The Guardian First Book Award

The shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award 2009 has just been announced, and includes two books which I recommended earlier this year. The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey deals with Alzheimer's Disease; it made the Man Booker longlist and has become relatively uncommon. The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton was for me a more enjoyable book, if perhaps a litle self-consciously clever. It is still readily available in the first edition. Previous winners have included a number of highly collected books, including A Month in the Country by JL Carr (1980) and Kepler by John Banville (1981).


Full shortlist:

•A Swamp Full of Dollars, by Michael Peel (IB Tauris, non-fiction)

•The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton (Granta, novel)

•The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, novel)

•The Selected Works of TS Spivet, by Reif Larsen (Harvill Secker, novel)

•An Elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah (Faber, short story collection)