I slipped in Port Bou deceitfully, for it's not a novel at all, but a poem set on the frontier. Paul Scott's vivid, experimental novel of betrayal, despair and suicide on the Costa Brava.Īngela Jackson's epic on British women in the Civil War, reaching its climax in the Priorat mountains. As the Jews are expelled from Girona, Alba has to find strength in her past and religion to overcome lost love, family deaths and the destruction of her people. Spare and bleak book about Katherine's 1950s flight from Ireland to Barcelona to the Pyrenees and her fight for independence and understanding. Three were crime novels, varied in style: Barbara Wilson's comic paean to sexual freedom David Hall's hardboiled detective story and Caroline Roe's more traditional mystery.Ĭolm Tóibín's first novel. All of these were sharply realised and integrated into the story, such as fictional villages on the Costa Brava (Scott), in the Pyrenees (Tóibín), in the Penedès (Gordon) or real villages, such as La Floresta (Hall), Portbou (Spender) and La Bisbal de Falset (Jackson). Girona, not Barcelona, was the privileged city: Graves and Roe both set their novels in its medieval Jewish quarter and Patrice Chaplin fell in love with that same city. Nor, as one might think, have the books focused only on Barcelona, the capital that sucks resources and people from the rest of the country. Colm Tóibín's imagination puts across what the dictatorship felt like (history books try to tell us what happened) Paul Scott shows us the Costa Brava on the cusp of change from fishing-villages to tourist resorts Barbara Wilson's Cassandra is struck by the impact of Gaudí's buildings Lucia Graves and Caroline Roe explain the Jewish absence –or their presence, Graves believes– in the Catalan character today and Noah Gordon in a most detailed portrait of a Penedès village highlights the strength of Catalan tradition and identity. C.C.And several throw strong light on aspects of Catalonia, as fiction can so well.Michelle Spring – Standing in the Shadows.Peter Robinson – The Summer that Never Was (aka: Close to Home).David Rotenberg – The Hua Shan Hospital Murders.Mary Jane Maffini – Lament for a Lounge Lizard.Rick Blechta – Cemetery of the Nameless.Maureen Jennings – A Journeyman to Grief.Michael Van Rooy – A Criminal to Remember.William Deverell – I'll See You in My Dreams.
Alan Bradley – I am Half-Sick of Shadows.Indicates a review is available for that book For more information, visit the official site. The Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel written in English is awarded by Crime Writers of Canada to an author living in Canada or a Canadian writer living outside of Canada.
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