From my point of view, I can see positive aspects in all four that I have read — but also have to say that I also found flaws in each of them.

The Real Giller list is due out within the hour of my writing this commnet — we’ll see how their top six compare with yours.

Again, thank you for such an extensive and thoughtful appraisal.

Managed to finish reading the entire longlist. Can’t say it was a particularly enjoyable experience, but as you said, they aren’t actually bad (or at least most of them aren’t actually bad).

My #1 is Y, even though I hated reading each and every page. At the sentence level it is very sophisticated and well crafted, and she is telling an unusual story, and telling it very well. The problem is that I had zero interest in any of the characters or the story line. Absolute zero. I had to force myself to continue reading it and concentrated on the technical aspects of what the author was doing, and doing very well.

I made The Emperor of Paris my #2. I liked that the physical book, with its raspberry colored cover, faux fine end papers and even a book plate fit snuggly into the book-as-physical-object portion of the book. The plot and character development are all within a straight jacket, but that didn’t bother me. The book fails to really breath, but I thought that was a successful gambit by the author. I thought the whole thing fit together well.

My #3 is The Imposter Bride. Several things about the book don’t work: the journal that is quoted from throughout the book sounds exactly like it is described, a young person’s awful prose. But why make us wade through it, since it is, as advertised, terrible. And the sections of dialog with a young child? Those are very hard to pull off as interesting, and this failed. It simply sounds like the inane back and forth with a young child. What I admired about the book is that it takes a unique (at least unique to me) spin on the holocaust. The damaged lives of those Jews who ended up in Canada. The book follows people who left for Canada before the war but were the only ones to leave, and survive. The walking wounded that came after the war, and the next generation that didn’t personally experience the war but are surrounded by the damaged generation that did.

#4 is Our Daily Bread. Not a particularly original plot, the city folk looking down their noses at the white trash while the true generosity is extended by outliers who empathize because they themselves have suffered, but I thought the execution was very good. My major complaint is that there is insufficient ambiguity in the various characters. The religious are over the top full of themselves, and the old standby of rural trash having children within that wretched community when they are still children. And the sermons-through-the-ages that start each chapter accomplish zero. We know that the religious are small minded bigots in this book. Adding the silly sermons isn’t necessary.

#5, Whirl Away. The stories are thoughtful, they have a decent variety of subject matter, and are well constructed. And , well, the rest of the longlist was worse.

#6, Inside. Intense character studies, but I didn’t think the book gelled very well. Too choppy, too skattered.

#7, 419. Not really a thriller or a narrative novel. Tried to do too many things and couldn’t really pull it off. Ending was a rather last-ditch effort for pulling it together, and wasn’t satisfying. Also, a young white dude who has traveled all over the world is in no position to write about the life of an African tribal woman. So he spent a few nights in a few villages? He certainly was not in a position to have ever had ever known a Muslim woman in this tribal world. I found his appropriation of this character created from zero knowledge to be creepy.

#8, Dr Brinkley’s Tower. Same problems I had with 419. Just to hone in on one detail, the cover art. Yes I know, this is the responsibility of the publisher, not the artist, but it is an excellent case study in inappropriate appropriation. The cover shows a small detail from Diego Rivera’s most famous mural, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park. But that is not what the book describes. It says “cover art by Diego Rivera” and then misspells Alameda and leaves off Dream of a Sunday. Nowhere are we told that this is simply a tiny detail from a huge mural. It makes it sound like Rivera whipped this up as the cover illustration. You can’t understand, begin to understand, this mural without understanding the Dream element, and it needs to be seen as a whole, not simply cut & paste a small section. Aaarrrgh!

The author lives in Toronto. What the heck does he know about Mexican village life? The whole narrative reads like someone’s fantasy of a foreign place with simple people living a simple unspoiled life.

#9, My Life among the Apes. Boring stories from a very limited palette. I simply didn’t care about these stories and forgot one as soon as I moved on to the next.

#10, The Sweet Girl. Stilted narrative. Just because it is historical fiction is no reason to use an off-putting narration. I’d call it pseudo biblical.

#11, One Good Hustle. Simplistic story told with a simplistic, dumbed down narrative style. Written for adolescents eager to read an emotional story. No subtlety, unsophisticated writing.

#12, Ru. Hallmark card of a book. Tells a story of Vietnam boat people with brief stories that sound completely stereotyped. No attempt to weave the various narratives into a coherent story. This was written for people who want sad but tender stories told in a soft, simplistic, voice.

#13, Everybody has Everything. And why was this published? Many surface similarities to Zadie Smith’s just published NW. Two couples, one with kids one without, woman workaholic lawyer, lots of angst. But NW works, this is simply an unsophisticated and uninteresting book. And I mean, you want to plop a young kid into the plot so you have the kid’s dad die and the mom in a coma? And when that story runs aground and the kid no longer serves a plot purpose? The mom comes out of the coma!

On this year’s list, I’d only read Robert Hough’s novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of the others there are several authors whose works I’ve meant to explore but hadn’t yet (Ohlin, Davis, Richler, Richardson, Ferguson, Wangersky, Fagan), others whose works I’ve enjoyed (Livingston, Onstad) and two debuts that I’ve been hearing lots of good things about (Ru and Y). The names were familiar but, as others have said, not necessarily obvious choices. (I’ve since read C.S. Richardson’s novel, Wangersky’s stories, and have just begun The Imposter Bride.)

How disappointing that Carrie Snyder’s Juliet Stories did not appear on the Giller list, but hope it garners some other attention this season nonetheless. I also thought that Yasuko Thanh’s stories and J.Jill Robinson’s novel would have had a good chance, but no luck for them either…

Or, if the footie was on we could watch it.

That’s a wonderful offer, Kevin, which I may eventually be impudent enough to call you on. Thank you. And 4000 you say? Good grief, I may hide out down there, never to be found.