The 2008 Shirley Jackson Award Winners

The Shadow Year

Author: Ford, Jeffrey
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 304pp.
Pub. Date: July 17, 2008
Publisher: William Morrow

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

Jeffrey Ford’s writing has been compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr. In this powerful tale he turns his talents to nostalgia and youth, bringing the optimism and dark underbelly of 1960s small-town suburbia to life.

The Shadow Year is a time marked by strange events for one particular Long Island sixth grader: a classmate disappears; a man in a large white car appears; a peeping tom prowls the neighborhood; the school librarian goes crazy. The narrator and his older brother, Jim, keep track of these events in “Botch Town,” a neighborhood of cardboard houses and clay figures that they build in their basement.

But then the brothers realize that their younger sister, Mary, is secretly rearranging the clay figures — changes that are soon reflected in actual events. With the help of their sister, the brothers investigate the disappearance of a neighborhood boy and make a discovery that will cast a long shadow across their lives.

Disquiet

Author: Leigh, Julia
Format: Hardcover/Trade Paperback
Type: Novella
Page Count: 128pp.
Pub. Date: January 1, 2008/November 25, 2008
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella

Olivia arrives at her mother’s chateau in rural France (the first time in more than a decade) with her two young children in tow. Soon the family is joined by Olivia’s brother Marcus and his wife Sophie — but this reunion is far from joyful.

After years of desperately wanting a baby, Sophie has just given birth to a stillborn child, and she is struggling to overcome her devastation. Meanwhile, Olivia wrestles with her own secrets about the cruel and violent man she married many years before.

Exquisitely written and reminiscent of Ian McEwan and J. M. Coetzee, Disquiet is a darkly beautiful and atmospheric story that will linger in the mind long after the final page is turned.

The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

Author: Ogawa, Yoko
Translator: Snyder, Stephen
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novella Collection
Page Count: 176pp.
Pub. Date: January 22, 2008
Publisher: Picador

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection

The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan’s bestselling and most celebrated authors

From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent.

“The Diving Pool” — A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool–a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.

“Pregnancy Diary” — A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination — but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister’s?

“Dormitory” — A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.

Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.

Table of Contents:

• The Diving Pool
• Pregnancy Diary
• Dormitory

The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease

Editor: Eyre, Sarah and Ra Page
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Anthology
Page Count: 226pp.
Pub. Date: September 1, 2009
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
Original Pub: December 4, 2008 (Hardcover — Comma Press, England)

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Anthology

Performing a deft metaphorical evisceration of Sigmund Freud’s classic 1919 essay that delved deeply into the tradition of horror writing, this freshly contemporary collection of literary interpretations reintroduces to the world Freud’s compelling theory of das unheimliche — or, the uncanny.

Specifically designed to challenge the creative boundaries of some of the most famed and respected horror writers working today — such as A. S. Byatt, Christopher Priest, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Matthew Holness, and the indomitable Ramsey Campbell — this anatomically precise experiment encapsulates what the uncanny represents in the 21st century.

Masterfully narrated with the benefit of unique perspectives on what exactly it is that goes bump in the night, this chilling modern collective is not only an essential read for fans of horror but also an insightful and intriguing introduction to the greats of the genre at their gruesome best.

“Pride and Prometheus”

Author: Kessel, John
Format: Magazine
Type: Short Story
Pub. Date: January 2008
Published in: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette

“Pride and Prometheus” was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction January 2008.

“The Pile”

Author: Bishop, Michael
Format: Online Magazine
Type: Short Story
Pub. Date: Winter 2008
Published in: Subterranean Online

Winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story

“The Pile” was published in the online magazine called Subterranean Online Winter 2008. You can click on the link to read the story online.