2022 Longlist

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé
Flamingo by Rachel Elliott
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey
Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini
The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
This One Sky Day by Leone Ross (aka Popisho)

The shortlist will be announced April 27th and the winner announced June 15th.

Thoughts?

Here's the list to rank: https://www.librarything.com/list/43513/all/2022-Womens-Prize-for-Fiction-Longli...

I'm not enthused by anything here at all. The list seems very US-centric. I'm open to having my mind changed. I listen to a lot of BookTubers who read the full long list, or try, so I'll follow along and I'm looking forward to finding something I might be interested in. I have heard nothing but raves about This One Sky Day (Popisho in North America) and the Island of Missing Trees but so far I'm not sold on either of those

Thanks for posting the list so quickly. Even when I don't like the books, I still like to watch this award

I own Great Circle and have not been inspired to read it. Other than that, I've only heard of a few of these authors/books. I am interested in The Island of Missing Trees.

Are they a lot of first time authors? Just curious.

I usually love at least a few books/authors that I find on this list, so I always enjoy following this prize.

>3 japaul22: - I can't remember the number, but yes, several first books. Which must be incredibly exciting for the author

ETA - 5 debuts

I've read The Sentence which was my first Erdrich, liked it quite a bit.
I'm reading The Book of Form and Emptiness; I read Ozeki's other book and it is similar in unusual form, but I am liking it.
I already had The Island of Missing Trees on my audio library list, so still waiting.
I recognize Charlotte Mendelson's name but haven't read anything, and I recognize the title The Final Revival of Opal & Nev and have it on request now. My library had a couple others I was able to request.

Thanks , Elizabeth, for posting the longlist for us. I've not read any of them. I watched Simon Savidge's you-tube vlog with his reaction to the Women's Longlist earlier today. I'm not yet sure what I'll read. I think Careless by Kirsty Capes sounds interesting. I read Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson back in 2014, but I only gave it 3 stars, which is a " meh " book for me. I'll have to look more into the books before I decide what interests me.

I've heard several comments from book people made before the list came out that 2022 might be the "year of the chunkster". Apparently there is minimum word count of 30,000 words, which means that novellas don't qualify (a newer rule, as I know at least one very short book from past years). So was this prediction correct?

Flamingo I could only find on ebook w/no page count. The shortest is The Bread the Devil Knead has 208 pages, and the Great Circle at 608 pages is the longest. Most of them are in the mid-300s to mid-400s. If you're trying to read them all before the short list comes out in April, that's a lot of pages. But most of us aren't even thinking of that, so I don't think they're all that long.

I've heard that The Sentence is good and I've liked other books of hers (I'm on the hold list at the library). I've read some good books from this list over the years but will probably wait to see the short list before committing to any.

Thanks for posting the list and starting the discussion. The sentence and The island of missing trees are already on my TBR pile. Am adding Build your house around my body and possibly Creatures of passage. But I suspect I'll be lucky to get one of those four read by the time the award is selected.

I had a lovely browse in Munro Books today and saw many of these titles. I brought home the one I found most intriguing, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. I'll try to read it before the short list announcement

>7 Nickelini: I mostly listen to audio, and several are in the 12-13 h range which is not bad. But The Great Circle just came in for me and it’s 25 h! I’ll have to really like this one to get through it.

I loved the Sentence and Great Circle so the others will have a high bar to meet to beat them (for me). I won't get to all of the books before the shortlist but will try to read half, I think. I've ordered a couple - Salt Lick by Lulu Allison (as it's already in paperback) and Creatures of Passage which sounded intriguing. They're both by small publishers, so nice to see them getting this kind of attention from the Women's Prize.

I'd already got Build Your House Around My Body and The Book of Form and Emptiness out from the library before the announcement. I've requested The Final Revival of Opal & Nev and This One Sky Day. Whether I'll get them read in time though, is another thing.

I'd not heard about the length requirement changing, that's interesting. I quite like a well done novella.

Like japaul, I own a copy of Great Circle but haven't felt compelled to pick it up. I'm very interested in Remote Sympathy, and Salt Lick because it's cheap for Kindle, and the Charlotte Mendelson because I enjoyed When We Were Bad. Oh!! And maybe *Build Your House....*. I'm not a huge fan of Shafak or Ozeki, but I do like Erdrich. Anyway unlike Deborah, this list looks better to me than any they offered in the last few years. (Is it because I'm USA-centric???) I'll be interested to see what other people think!

And thank you for posting the list and getting us started, Elizabeth!