Women’s Prize: 2022

After loving the Women’s Prize shortlist in 2023, we have decided to back read the Women’s Prize shortlists. The finalists for the year we have completed were so readable, meaningful and highlighted the female experience. That’s a winning reading combo we want to chase more, so it’s off to the 2022 shortlist.

Late in 2023 Suzy and Rachel completed the titles they had not already read and over the hot summer shared their thoughts and analysed the six titles, deciding which book they would have picked as winner.

The finalists were:

The Bread The Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agnostini. Trinidadian Alethea has an abusive past and present. She is trying to forge a career and make something of herself but her controlling boyfriend and secrets from the past are set to thwart her.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. This is a haunted book, starting with a ghost in a bookstore but includes characters haunted by the past, by racism, by Covid and by secrets. Set in Minneapolis, its leading character is a former felon married to the man who arrested her.

Sorrow & Bliss by Meg Mason. A love story about Martha and Patrick and the impact that Martha’s undiagnosed mental illness has on their relationship. It is heartfelt but also funny and dark humoured. As the title says, the book, and the relationships in its pages, are filled with bliss but also much sorrow.

The Book Of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. A boy begins hearing voices after the death of his father. Of the objects speaking to him is a book about his life who in part narrates this book to the reader. A study of grief and madness in a surreal setting, with a struggling mother-son relationship at the centre of it.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. A father and daughter struggle after the death of their wife/mother. Dual timelines relay the story of the parents’ controversial love affair in war-torn Cyprus, and their life once reunited in the UK. However, escaping the conflict doesn’t remove the emotional consequences of it.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. Marian Graves is an orphan who becomes a great aviator. She has many obstacles to her dream but is dogged in her determination and finds ways to achieve. A century later Hadley Baxter is examining Graves’ life as she plays her in the movie of her life.

● Suzy: The 2022 shortlist did not f$%k about and was absolutely filled to the brim with violence, addiction and mental illness. Some authors did this more effectively than others and I am at a loss as to why The Book of Form & Emptiness was selected as the winner. I don’t know how I managed to stay fairly unmoved by this family’s tragic circumstances, but the smug narrator (a book) may have had something to do with it.

The rest of the shortlisters all shone, albeit in different ways. It was hard to go past Great Circle as my favourite – it was a breath of fresh air to read a story about a female adventurer and it was just done so well. Sorrow and Bliss and The Island of Missing Trees were also very special and I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

● Rachel: Despair, trauma and mental illness played a big part in the formation of the shortlist in 2022. That may sound miserable but texts that dissect female emotions and the handling of sensitive information are valuable. This honesty gave me a deep sense of connection with (most of) these novels and their characters.

The Island of Missing Trees came out on top for me. The love story, the trauma of war and separation, and a young girl grieving for her mother were powerfully written. I read all 354 pages in one sitting, unable to put it down. Shafak is a very talented writer.

Sorrow and Bliss by Kiwi-born author Meg Mason and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead came in second and third. The former heart-wrenching, the latter a great adventure. I can’t fault The Sentence but it just wasn’t as captivating for me as the aforementioned titles.

The Bread The Devil Knead was well constructed and written but it had too much traumatic content for me to place it any higher. Like Suzy, I can’t understand how The Book of Form & Emptiness won the prize in 2022. It really took the concept of using metaphors for grief to the nth degree. And there were many subplots shooting off at all angles. The characters felt like characters in a book. I know that sounds weird because they were, but after feeling so much for the characters in the other shortlisted books, I found myself not caring for Benny and his mother.