National Book Critics Circle Awards go to 'Billy Lynn,' 'Far From the Tree'
The National Book Critics Circle honored works such as 'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon and 'The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson' by Robert Caro during their 2012 awards ceremony.
The National Book Critics Circle honored works such as 'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon and 'The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson' by Robert Caro during their 2012 awards ceremony.
The National Book Critics Circle awarded its top prizes for 2012 to already well-received works such as 鈥淏illy Lynn鈥檚 Long Halftime Walk鈥� by Ben Fountain and 鈥淭he Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson鈥� by Robert Caro.
Fountain鈥檚 novel won the fiction award for the NBCC, while Caro鈥檚 work picked up the biography prize and Andrew Solomon鈥檚 book 鈥淔ar From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.鈥�
The NBCC's 2012 poetry award went to D.A. Powell鈥檚 work 鈥淯seless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.鈥� The criticism award went to author Marina Warner for her book 鈥淪tranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights.鈥� 鈥淪wimming Studies鈥� by Leanne Shapton won the autobiography prize.
Monitor fiction critic Yvonne Zipp called 鈥淏illy Lynn鈥� an 鈥渁bsurdist portrait of the war and modern society painted with brush strokes laid as precisely and as viciously as a whip.鈥�
鈥淗aving been away for months, Lynn returns to his own homeland as a stranger, and the dissonance is both uncomfortable and revealing,鈥� Zipp notes.
鈥淭he Passage of Power,鈥� meanwhile, demonstrates that 鈥淐aro long ago mastered his subject 鈥� Johnson and power,鈥� according to Monitor reviewer Erik Spanberg.
鈥淲ith characteristic detail and precision, Caro frames the assassination from Johnson鈥檚 vantage point, providing a horrifying, pulse-pounding account of what it was like for a humbled man 鈥� even one as ambitious and power-hungry as LBJ 鈥� to shoulder the grief and burden of an entire nation,鈥� Spanberg wrote.
William Deresiewicz, critic, blogger, and author of "A Jane Austen Education," was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, while the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award went to Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert.
The prizes were given out in the Tishman Auditorium at New York鈥檚 New School.
The nonfiction prize for last year went to Maya Jasanoff鈥檚 work 鈥淟iberty鈥檚 Exiles,鈥� while the fiction award was given to Edith Pearlman鈥檚 short story collection 鈥淏inocular Vision.鈥�