The weaker sex?

I note that Zadie Smith has won the Orange Prize for best novel.

Now I have no knowledge of whether this a good book or not but I'm always intrigued by the Orange Prize in that it is only open to women. Equally St Hilda's college Oxford is having a ballot today on whether it should admit men.

Now this puzzles me. Why is it that it is perfectly acceptable to have a literary prize restricted only to Women? Why is it that a college can restrict access to women only? and for that matter we have the Women's Institute.

Frankly none of this would bother me except that if any club restricts itself to men only e.g. a Golf Club it is a national new story. These are organisations are anachronistic and are frightened of women blah de blah.

Now I accept there maybe a need for positive discrimination in some areas e.g. Parliament where women are under represented but in books?

I don't see much discrimination in the world of books, for instance many women have won the booker prize. Even in genre fiction women are very well represented. In Crime there is Ruth Rendell, PD James, Val McDermid, Minette Walters all of whoim have one major awards.

Even in that male dominated world Science Fiction the person to have won more awards is a women, Connie Willis.

I would bet there would be outrage if there were male only college's. Now it would not necessarily be a bad thing since male and female are different and there are suggestions that boys would do better in all male environments. This of course shows "fear" of women but the other way does not show fear of men. I'm confused.

I daresay I am being an oldfashioned fuddy duddy but methinks some women want their cake and eat it.

Anyway I will finish with a book review. Curiously by a women and darned fine it is to.

Karin Alvtegen - Betrayal

Synopsis
"By the prize-winning author of Missing Eva, a dynamic, successful young mother, is forced to reassess her marriage when her husband's apathy can no longer be ignored. Then she discovers he's been having an affair with her young son's day-care teacher and her grief and rage drive her into vengeful action. Fatefully, she comes across Jonas, an isolated young man who for the past two years has been keeping vigil beside his obstinately comatose girlfriend. Burdened with his own sinister history of betrayal and his quest for acceptance, he sees a chance to start afresh with Eva. When Jonas and Eva react to redress their wrongs, the combination proves lethal..."

The success of Henning Mankell's Wallander crime novels has prompted publishers to scour the Nordic (karwin would moan if I said Scandanvian) countries. Indeed so successful are the nordic writers that the CWA have stopped translated works winning the gold dagger for best crime novel and German writers are resorting to making their names sound Nordic!! So from Iceland we have Arnaldur Indridason, from Norway the excellent Karin Fossum and from Finland Jo Nesbo. Sweden has produced Mankell, Lisa Marklund, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, Ake Edwardsson and perhaps the best of the lot Karin Alvtegen.

This is the second novel to be published in the UK and the second I've read. The first, Missing, wasn't reviewed on here but would have achieved a ***** rating. It was a sensitive and even positive portrayal of a homeless person. Betrayal is perhaps even better. It tells the story of a woman who discovers her husband is having an affair and becomes obsessed with gaining revenge and of a young man obsessed with his comatose girlfriend. These two meet and the twin obsessions collide.....

There are many things to enjoy here. Firstly the book is only 297 pages long and I suspect other novelists would have found time to add another 150 pages to bloat it out a bit. There are lots of twists and turns as things go wrong and go off in unplanned directions.

The book and author are highly recommended - *****