Bookmaker's Odds

Writer Joseph Boyden. Photo Stephanie Beeley/Penguin Group.

Monday’s announcement of the nominees for the Governor General’s Literary Awards comes as the fall book award season is in high gear. It follows Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize win and news that Irish writer John Banville won the Man Booker Prize over favourite Julian Barnes. Like Pinter’s surprise win (he wasn’t even considered a likely candidate), Banville’s award had some literary critics and bookmakers — who had made Banville a seven-to-one outsider — scratching their heads. Banville’s The Sea had only sold 3,000 copies in the U.K. and the author had none of the hype that surrounded favoured finalists Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro. But such are the vagaries of literary prize juries.

In Canada, the common wisdom is that the longstanding Governor General’s Award for fiction in English is the less glamorous and quirkier prize, while the 10-year-old Scotiabank Giller Prize is glitzier and more mainstream.

But is there really a pattern to the awards? Is there a formula for a quintessentially award-friendly Canadian book? To find out, I looked at 31 winners, from all 10 years of the Gillers and the last 20 years of the GGs (the odd number is the result of a tie between Michael Ondaatje and David Adams Richards for the Giller in 2000).

Turns out, more than a few similarities emerged. Here’s how to write a Canadian award-winner.

Be Alice Munro. Since 1985, Munro has won a total of three GGs and Gillers, and won two GGs prior to that. Other multiple winners include Michael Ondaatje (three), Margaret Atwood (two), M.G. Vassanji (two), Richard B. Wright (two), Rohinton Mistry (two) and David Adams Richards (two).

And if you can’t be Alice Munro, be a man. Twenty of the awards went to men.

Write long. Collections of short stories account for only six awards — and three of those were by Alice Munro (see above).

Stick to the past. Fiction with historical settings accounts for a whopping 21 winners. Extra points if the book is set against larger political events like the two World Wars, the Great Depression, or mass waves of immigration.

Geography matters. Every cliché about CanLit is true: 18 past winners were set in a small, Canadian town, or in the Canadian wilderness. Of the remaining winners, eight were set in foreign countries.

So does race. Themes of racial conflict, racism and interracial relationships and desire are explored in nine past winners.

And family. The plots of 11 of the winners centre on relationships within families.

Finally, get published by a big company. While books from smaller houses usually get a token nod on shortlists and even make for the occasional winner, the Gillers and GGs have been owned by three publishers: McClelland & Stewart with 11 awards, Random House/Knopf/Doubleday with 10 and HarperCollins with four.

So is it possible to use the formula to predict this year’s winners?

This season’s shortlists are almost as notable for who’s absent, as for who is nominated. No sightings of international heavyweight Jane Urquhart (A Map of Glass). Michael Crummey’s award-friendly The Wreckage, a love story set in WWII-era Newfoundland fishing villages, is MIA, as are critical darling The Girls, Lori Lansens’ tale of conjoined twins, and A Short History of Indians in Canada, Thomas King’s fantastical short-story collection.

Still, the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist stuck pretty close to formula, with novels set in small towns or foreign settings and themes of war and star-crossed love.

The Scotiabank Giller nominees are:

Writer Joan Barfoot. Photo courtesy Victor Aziz/Random House Canada.

Luck by Joan Barfoot (Knopf Canada)
A CanLit fixture often compared to Carol Shields and Anne Tyler, Barfoot’s Critical Injuries was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Luck follows the immediate aftermath of the sudden death of a small-town furniture maker and the impact it has on his artist wife, her model and the family’s housekeeper.

The Time In Between by David Bergen (McClelland & Stewart)
A previous GG finalist, Bergen is getting great buzz for his story of a war veteran’s return to Vietnam 30 years after the war.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb (Doubleday Canada)
Set against the civil strife in Ethiopia and Margaret Thatcher’s London, this story of the star-crossed love between a white Muslim nurse and a black activist doctor is the kind of novel judges love.

Alligator by Lisa Moore (House of Anansi Press)
A wild card Giller nominee in 2002 for her gritty short-story collection Open, Moore’s debut novel is a Maritimes gothic tale set in contemporary St. John’s.

A Wall of Light by Edeet Ravel (Random House)
This is the final instalment of her Tel Aviv trilogy about three generations of an Israeli family. Ravel’s Ten Thousand Lovers was a GG finalist in 2003.

And the Giller goes to: While it would make for a delightful shake-up for the award to go to a dark horse like Lisa Moore’s Alligator, the smart money’s on a safer choice. The Time In Between, Sweetness in the Belly and A Wall of Light all have the kind of epic scope Giller judges tend to love, but my intuition tells me it will be Joan Barfoot’s year.

The Governor General’s English fiction shortlist is typically obscure. Only one nominee is an established novelist and only one book approached blockbuster status (in Canadian terms, of course).

The GG nominees are:

Courtesy Penguin Group.

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada)
This debut novel was the must-read book of the spring. The manuscript of the story of two Cree snipers in the trenches of France during the First World War sparked a huge bidding battle.

A Perfect Night to Go to China by David Gilmour (Thomas Allen)
Like Ian McEwan’s A Child in Time, Gilmour’s latest novel begins with the disappearance of a young child and follows its devastating impact on the father. A departure from Gilmour’s earlier, prurient work.

Ladykiller by Charlotte Gill (Thomas Allen)
This dark, unsentimental debut short-story collection by University of British Columbia creative writing program alum and 2003 Journey Prize finalist Gill, was called “lethally effective” by one reviewer.

Nellcott Is My Darling by Golda Fried (Coach House)
A well- and widely-reviewed, but little-read coming of age novel set in Montreal. But not a likely winner, given the competition.

Alphabet by Kathy Page (MacArthur and Company)
British-born, Canada-based Page writes the kind of popular psychological thrillers that rarely get high-minded literary attention — but hers do. The Story of My Face was longlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize. Alphabet is about an intelligent and manipulative imprisoned murderer.

And the GG goes to: The GG is usually less predictable than the Giller, but Boyden is due the award, not because it fits the formula, but because Three Day Road is an epic, moving and deserving novel.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize will be announced in Toronto on Tuesday, Nov. 8. The Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced in Montreal on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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