Being a judge for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction has been an honour and a huge responsibility: not least because it’s the one prize whose longlist always has me rushing to the bookshop. As a group of five very different readers, I and my fellow judges Louise Minchin, Bella Mackie, Irenosen Okojie and Tulip Siddiq set out to reflect and celebrate the breadth, skill and visionary quality of women’s writing. Our shortlist has humour, anger, empathy, courage, danger, suspense, joy. In terms of common themes, there is a need to find a voice for the unvoiced – from the ocean floor to a Renaissance palace. Most of all, there is urgency. Every one of these writers speaks – indeed shouts and sings – in a voice that is undeniably and wholeheartedly her own.
We were blown away by Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks. A young Black British woman growing up in 1970s London, Yamaye lives for the weekend when she goes clubbing and loses herself in music. There she meets Moose and finally feels on the edge of happiness, until their relationship is brutally cut short and Yamaye begins a journey of self-discovery. Past and present collide with explosive consequences. Ambitious, imaginative and singular, this novel is as relevant to today’s racial climate as the 1970s’, with dub music as a character in its own right. It’s an electric story of love, violence, loss and Black womanhood.
