I’m sure it is a bit of a surprise for everyone that Eva Hornung won the PM’s literature award for fiction for her novel about a young boy in Moscow living with a pack with dogs. I’m really pleased, though. Was it Gillard’s choice? There’s a judging panel but this choice seems idiosyncratic. A newspaper article suggested she hadn’t read the shortlist because she was going to get to some of them over summer. I’ve commented elsewhere (see Animal in Fiction piece) about the paucity of novels including animals. So, good on Eva for going there. I haven’t read Dog Boy but my partner has. He says the first third was riveting but he thought the latter part didn’t live up to the promse of the early sections. I hope Eva gets a sales lift from winning the award but I don’t know if it has the oomph of the Miles Franklin. Interestingly enough, the two previous winners of the PM were Steven Conte for The Zookeepers War and Nam Le for The Boat – both mostly overseas set. Perhaps the PM’s Award is setting itself up against the Miles Franklin with it’s Australian setting requirement. Read Dog Boy review here.
“Dog Boy creates, in Romochka, a touchingly complex and credible dog boy – cunning, tender, angry, wild, strangely beautiful – as well as a wholly convincing study of how a feral dog-pack works.” – John Burnside The Guardian. Full review here.