Ah, reader, it’s finally here. The day you have all been waiting for. I know you are SUPER excited. You’ve had this in your diary for weeks, you’ve been checking back anxiously all day to see if it’s up yet, you are all on the edge of your seats. I expect you’ve been all aflutter. It’s understandable (you can’t see, but I’m nodding my head sagely) for today, I announce the winner of the landmark literary event that is the Grace Booker Prize: my number one fiction book of the year so far. I shan’t keep it from you any longer.

And the winner is…

*drumroll*

Asylum – Patrick McGrath

asylum

*applause, squealing, sounds of general excitement*

Yes! Ladies and gentlemen, my favourite fiction read of the year thus far is Asylum, a gothic and twisted story about the wife of a doctor at a mental institution who embarks on an affair with a long term patient. It is a wonderful book, brilliantly atmospheric and tense, that haunts you long after you’ve finished it. There’s also a pretty good film adaptation starring everyone’s favourite guy Gandalf *ahem* I mean, Ian McKellen. But the book is better. Obviously.

But Grace! I hear you cry. This is a feminist book blog! You only ever talk about books by women, who is this male infiltrator? I know, reader, I know. Looking back through my book journals I realised that I rarely read books by men. It’s not intentional, honest, it just usually turns out that way. Put it down to me being a man hater who always sides with the women on Come Dine with Me. But trust me, this book is a corker. Its portrayal of the position of women in 1950s Britain and the way that the mental health system was used to uphold patriarchal expectations of “natural” female behaviour (chastity, maternity, a love of cooking, all that shit) is absolutely fascinating, and would make an interesting comparison with The Bell Jar if I ever have the time/motivation/caffeine supply necessary to write it. So you can read this one without risking your feminist lit fan street cred (and I won’t tell them about the 10 year anniversary addition of Twilight you’ve got under the desk because WE ALL KNOW YOU’RE GONNA READ IT). The writing is fantastic, the story is gripping, the interplay between man/woman and patient/doctor roles gets all mixed up and turned around, and the narrator is so wonderfully creepy I can guarantee you will love it. If you love dark, twisted stories where everything goes wrong, that is. Mills and Boon this is not.

A big congratulations to the ACTUAL real life Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. The novel is also up for the Green Carnation Prize 2015, so best of luck to him.

Phew, all that excitement has quite exhausted me. Someone put the kettle on, I am in desperate need of tea.

Image via Google Books