Marilynne Robinson’s HOME wins the Orange Prize for Fiction

The buzz is all about Marilynne Robinson’s winning the Orange Prize for Fiction, given every year to the best novel written by a woman in English.
I read HOUSEKEEPING a few times in the twenty years between that and GILEAD.  GILEAD was well worth waiting for; in fact, Bill Evertsberg was so taken with it, too, that we discussed it at the First Presbyterian Church’s Desert Island Book Club. 

HOME, published in 2008, is the book for which Robinson just won the Orange, and I loved the last 35 pages—masterful!!!

Of almost as much interest to me about the Orange Prize announcement was the mention of Ellen Feldman’s SCOTTSBORO on the  list of finalists.  Norton sent me a galley of the book, and I read it in nearly one sitting.  Don’t overlook SCOTTSBORO, which is based on the true events that were the seed for Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.  It takes place in 1931 when nine black youths are arrested and tried for raping two white girls.  The novel is intertwined with historical and fictional characters, and the shocking injustices in this case brought out the best and the worst in people.  Feldman is an engaging writer:  my blood was boiling from the first page!