The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction: Shortlist 2005

Judges
Liam Davison (Convenor), Thuy On and Ailsa Piper

The nominations for this year’s Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction reflect the current vibrant state of Australian fiction with impressive new works from both established writers and a range of new and emerging voices. The judges were particularly impressed by Stephen Carroll’s The Gift of Speed for its elegiac lyricism and Arnold Zable’s Scraps of Heaven for its evocative melding of memory and storytelling. The three short-listed titles all display a high degree of imaginative sophistication.

Shortlist

Surrender
Sonya Hartnett
Viking/Penguin
Part psychological thriller, part gothic tale, Hartnett’s intensely dark and wondrous story of Gabriel’s childhood mistakes and his uncertain relationship with the boy Finnigan and dog, Surrender, is thoroughly compelling. The unreliability of the narration coupled with the terrible revelations of the pact at the heart of the novel leaves the reader with a sense of deep unease. The interplay between the two consciousnesses as Hartnett leads the reader by stealth and allusion provides a disturbing tension that constantly challenges one’s expectations. Hartnett’s poetic vision is carried by language that is intelligent, visceral and organic.

Sixty Lights
Gail Jones
Vintage/Random House
In sixty short chapters that shimmer with light and carry striking images of enduring beauty and pathos, Gail Jones explores the aesthetics of grief and the ‘rich patina of loss’ that shapes the brief life of her main character, the captivating Lucy Strange. Jones is alert to the richness literary theory can bring to fiction and, like any true post-modernist, keeps one foot firmly in the narrative past of the Victorian novel while holding a mirror to the future. Unconventional in structure, the novel reads like a luminous album of photographs that transcend narrative time.

Affection
Ian Townsend
Fourth Estate/Harper Collins
Essentially a historical novel about the outbreak of bubonic plague in Townsville in 1900, Ian Townsend’s first novel deftly walks the fine line between historical documentation and fictional lives to recount an absorbing story of love, fear, ignorance and colonial political intrigue. While the subject may be grim and tragic, Townsend applies a surprisingly light and comic touch to reveal the humour underlying it. The eccentric Doctor Turner and melancholic Doctor Row are fully realised characters pitted against the self-interested absurdity of Australia’s tropical North. Affection is ultimately much more than merely a curiosity about a glitch in our history.