Flanagan tipped over Winton for award
Across the nation, literary circles are abuzz with speculation about who will win this year's Miles Franklin Award on Thursday.
While one critic declared Tasmanian novelist Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage, $33/ebook $12) the next winner months ago, Tim Winton is another notable favourite with Eyrie (Hamish Hamilton, $45/ebook $18).
The prominent West Australian is the only other male on the shortlist.
If Winton wins this year's prize, he will be the first author to win five Miles Franklins. During an interview with books editor William Yeoman last October, Winton described Tom Keely, his unemployed and divorced lead character as "a man in retreat from everything".
"Keely's a little bit like a bird retreating to its eyrie - trying to find some kind of security in elevation," he said.
The present-day tale, set in a Fremantle slum-rise, certainly seems to meet the criteria for the stellar award.
Each year, the Miles Franklin is granted to "the novel of the year of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life in any of its phases".
Both Winton and WA Premier's Prize winner Flanagan attracted short- listings in the literary fiction book of the year category of last month's Australian Book Industry Awards.
They were pipped by Adelaide-born debutant Hannah Kent with her tale of a convicted murderess (Burial Rites, Macmillan $20/ebook $12), but the fictionalised northern Iceland tale is out of the running for the latest award. The traditional interpretation of Australian life for the award was "books set in Australia".
In a historical sense, Flanagan's story of a surgeon stuck in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on the Thai-Burma railway pushes the envelope.
However, things have loosened up, with judges awarding the 2001 Miles Franklin to Frank Moorhouse for a novel set in Geneva (Dark Palace, Vintage $20/ebook $10) after the first book in the series (Grand Days, Vintage $20/ebook $10) was deemed ineligible for the 1994 prize.
Australian life, it seems, also takes place overseas.
But what of the rest of the shortlist — all women, though not tipped among some insiders' top two?
Fiona McFarlane is on the list with The Night Guest (Penguin $30/ $15 ebook), Cory Taylor with My Beautiful Enemy (Text $30/$7 ebook), Alexis Wright with The Swan Book (NewSouth Books $30/$12 ebook) and Evie Wyld with All the Birds, Singing (Random House $33/$14 ebook).
Recent Miles Franklin controversy has focused on Australian women writers' difficulty in claiming awards.
An outcry led to the creation of the $50,000 Stella Prize, first awarded last year — the same year the Miles Franklin shortlist was notably all female.
Wright previously won the 2007 Miles Franklin for her tale Carpentaria (Baker and Taylor, $42) and perhaps she could claim glory again.
However, many view Perth Writers Festival headliner Flanagan as the favourite.
Flanagan has certainly produced a worthy literary tale of a troubled Australian life, suitably angst-ridden and with an Australian-enough setting.
