Tender Morsels and The Shadow Year share World Fantasy Award
Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels and Jeffrey Ford’s The Shadow Year were named joint winners of the World Fantasy award for best novel.
Tender Morsels [link to review] was Fantasy Book Review’s favourite amongst the nominees with the reviewer saying “If you remove all the fuss surrounding the novel you will find that Lanagan has, using the barest framework of the Grimm brothers Snow-white and Rose-red, woven a beautiful and at times brutal fairy tale for the modern age. Tender Morsels never once tries to show that life has a happily ever after ending. It shows that life is full of hardship; you will experience hurt, you will watch loved ones die and you will often be afraid. It also shows that live can be full of love, caring and kindness. It is better to experience something, be it good or bad, than to experience nothing at all.”
Although it has to be said that Jeffrey Ford’s The Shadow Year [link to review] did not fair too badly either with Jim Eaton saying that “What the Shadow Year has that King and Sebold don’t in their tales is a rich, enveloping sense of subtext. And for me, who has long since fled screaming from Shea and his Shannarigans in search of an author’s mind at work, subtext is king. For many, there will be references that fly over head and crown. Roll with them anyway. For those of us…uh…lucky enough to have grown up on Long Island in the late sixties and early seventies, the presence of such nuggets as Mister Softee, Chiller Theater, the 4:30 movie and a deep fear of Halloween apples and Nair bombs provides an extra, magically delicious subtextual payoff. Krapp’s moon shines brightly in some form or fashion in all our ripening minds, n’est pas?”
Congratulations to both Margo Lanagan and Jeffery Ford, here are the winners in full:
2009 World Fantasy Award Winners
Life Achievement
- Ellen Asher
- Yolen
Novel
- The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford
- Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan
Novella
- If Angels Fight, Richard Bowes
Short Story
- 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss, Kij Johnson
Anthology
- Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed.
Collection
- The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford
Artist
- Shaun Tan
Special Award – Professional
- Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
Special Award – Non-professional
- Michael J. Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)
Posted: November 4th, 2009
Author: Lee
Categories: Awards, Margo Lanagan
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