Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist Prediction 2026

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hi and welcome or welcome back to my channel. I'm Simon and today I am back to go through the Women's Prize for Fiction long list and give you my personal short list and then what I think could actually be the short list.

[00:00:15]Overall, I have really, really enjoyed it. I did DNF a couple, but out of that 16, there have been some incredible riches, too. There is one book particularly that I don't think I would have read if it hadn't been for it being on the long list and it's become one of my favorite books of the year. What I'm going to do is as I go through these books, all 16 of them, is give you an elevator pitch and then give you what I liked, what I didn't like, and whether I would put it on my own personal short list before predicting the actual short list. I'm always wrong, so maybe I should just leave it at my own personal one. But I'm not going to cuz where would the be? And there was something else I was going to say then and I can't remember what it is.

[00:00:52]>> In alphabetical order by author surname.

[00:00:54]First up we have Gloria Don't Speak by Lucy Apps which is all about a young woman called Gloria who has learning disabilities and she I was going to say is befriended by but really it's be is beguiled by a young man called Jack who is very troubled and is trouble. there ends up being a really horrific thing that happens that Gloria is witnessed to and we follow on from there. What I liked about this was Gloria's narrative.

[00:01:26]I also thought it looked at how people's perceptions and assumptions of learning disabilities can be both in them being sometimes well taken advantage of but also sometimes having stereotypes in their head etc. What I didn't like so much about this book and I'm still a bit baffled by is in the second half of the book, Gloria is involved in another incident and I couldn't quite work out what Lucy Apps was trying to say with that. So, it's left to a lot of questions. Would be a really, really, really good book club book, but it's not on my personal short list. We then have Hannah Lilith Assad's Paradiso 17 which is all about the well the entire life of a man called Suffian who is born in Palestine and with his family in 1948 with the Nagba leaves and he is basically displaced from then on and moves around the world with this constant link to what's going on in Palestine never leaving. What I loved about this book was Sophia. I just thought he was this brilliant, flawed, complex, compassionate. I said complicate complex, not saying complicated.

[00:02:42]>> He felt so real to me. This book really looks at all of life's emotions, love, loss, grief, joy, and it also looks at how war is constantly going on and how can that be that the world carries on. I thought this was so powerfully done. If I had to pick, and it's hard with this one, something that I didn't like, I would have liked to have got to know Sophian's wife and daughter a little more in depth. That is literally all I can say.

[00:03:17]So, yes, this will be on my personal short list. We then have moderation by Elaine Castillo and this is all about Girly who is working for a massive online/social media company in the moderation department where she has to look at really horrific things to basically take them off. I was going to say decide whether to keep them on or not the website but no to take them off.

[00:03:45]And that's really hard to read at the beginning. the company is planning something new in virtual reality and the man in charge of that. There's a fris between them and we go from there. I have to say this is one that I DNFED and I'll come to why shortly. But what I did like about this I found Girly a really interesting character and I was enjoying getting to know and would have liked to got to know more of her family and friend well her relationships. What I didn't like about this and what stop me from was I found it quite repetitive.

[00:04:18]For example, there's like two or three paragraphs in the gym where it's just the same thing over and over. And I get that that's what people do in the gym. I don't know. It just that was a slight issue. And it happened with other things. It happened with some of the discussion around how online uh websites work, how virtuality works. And I think also having worked on VR projects myself, I felt like I already knew quite a lot of this and so I was sort of not as invested if that makes sense cuz there was quite a lot of time on it cuz naturally it's going to be because what it's about. However, if this is shortlisted, I will go back to it and finish it but it's not on my personal short list. We then with what we then have Susan Choy's flashlight and this is a huge epic novel which opens with a young girl waking up on the beach after having gone for a walk with her father.

[00:05:17]He's disappeared and then we head years into the future where she is living with her mom. She's having therapy and is spiraling and what has happened to her father? Do we find out? Don't we find out? this becomes this big, like I said, epic. What I did like about this was it gave me an insight into a period of history of Korea and Japan I didn't know masses about. Oh, and I also loved the mother's character. I was always way more invested in her than the other characters, but we haven't got to what I didn't like about it so much yet. And that is I think one of the main characters I just didn't like, really struggled with. one I thought was superfluous and I didn't really understand why it was there. But also the middle really really sagged for me.

[00:06:02]I think sentence by sentence Susan Choy is a fab writer but I think there was just sometimes too many of them not on my personal short list. I should say at this point I don't know if I said at this cross if any of these got shortlisted and that's not a copout. I think if you've seen my vlogs both which were quite long I won't lie. There was nothing where I was like, "This is dreadful." Next up, Dominion by >> This is bothering me. I can see these here. I don't like it.

[00:06:31]>> Anyway, let's get back on track.

[00:06:32]Dominion by Addie E. Sitchins. This is set in Mississippi in the town of Dominion.

[00:06:40]And it's about a reverend and his wife and their youngest son who is known as Wonder Boy. Everyone really, really loves Wonderboy. But we soon discover that Wonder Boy is not who he appears to be. So, what I liked about this book, well, let's be honest, what I loved about this book was the narration. I loved both the voices of Priscilla and Diamond and enjoyed spending time with both of them. I thought the way this looks at misogyny around religious men and their families in particular and what they can get away with was really fascinating. I think it's also a really interesting look at religion. Full stop.

[00:07:22]In terms of what I didn't like about it, again, it's hard to say. I guess I would have quite liked it to have been longer cuz I really really loved Add's writing.

[00:07:32]So, yes, this funny enough does make my personal short list. Then we have The Benefactors by Wendy Erskin. All about a young woman who is sexually assaulted.

[00:07:45]And well, the blurb says we get the story from the mothers of the three boys involved. That isn't quite true. That happens later on. But actually, this book is an epic patchwork of voices.

[00:08:00]Some who are very close to what goes on or close to Misty. Some, like I said, the mothers, including Miriam, who Wendy, if you see this, could we please have an entire novel about Miriam?

[00:08:12]because I absolutely loved those parts.

[00:08:15]Sometimes the voices are police that are involved or it might be some I don't know snatches of gossip and it creates as you go on this really sprawling picture of the ripple effects of an assault. So what I loved about this book, Miriam, I also loved the patchwork element and all the different voices.

[00:08:38]That said, what I didn't love so much about this book was what I loved about it because it was the patchworkness. I was a bit confused to start off with. I also think there might be in hindsight, although I didn't really notice it at the time, but I just having thought about it a bit and comparing it to other books, which of course is hard to do, but it's all part and parcel of the process. I do think there were maybe a couple too many characters, and I would have liked to have gone in depth with some more. And I did think Miriam really stood out of the three mothers. The other two I kept getting confused which one was which. But I thought the writing was great. And I've read Wendy's first short story collection and can't wait to go to her second cuz I think she's a corking writer. That said, unfortunately this is not on my personal short list, but it was one that I really debated over. Then we have The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. And this is a novel in letters orary novel. And the writer of most of those letters, but also the receiver of a lot of letters is Cibil who is a woman in her later years. She is losing her sight. And through the letters, we get this insight into her entire life pretty much. we get glimpses of what's happened and we're sometimes left to fill in the gaps but then sometimes those gaps are filled later. I think this book has been slightly mismarketed in this edition cuz it looks and I have to be honest I thought it was going to be incredibly twe and a bit saccharine and that's not true. There is so much emotional depth to this. What I loved about it was the fact that I felt like I really got to know Syibble, even though she doesn't always really want you to get to know her and she felt so real. Also, the way it looked at grief and guilt and how that haunts us, I thought was beautifully done. What I didn't love so much, there are some letters to authors and some of them reply. Now, some of those letters, one give away spoilers for some books that if you hadn't read them, that might be a bit of a tricky one. I didn't make a list. The one that stayed with me though was Never Let Me Go by Kazawishuru. I actually much preferred when in her letters to her best friend, who happens to be married to her ex-husband's brother. They always end the letter with what they're reading and a little bit of what they think of it. That I thought was way more interesting than the letters between authors. But yes, this would though be on my personal short list because I found it an absolute treat to read. Then we have the mercy step by Maria Hutchinson which is all about Mercy a well I was gonna say young girl it starts before she's born and she is quite the narrator and character from the off but it's set at the beginning in the 1960s in Bradford and we meet Mercy and her family including some of her siblings who live at home but then some of her siblings are actually back home because her parents came over from Jamaica.

[00:11:46]And this is a book about well one the love of libraries which who doesn't love that two how we as we grow up discover our parents foibless and the complexities of them as human beings.

[00:12:03]And it's also a book about religion and how it can become something of real hope for people but also can sometimes go too far and overtake. I thought the narration was done really well. So what I liked about it, sorry forgetting my own format, was the narration of Mercy.

[00:12:26]Sometimes she's older than her years, but you kind of guess that you're going to get that with the prologue where she's narrating from the womb, it also has slight Matilda vibes, what I didn't like about it so much was whilst I loved her narrative and very much enjoyed word play with certain words like um instead of anesthetic, it was anthetic, etc. I sometimes felt like the precociousness pushed into a little bit too much. But that said, really enjoyed spending time with Mercy and her family, even though you do go through some very difficult things. Oh, there's a lot of blood in this book. That is one thing I will say and I'm a bit funny about blood. But anyway, is it on my personal short list?

[00:13:17]No. But like any of these, would I be mad about it being on the short list?

[00:13:20]No. Then we head to the others by Sheena Kalariel. And I have to say this is another one that I DNFED. It is set in 1989 in East Germany. And we follow three people in this sort of love triangle. We have Oh, I'm going to get the names wrong. Armando who is a factory worker from Mosamb beek, Lolita who is a medical student from India and Theo who wants to be a writer and is from East Germany. Now I mentioned with Oh no, hang on. What I enjoyed about this was I don't normally love books set in Germany. Studied both the Cold War and World War II so much at school that there's just this I don't know. It it it I always think when I pick up a book I'm going to be sort of either lectured at or I don't know. It's just a a thing that I I don't tend to head to. This gives a very different insight into Germany until we meet Theo and heading to the things I didn't like about this book. Theo was the problem for me. But if it's shortlisted, I will head back to it and finish it.

[00:14:32]>> I should have mentioned that we were halfway down. We're over halfway now.

[00:14:34]Next up is King Fishcher by Rosie Kelly, which is all about an unnamed narrator who is a gay man in a relationship.

[00:14:43]However, he becomes besotted and well, he I was going to say falls in love, but initially it's very much lust with an older colleague who is also a woman. And we look at how that relationship, well, we look at that relationship and also at his relationship with his partner Michael. They recently opened up their relationship. I feel like I've just said relationship a lot of times.

[00:15:09]And that is in essence the book.

[00:15:10]Although there's various things that happen along the way that I don't want to spoil, but I found it very emotional.

[00:15:17]What I loved about this was the way that this looks at sexuality and the way it looks at how we as human beings long for connection and all sorts of different kind of connections. Be it friendship, be it relationships, be it sex, also it looks at family. And boy oh boy is our narrator's mother Hetti the character.

[00:15:44]She is a homophobe and a half. And that's a really interesting thing to look at that I haven't seen that much.

[00:15:51]Well, not done with this sort of nuance before. What did I not love so much about it? This is a really silly small thing, but the penultimate chapter is in a different font. It's a bigger font, and I get why, but it did break me out of the book a little bit, and that was a bit of a shame, but it's like a minor issue because I really, really enjoyed this. And yes, this would be on my personal short list of which we've now got four. There's only two spaces. Will Lily King be added to that list with Heart the Lover. What's it about? First of all, it is about a unnamed narrator, well at first an unnamed narrator who in senior year at college, which I always get confused with university, ends up a pin, another love triangle that I'm being careful not to give away too much.

[00:16:40]In the second half of the book, we go many years in the future. And again, don't want to spoil anything, so won't say more than that. I would be interested to hear from you all if cuz I do think there's a writing shift between part one and part two and if part two is more like or writers and lovers is more like the writing in part two because I really really enjoyed part two. I didn't however enjoy part one so much and that might be partly because as someone who didn't go to university. I'm gonna say technically because my mom did take me with her when she went when she was 19 and I was three but didn't actually go as an adult. Sometimes I can find university or college narratives quite alienating or a bit dare I say syy.

[00:17:28]Sadly this is not going on my personal short list. We then have Audition by Katie Kitamura, which I actually read last year when it was up for the Booker and was I think the word that comes to mind is bamboozled by it. This is in the first part about a woman who is having a meal with a much younger man and you're trying to work out what their relationship is and it is kind of up for debate. The book then in the second half completely flips and becomes something quite different and I think quite weird and bonkers. I have still not forgotten that scene with the man crawling out from behind the sofa. It really really chilled me and creeped me out and I just think about it a lot. The fact that it bamboozled me actually in hindsight is something that I really liked about it and the fact that it's open to a lot of different interpretation and a lot of discussion. What I didn't love so much about it was also that it completely bamboozled me and I was desperately trying to work out what was going on.

[00:18:31]And I don't think you're always meant to. I think that's the point. Is it on my personal short list? This was so close. Partly because I really want to read it again cuz I think it does deserve a reread and also because it is a book that I have thought about so much since. But I'm trying to base it on my like feelings just after I read it like with the other books on the list and so no. But I would be delighted if it was.

[00:19:01]Is that a copout? Probably my channel my rules. Then we have the first of two climate crisis books on the long list. A guardian and a thief by Mega Majamar, which is about initially a woman and her father who are trying to leave India to head to America where her partner is as things are just so awful because of climate change and they have managed to get climate visas. However, not long after getting them, they are robbed and the documents are stolen and we follow their hunt to try and find them. But we also follow the story of the thief. Now, actually, both main characters are both guardians and thieves, which I think is really clever.

[00:19:46]What I loved about this book was the world building. I really could believe this not tooistant future. And I also thought the way Mega Majumdar builds both of those two characters along with this tense atmosphere was fantastic.

[00:20:02]What I didn't like so much about the book was it is relentlessly bleak and the ending and at first it really put me off the book. However, the more time I've spent with this sort of sitting in my brain and percolating, oh, there's a word, it has really really grown on me. So, yes, this would be on my personal short list, which means there's one spot left and there's three books. Next, which is the other climate crisis novel on the long list, and that is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConn. And this is set on a remote island of Australasia. I was really excited cuz I love me some Australian fiction. So I was thrilled to see an Australian author on the list. I just have to throw that in. There has been a research facility and there is a seed vault for the future if there is one. And we meet the family who are living on the island and caretaking the space. We discover quite early on there are some secrets going on in that family. but also a woman washes up on the shore who comes with secrets too and we go on this wild romp. It's a real adventure. It's got such a propulsion to it. Oh, he's forgotten this format again. What I loved about this was this book has a real propulsion to it. It is a page turner. I completely devoured it once I got properly into it. That's not the fault of the book. I was on trains with noisy people. And also, this book has kind of everything in it, which links into what I I guess would be the flaws or what I didn't like so much about it. Charlotte Mcconnay throws everything and the kitchen sink into this book. Not quite literally. I don't remember there actually being a scene with the kitchen sink, but you know what I mean. Whilst I thought that was gripping and thrilling, I think compared to some of the other novels on the list, I don't know. it. Again, it's comparing, contrasting, but yeah, for me, I really, really, really enjoyed this, but it's not on my personal short list. So, we're down to the final two. Which one will it be that ends up on my personal short list? Well, first up, we have Kit Duals, The Best of Everything, which is about Pette, who when we meet her is in a relationship with Denton. She's absolutely head over heels, besotted.

[00:22:25]And and this isn't a spoiler because I think it says this in the blurb, but Denton dies and Pette discovers that actually he had a complete other life.

[00:22:34]Not so long after that, she meets the man responsible for his death.

[00:22:42]And what more can I say about it than that? That's really I don't really want to say, but we follow on from there. And this book takes a turn at looking at found family.

[00:22:55]H yeah, I don't want to give too much more away than that. It's really hard to do really really short synopsis of books, especially when you don't want to give any spoilers and at the same time you want to absolutely chat about these books to bits and we can do in the comments down below. I should say I have not spoken to anyone about the women's prize for fiction long list. I've not looked at anyone else's content. I'm going to do that after filming this.

[00:23:14]I've not chatted about it with mom cuz she's going to be reading the short list. I want her to go in and know as little as possible about my thoughts on it. I thought he even talked to my bookish best friend cult about this and he's furious about it.

[00:23:21]>> What I loved about this book was Plet and her character. I also loved all the food writing. I was hungry a lot through this.

[00:23:28]>> I had to at one point go and get Caribbean dumplings because that was the effect that this book was having on me.

[00:23:32]>> I also loved the way that it looks at found family. What I didn't love so much about this book is also one of its strengths and that is that I became quite frustrated with Plet and at one point frustrated with the book. But that's the intention because you get to know Pette so well that when she makes certain decisions, some of which are cyclical, I became so I just wanted to get into the book and be like, Plet, what you playing at? Come on. And that shows the parable book, but it did really, really, really frustrate me at points. Would this be on my personal short list? Sadly not. And I feel really bad cuz I know Kit and I love her and I do think that she has created such a wonderful character in Plet that I was frustrated with her because she was so real to me.

[00:24:24]Which means, you guessed it, a beast links towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang would also make my personal short list. This is all about a woman who gets a phone call to say that her father has appeared at house she used to live in.

[00:24:39]And he has been missing for years, over a decade. And she takes him back to her apartment in New York where he says he has a prophecy for her. And things start to get really weird from then on.

[00:24:54]Although, as we discover, things have been quite weird for quite a long time.

[00:24:59]and we go back through generations and history. What I loved about this book was the folklore element, the creepy spookiness, the what the h sometimes, and also the fact that like with flashlight, I learned about a period of history in another part of the world that I didn't know much about at all. I mean, it's it was hard to read, but so powerful. What I didn't like, if I had to clutch its straws to say anything, with some of the historical elements and some of the characters, I got confused as who those characters were. But that's the point, cuz you have to work it out.

[00:25:44]And animals don't follow very well in this book at all. In fact, actually, cats don't do very well in quite a few of these books. Anyway, there we go. Those are my personal or that is my personal short list. Do I think they will be the same as the actual six shortlisted books? No. I am going to just do a little bit of jiggling around and let you know what I think is going to be on the list instead.

[00:26:20]>> I don't know why I've got this anyway. I just have it. I think I'm wrong.

[00:26:27]>> I think the short list might be that.

[00:26:31]So, I think I've just mixed them up in a dreadful order there. I don't think it's alphabetical order at all. But we've got Susan Choys Flashlight, Lily King's Heart the Lover, A Guardian and a Thief by Mega Majimda, Dominion by Addie E Kitchens, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, and Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lilith Assadi. That's what I think. Although I feel like I've missed Audition and auditions be should be in there somewhere, but we'll see. I could do so many different versions of that and that would just be even more cheating than I already have. But we will find out tomorrow. I will be doing a reaction video over on Patreon. I may well do a real possibly to try and be down with the kids and the algorithm. We'll see.

[00:27:15]Editing Simon here just to say that that is not me done with the women's prize for fiction 2026 as mom will be joining me here to do our short list ranking and winner predictions. and I will be doing that for the non-fiction short list on her channel in due course. I'll also be doing a vlog reading the women's prize for non-fiction short list too soon.

[00:27:39]Also, I'm sorry this is way longer than I meant it to be. But back to pass me. I would love to know in the comments down below what your personal six short listes would be and why and just any thoughts you have on the long list this year and we can keep chatting about it all there. But until next time, I hope you're doing super duper well. I hope you're reading something fabulous. And if you'd like more savage shenanigans in the intrim of whenever the next video may be, then my affformentioned Patreon, my Instagram, my blue sky, all those things are linked down below along with that comment box where we can have a chat. And if you want to like this video, lovely. And if you're new and you want to subscribe, please do. But yeah, I will see you all soon. Bye.