Consent by Annabel Lyon makes the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist
Consent by Vancouver author Annabel Lyon has made the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.
The £30,000 (approx. $52,769 Cdn) prize recognizes the year's best novel written by a woman in English.
Consent follows a woman named Sara, who becomes caregiver to her intellectually disabled sister, Mattie, after their mother dies. When Sara returns home, she surprisingly finds Mattie married to her mother's handyman, Robert. Sara gets the marriage annulled, driving a wedge between herself and Mattie. When Robert re-enters their lives, Sara and Mattie get entangled with him and another set of sisters, twins Saskia and Jenny.
"We read so many brilliant novels for this year's prize... but we're confident that we have chosen 16 standout novels that represent a truly wide and varied range of fiction by women that reflects multiple perspectives, narrative styles and preoccupations," said chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other.
Lyon is the only Canadian to make the list. Her 2009 novel The Golden Mean won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Her other books include the short story collection Oxygen, the novella collection The Best Thing for You and the YA novels All-Season Edie and Encore Edie.
The full longlist is:
- Because of You by Dawn French
- Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
- Consent by Annabel Lyon
- Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
- Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
- How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
- Luster by Raven Leilani
- No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
- Summer by Ali Smith
- The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
- Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
A shortlist of six novels will be revealed on April 28, 2021. The winner will be announced on July 7, 2021.
Canadians who have won the award include Toronto's Anne Michaels for her 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces and Winnipeg's Carol Shields for her 1997 novel Larry's Party.
Past winners include Kamila Shamsie, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith.
