The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction: Shortlist 2006

Judges

Liam Davison (Convenor), Louise Adler, Rosemary Cameron and Michael Cunningham

The 103 entries for this year’s Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction confirmed the judges’ belief in the vibrant state of fiction writing and publishing in Australia. While larger, commercial publishing houses accounted for more than half the entries, it was noted that titles came from 37 different publishers and that smaller, independent presses are committed to bringing new, often risky, fiction to Australian readers.

Shortlist

	Theft: A Love Story Peter Carey (Knopf/Random House) The judges admired the sheer bravura of Carey’s tragic love story and the broad scope of the comic vision that informs it. The brutal lyricism of the dialogue between the once-famous artist Butcher Bones and his damaged brother Hugh engages effortlessly in conversation about identity and authenticity with multiple works of art and literature while carrying a poignant story of love between two brothers. The language is bold and visceral: by turns coarse and poetic. Its cultural references are unashamedly parochial, yet it positions Australia on the world stage with a knowing wink towards its colonial insecurities.
	Slow Man J.M. Coetzee (Random House) Coetzee’s unconventional double narrative of an ageing man made forcibly aware of his own mortality, and a disillusioned writer at the end of her career, impressed the judges with the complex fictional possibilities it both entertains and denies. In deceptively plain, unadorned prose and with a storyline that steadfastly refuses to conform to the conventions of fiction, Coetzee melds realist and meta-fictional devices to examine the ambiguities of life and writing. Its structure, language, plot and artistic ambition all serve together to deliver an extraordinary work.
	The Secret River Kate Grenville (Text Publishing) Grenville’s meticulously researched and deeply felt colonial foundation novel caught the attention of the judges with its broad narrative sweep and its assured telling of a chillingly familiar story. Informed by a contemporary awareness of the mutual misunderstanding between white settlers and Aboriginal Australians, The Secret River invites empathy rather than judgement and provides tragic glimpses into the way things might otherwise have been. It is beautifully imagined historical fiction that wavers on the border of myth to re-examine issues of ownership, legitimacy and shared responsibility for past actions.
	Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living Carrie Tiffany (Picador/Pan Macmillan) The panel was moved by the quiet, cumulative strength of Tiffany’s debut novel and the ironic humour and pathos that underlies it. With a keen eye for regional and period detail, Tiffany recounts a seemingly small and intimate love story about a doomed marriage in regional Victoria that effortlessly carries its broader themes of idealism, belief in a possible future and the harsh realities of land management in a dry country. The stoic resilience of her characters in the face of adversity and their increasingly tragic self-awareness give voice to a quintessentially Australian sensibility.