The Giller Longlist for 2017

Eden Robinson author of Son of a Trickster

Twelve books, twelve authors and twelve publishers and many many readers will await November 20 when the award will be announced. Of the twelve I have read only two, Rachel Cusk's Transit and Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster. Both are excellent books. I was surprised to find Cusk's name on the list. I had always thought she was a British writer. Cusk tore up the rule book when she wrote Outline, the second in a trilogy. Instead of the traditional form, she introduces a narrator, a shadowy figure called Faye, who simply talks to us telling stories about people she meets. It is an odd but mesmerizing book. Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster introduces Jared, a mixed up teen in a dysfunctional family and a violent world. But Jared is different. He has visions.  The novel has made several best seller lists. 

The longlist for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize is:

• David Chariandy for his novel Brother, published by McClelland & Stewart
• Rachel Cusk for her novel Transit, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• David Demchuk for his novel The Bone Mother, published by ChiZine Publications
• Joel Thomas Hynes for his novel We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, published by HarperPerennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Andrée A. Michaud for her novel Boundary, published by Biblioasis International Translation Series, translated by Donald Winkler
• Josip Novakovich for his story collection Tumbleweed, published by Esplanade Books/Véhicule Press 
• Ed O’Loughlin for his novel Minds of Winter, published by House of Anansi Press
• Zoey Leigh Peterson for her novel Next Year, For Sure, published by Doubleday Canada
• Michael Redhill for his novel Bellevue Square, published by Doubleday Canada
• Eden Robinson for her novel Son of a Trickster, published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada
• Deborah Willis for her story collection The Dark and Other Love Stories, published by Hamish Hamilton Canada
• Michelle Winters for her novel I Am a Truck, published by Invisible Publishing

The 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize will air on Mon. Nov. 20, on CBC at 8 p.m. (12 AT/12:30 NT), CBC Radio One at 8 p.m. (9 AT/9:30 NT) and will be livestreamed at CBCBooks.ca.

The longlist was selected by Canadian writers Anita Rau Badami (Jury Chair), André Alexis, Lynn Coady, along with British writer Richard Beard and American writer Nathan Englander.

David Chariandy author of Brother