We begin our series of blogs presenting the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominations with the award for best Novel.
The Shirley Jackson Awards website describes the award this way:
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
Best Novel
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Big MachineAuthor: LaValle, Victor |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God. Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us. |
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Last DaysAuthor: Evenson, Brian |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel Intense and profoundly unsettling, Brian Evenson’s Last Days is a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult. The story follows Kline, a brutally dismembered detective forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside the cult. As Kline becomes more deeply involved with the group, he begins to realize the stakes are higher than he previously thought. Attempting to find his way through a maze of lies, threats, and misinformation, Kline discovers that his survival depends on an act of sheer will. Last Days was first published in 2003 as a limited edition novella titled The Brotherhood of Mutilation. Its success led Evenson to expand the story into a full-length novel. In doing so, he has created a work that’s disturbing, deeply satisfying, and completely original. |
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The Little StrangerAuthor: Waters, Sarah |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel From the multi-award-winning and bestselling author of The Night Watch and Fingersmith comes an astonishing novel about love, loss, and the sometimes unbearable weight of the past. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to see a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the once grand house is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its garden choked with weeds. All around, the world is changing, and the family is struggling to adjust to a society with new values and rules. Roddie Ayres, who returned from World War II physically and emotionally wounded, is desperate to keep the house and what remains of the estate together for the sake of his mother and his sister, Caroline. Mrs. Ayres is doing her best to hold on to the gracious habits of a gentler era and Caroline seems cheerfully prepared to continue doing the work a team of servants once handled, even if it means having little chance for a life of her own beyond Hundreds. But as Dr. Faraday becomes increasingly entwined in the Ayreses’ lives, signs of a more disturbing nature start to emerge, both within the family and in Hundreds Hall itself. And Faraday begins to wonder if they are all threatened by something more sinister than a dying way of life, something that could subsume them completely. Both a nuanced evocation of 1940s England and the most chill-inducing novel of psychological suspense in years, The Little Stranger confirms Sarah Waters as one of the finest and most exciting novelists writing today. |
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The Owl Killers: A NovelAuthor: Maitland, Karen |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel From the author of Company of Liars . . . comes a magnificent new novel of an embattled village and a group of courageous women who are set on a collision course — in an unforgettable storm of secrets, lust, and rage. England, 1321: The tiny village of Ulewic teeters between survival and destruction, faith and doubt, God and demons. For shadowing the villagers’ lives are men cloaked in masks and secrecy, ruling with violence, intimidation, and terrifying fiery rites: the Owl Masters. But another force is touching Ulewic — a newly formed community built and served only by women. Called a beguinage, it is a safe harbor of service and faith in defiance of the all-powerful Church. Behind the walls of this sanctuary, women have gathered from all walks of life: a skilled physician, a towering former prostitute, a cook, a local convert. But life in Ulewic is growing more dangerous with each passing day. The women are the subject of rumors, envy, scorn, and fury . . . until the daughter of Ulewic’s most powerful man is cast out of her home and accepted into the beguinage — and battle lines are drawn. Into this drama are swept innocents and conspirators: a parish priest trying to save himself from his own sins . . . a village teenager, pregnant and terrified . . . a woman once on the verge of sainthood, now cast out of the Church. With Ulewic ravaged by flood and disease, and with villagers driven by fear, a secret inside the beguinage will draw the desperate and thedepraved — until masks are dropped, faith is tested . . . and every lie is exposed. |
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The Red TreeEditors: Kiernan, Caitlin R. |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house’s former tenant — a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago . . . |
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White is for Witching: A NovelAuthor: Oyeyemi, Helen |
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Nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel “Miranda is at home — homesick, home sick . . . “ As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there’s the family house in Dover, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda’s father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But the Silver House manifests a more conscious malice toward strangers, dispatching those visitors it despises. Enraged by the constant stream of foreign staff and guests, the house finally unleashes its most destructive power. With distinct originality and grace, and an extraordinary gift for making the fantastic believable, Helen Oyeyemi spins the politics of family and nation into a riveting and unforgettable mystery. |
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- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novel
- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novella
- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Novelette
- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Short Story
- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Edited Anthology
- The 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Nominations for Best Single-Author Collection
- Presenting the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Winners
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