Other / Maxliu / 13 May 2010 / 3

The 15th Orange Prize, which aims to reward the best English language novel of the year by a female author, will be announced on June 9. Here's a rundown of the nominees and some informed betting advice that could land you decent winnings.

A punt on Lorrie Moore to win the Orange Prize for Fiction could prove to be almost as shrewd as her whip-smart prose.

Moore [7.0] is nominated for A Gate at the Stairs, a strange, funny and moving coming of age tale which contemplates the psycho-geography of the American mid-West as well as racial and social hypocrisy in the post-9/11 era.

AGATS will unite the judges - a quality which it always pays to look for when betting on awards. I've never met a reader who doesn't enjoy Moore's work and I recently saw her read in a roomful of people for whom her books provide enormous entertainment as well as emotional and spiritual sustenance. "I'm not a natural novelist, but I'd like to become one," she commented, intriguingly. Moore has popular appeal but she is not straightforward; she makes alienated characters matter to everyone and her formal innovations draw readers close instead of pushing them away. That books this good mean a lot to a lot of people is cause for optimism. The only factor she might have against her is that we had an American winner last year, but this shouldn't carry too much weight.

Moore's most serious competition comes from Hilary Mantel, who was previously nominated for Beyond Black in 2006. The market leader at [1.9] is hoping to pull off a Booker/Orange double with Wolf Hall, her epic historical novel about Sir Thomas Cromwell. The Guardian's Alex Clark, who considers Wolf Hall the best contemporary novel she's read for many years, believes prizes should reward literary merit alone. That Clark's point needs to be made raises questions about the role of prizes; our preoccupation with competition - and betting - means they are unlikely to be answered.

Literary doubles are rarely done - look at last year's Forward winner Don Paterson's inexplicable failure to even make the 2009 TS Eliot Prize shortlist - and I suspect the judges may fear that awarding the Orange to the Booker winner might diminish it. The Orange would be only the second most important prize that Wolf Hall had won; the book would be the story, not the prize, and the sponsors wouldn't like that.

Barbara Kingsolver's [3.0] The Lacuna is a bildungsroman set in Mexico and the US, featuring cameos from Frida Kahlo and Lev Trotsky. Kingsolver's work consistently makes the bestseller lists but, despite a slew of nominations, she's so far missed out on the big prizes. Lacuna, like A Gate at the Stairs, is published by Faber, who have never produced an Orange winner.

If the judges want to make the headlines they might opt for Attica Locke's Black Water Rising. A thriller which mixes blood and oil by a screenwriter sounds like a toxic mix and, regardless of populist agenda, it's difficult to see what such genre fiction is doing on the same shortlist as Moore and Mantel.

Like Locke, Rosie Alison is a first time novelist with a background in cinema (doesn't the film industry pay its writers and producers well enough?). The Very Thought of You, a novel about a World War Two evacuee who becomes entangled in the illicit affairs of a wealthy couple is the market outsider at [9.0].

At [8.0] you can back Monique Roffey for The White Woman on a Bicycle - the story of a couple whose marriage disintegrates amidst a mesh of secrets when they move to Trinidad.

Recommended bet: The 2010 Orange Prize has to go to either Lorrie Moore or Hilary Mantel; at considerably longer odds, I'm backing Ms Moore.

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(3)

1. RLG | 13 May 2010

   Spectacularly ignorant commentary by someone who's not only failed to do their research by reading the coverage of the shortlist, but hasn't even read half the books! You'd be much better off reading the gossip online from people who have a clue than following this advice!

2. Tokengirl | 13 May 2010

   Attica Locke is spelt Attica LockE. At least do her the justice of spelling her name right if you're going to dismiss the book without reading it.

   I'd hardly describe a novel dealing with issues like the American oil industry and political and business-world corruption and questions of civil rights and race as 'populist' either.

   If you haven't read the book (or a synopsis), it's worth pointing out that the judges - who chose it for the shortlist with good reason - have.

3. H. A. McF. Spume | 09 June 2010

   It's Barabara Kingsolver.

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