, at Patrick's awkwardness to a real sense of compassion and empathy for his plight.  There are no happy endings here, no resolutions but it was a story that stuck with me and made me think.

The Seas  by Samantha Hunt
One of the things I thought as I read This is How is that Patrick's story would have turned out much differently if his parents had gotten him a good psychiatrist.  The same thought occurred to me about the unnamed narrator in Samantha Hunt's story.  And until I started writing this, I didn't realize I picked two books, set by the sea, told from the point of view of quintessential unreliable narrators.  Take note, future novelists.  If you want to be nominated for an Orange Prize/Women's Prize for Fiction, write from the point of view of an unreliable narrator and set your book by the ocean.  The formula seems to work.

In the case of The Seas, the unnamed teller of the tale is a nineteen year old young woman, another misfit although in her case, she realizes she doesn't fit in.  She attributes this to the fact that she's a mermaid.  Or at least that's what her father told her a decade before, just before he walked into the ocean.  Never able to accept the fact of his suicide, she watches the sea and waits for his return.  And while waiting, she meets Jude, a much older man (can anyone say father figure?) with whom she falls obsessively in love. 

Unlike Hyland's novel, while The Seas is told strictly from the point of view of the narrator, we also get a glimpse into the lives of those who love this troubled young woman.  Her mother and Jude, in particular, are well developed characters in their own right whose stories are worth being told.

The writing itself is reminiscent of the sea, evoking the ebb and flow of waves in its rhythm,  Some have likened Hunt's book to a retelling of The Little Mermaid or the German tale, Undine but Hunt's narrator is more complex.  We see her struggle between reality and fantasy, adulthood and childhood, truth and denial, and perhaps even sanity and insanity but in the end Hunt writes in just enough doubt to make the reader wonder if perhaps there isn't a little magical realism going on in her story.