The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction: Shortlist 2004

Judges

Kate Darian-Smith (Convenor), Delia Falconer and Peter Mews

The 78 nominations for this year’s Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction clearly demonstrate the stylistic assurance of Australian writers across a range of genres, and their ease with imaginative subject matter spanning centuries, continents and cultures. It was notable that many novels were concerned with themes of restlessness, telling stories shaped by physical movement and off-shore concerns and viewpoints, or offering introspective reflections on personal journeys of growth. The judges were particularly impressed by the singular elegance of Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire, and commend the scope of Gregory David Robert’s epic Shantaram. All three shortlisted books were distinguished by the authors’ ambitious social analysis and confidence in challenging conventional literary forms.

Shortlist

Elizabeth Costello
J. M. Coetzee
Knopf/Random House
With Elizabeth Costello J. M. Coetzee explicitly abandons the traditional tools of narrative in favour of a series of philosophical Lessons. These Lessons are centred around key moments in the literary life of a middle-aged Australian novelist who has achieved an international reputation and is feted abroad. This is a novel of the mind, a daring construction hanging from the barest of structural bones, written with exquisite craft. Coetzee is able to challenge the form of the novel itself, yet still produce a startling and memorable interior portrait of the ageing, occasionally regretful and always formidable Elizabeth Costello.

Slow Water
Annamarie Jagose
Vintage/Random House
Annamarie Jagose's impressively researched novel Slow Water recreates a boat journey to Australia and New Zealand in the 1830s with a remarkable precision of detail and authenticity of language. At the same time, it performs an exciting intervention into how we might imagine the histories of European colonization, and reflects on a famous gay scandal of the era from both white and Maori perspectives. Jagose switches effortlessly between the points of view of her many characters as she carefully unfolds her love story with touching humanity and sympathetic humour.

A Private Man
Malcolm Knox
Vintage/Random House
In Malcolm Knox’s A Private Man, time is suspended over the course of a five day Test cricket match as the Brand family mourn the loss of their father and husband. Nothing is quite as it seems: suspicious circumstances surround the death, a banished son reappears, and communications are punctuated by misunderstandings and silences. Knox skilfully focuses on sport and pornography to explore the public and private worlds of Australian men. In his tightly constructed novel, family relationships are stripped back to reveal unacknowledged desires and, despite all, a capacity for love and forgiveness.