Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 Reading Challenge

The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded each year to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English.

The books that appear on the longlist, then the shortlist, and finally the winner are generally well worth reading. They are often quite demanding reads and some deal with very challenging subjects while others are lighter.

The longlist of 16 books has just been announced and I thought it might be fun to read some of them together. So I'm going to set up a series of three swaps.

Each swap will list 5 or 6 books from the list. Choose one and read it, and then email your partners with your comments and responses. It's up to you what you say, but you might want to think about questions like why did you choose this book? Was there anything that surprised you? What did you think about the characters? Would you like to read something else by this author? Would you recommend it as a good read? Give your partners a short summary of the book as well (without spoilers!) so they can decide if it's one they might want to read.

You need to write a paragraph or more, not just a couple of sentences.

Don't forget to rate your partners!

Obviously if you want to listen to an audiobook rather than reading the print book, that's absolutely fine.

This month's books:

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

I'll give us a good length of time so that we all have time to choose a book and get hold of a copy, and then to read it. I've already ordered a couple from my local public library! Obviously you can start reading now, before partners are assigned.

The Prize website has lots of links, interviews with authors, readings from the books and so on.