2009 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD finalists Bonnie Jo Campbell and Jayne Anne Phillips and Man Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel were among the nominees for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, it was announced on January 23, 2010. Other nominees include Michelle Huneven, Marlon James, Mary Karr, Diana Athill, Rae Armantrout, Louise Glück, William T. Vollmann, Edmund White, Blake Bailey, Brad Gooch, Benjamin Moser, Richard Holmes, Wendy Doniger, Tracy Kidder, Morris Dickstein, among others. So many of my favourite books of 2009 are on the shortlists.

Fiction
1. American Salvage (Wayne State University Press, 2009) / Bonnie Jo Campbell
2. The Book of Night Women (Riverhead, 2009) / Marlon James
3. Blame (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) / Michelle Huneven
4. Wolf Hall (Holt, 2009) / Hilary Mantel
5. Lark and Termite (Knopf, 2009) / Jayne Anne Phillips

Poetry
1. Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009) / Rae Armantrout
2. A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) / Louise Glück
3. Chronic (Graywolf Press, 2009) / D.A. Powell
4. Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008 (Louisiana State University Press, 2009) / Eleanor Ross Taylor
5. Museum of Accidents (Wave Books, 2009) / Rachel Zucker

Biography
1. Cheever: A Life (Knopf, 2009) / Blake Bailey
2. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (Little, Brown, 2009) / Brad Gooch
3. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press, 2009) / Benjamin Moser
4. Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) / Stanislao G. Pugliese
5. Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press, 2009) / Martha A. Sandweiss

Autobiography
1. Somewhere Towards the End (Norton, 2009) / Diana Athill
2. Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) / Debra Gwartney
3. Lit (Harper, 2009) / Mary Karr
4. Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America (Simon & Schuster, 2009) / Kati Marton
5. City Boy (Bloomsbury, 2009) / Edmund White

Criticism
1. Notes From No Man’s Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press, 2009) / Eula Biss
2. Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2009) / Stephen Burt
3. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (Norton, 2009) / Morris Dickstein
4. Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo Press, 2009) / David Hadju
5. Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber, 2009) / Greg Milner

Nonfiction
1. The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press, 2009) / Wendy Doniger
2. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books, 2009) / Greg Grandin
3. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon, 2009) / Richard Holmes
4. Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness (Random House, 2009) / Tracy Kidder
5. Imperial (Viking, 2009) / William T. Vollmann

The winners will be announced on March 11, 2010