I should point out that I am reading the Women's Prize list blind and I'm not looking the books up beforehand. There are pros and cons to this.
Homesick - Jennifer Croft
This book exists in 3 forms as explained below (stolen from Goodreads). I read the US edition without realising that this would be an issue. It was simply the version I was able to borrow immediately from a library. I didn't know there was a difference until I came to log it on Goodreads. My thoughts are below the italicised section.
Jennifer Croft's Homesick began life as a novel written directly in Spanish, Serpientes y escaleras (Snakes and Ladders).
The book was then re-writen and re-presented in English in the US as Homesick in 2019, drawing on entries Croft had made on her blog. Croft is on record that neither version should be considered a translation of the other.
The US version, complete with photographs, was marketed, as her publisher's suggestion, as a memoir, although it has been presented as a novel in all other countries.
The 2022 UK version, published by Charco Press, removes the photographs and is again marketed as a novel, as Croft explains:
The UK version of the book is a kind of hybrid between that original Spanish version and the US version. I’ve once again removed the images to take the book back to where I first wanted it to be, the kind of slim novel that you could conceivably read in one sitting, and hope that the reader will trust the voice of the book enough to keep reading and keep thinking in the white space around and between the tiny ‘chapters’.
Writing it as a novel meant that while that kernel of truth inspired the book, I was more concerned with finding the right narrative arc, character traits, and voice for the story than I was with truthfully reproducing real-life events. In some ways this process might be comparable to a translation: the original coexists with the translation, and while the two are hopefully in sync with one another, they are inevitably also quite different.
Bear in mind I will have read a different book to everyone else.
Coming of age of 2 sisters in Oklahoma. They start to be homeschooled after Zoe becomes very ill and is later diagnosed with a brain tumour. They develop a love of languages and their parents engage a tutor to develop this. Amy is particularly talented and goes to university aged 15, while Zoe remains tied to home by her illness. Amy goes on to travel extensively and tries to maintain her connection to Zoe through a series of photographs.
This is a very clever concept. Each chapter is based around a photograph and the memories it evokes (in my version at least). It has a complicated relationship at it's core which is well explored, but leaves a lot of room for the reader to contemplate the unsaid bits. It's well written, some really interesting prose. However it fell flat for me, I simply didn't like it, while at the same time I can recognise the quality of it. Looking back with the knowledge above, I think it's trying too hard. It's a little too contrived.
Part of me is curious to see how the two English versions compare directly side by side, but I'm annoyed enough about it to say fuck that. The author sounds like hard work dicking about with it so much and that came across in the book. If modern art were a book, this would be it in it's wankiest form. Not for me, but I think many others here will enjoy it on it's very many merits.