2026: Women’s Prize

You don’t often see the in-between, do you? You don’t often see the part where you walk in silence and don’t touch one another, the part where the shards from an explosion float to the ground, and you have to get up again the next day. The part where you put the washing on and go to work and pretend everything is fine and all the while your chest is heaving from your invisible wounds. You see the chasms of heartbreak, the wet cheeks and dramatic sobs and hard goodbyes, but you don’t see the agonised conversations with friends: the fabrications of a narrative that doesn’t show us in our horrible, fractured, human light.

Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly

RACHEL
● This was a very emotive shortlist. It is full of characters baring all, gushing about their every feeling, being hyper self-aware and laying out an analytical examination of their thoughts and emotions. It was intense.

I do enjoy an introspective read, but was surprised there weren’t more books of different styles on this shortlist. I found it narrow in scope. A story doesn’t always have to involve a narrator throwing back their head and crying into the wind, hoping to make us tear up in sympathy. And actually I prefer books where things are left unsaid, where we as readers have to read between the lines and work a person out for ourselves. For isn’t that more like reality? We don’t know every thought that passes through someone’s head when we meet them in real life, and nor do I want to with a character.

As soon as his voice is gone I have that feeling I often have when I’m away from my family, like they are moving farther and farther away from me, beginning to flicker faintly as distant stars and I will never ever reach them again. It feels like a premonition of the fact that someday, one by one, we will be separated from each other forever.

Heart The Lover by Lily King

To be honest, this was my least favourite of all the Women’s Prize shortlists I’ve read. Of the six books, the only two I would have picked up independently were Flashlight and Dominion. Flashlight ultimately had some flaws for me, but I did like Dominion. Yes, it is still heartfelt, but its focus on how women cope within a patriarchal Southern US family gave it a wider scope. We came to know a larger cast of people, and the issues they faced felt representative of real life, whereas the others felt like “me, me, me” stories. I wanted more variety in how the stories were told, more trust placed in the reader, and less catastrophising.

My star ratings aren’t altogether terrible, but they are certainly lower than I would expect from an awards shortlist:

Dominion — 4⭐️
Kingfisher — 3.5⭐️
Heart the Lover — 3.5⭐️
The Mercy Step — 3⭐️
Flashlight — 3⭐️
The Correspondent — 2.5⭐️

I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans