I love awards: the Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and on and on. Every year I especially look forward to the Women’s Prize longlist. And this year it is unusual, because the judges are going in a pop direction. They are honoring pop fiction and borderline-genre fiction as well as literary novels.  

Most of the books are available in the U.S., which means we can actually can find copies this year.  I am a bit gobsmacked by the pop elements, though. Two have been American TV book club selections: an SF novel, The Ministry of Time (a Good Morning America selection), and The Dream Hotel (the current Read with Jenna selection), a literary dystopian novel. TV book clubs are influential, and  the selections are usually excellent. I try to to read a few each year to keep up with pop culture. I don’t mean to be snobbish: I embrace pop. I admired The Dream Hotel and look forward to The Ministry of Time. N.B. Read with Jenna is the more literary of the two book clubs.

I never read the entire Women’s Prize longlist, as some bold readers do, but I am on my fourth longlisted book.  That’s because they are such fast reads.  I am halfway through Nussaibah Younis’s Fundamentally, a novel about a serious issue, the heroine’s attempts to deradicalize ISIS brides in a camp in Iraq.  However, the narrator Nadia’s ironic voice, wry humor, and wit are a welcome relief from the tension.   And in some ways, as unlikely as it sounds, Nadia reminds me of Sara Paretsky’s private detective, V. I. Warshawski.

I know, they should have nothing in common, but just look at their degrees and job history.  Nadia has a Ph.D. in criminology, and struggles to find supporters of the deradicalization program at the camp in Iraq.  She meets resistance among her colleagues and employees, who also are busy with their own programs. And so she does online research, i.e., detective work, in order to discover her colleagues’ interests and befriend them. She can do nothing without their contacts.

Now on to V. I. Warshawski. She is a policeman’s daughter who gave up practicing law to be a private detective.  And because the first Warshawski mystery was published in 1982, she is now well-established in her job, though she still meets resistance, even among the police. And she stands up against corporations – very dangerous – as well as busting murderers and white collar criminals. At this point, she has a boyfriend, two dogs, and a paternal landlord.  And I love her sense of humor.

Here’s what these two women have in common:  both are brilliant and very intense, and delve into forbidden, dangerous territory, which even humor and friendship cannot always balance. And their lines of work are not entirely dissimilar. I recommend both writers.

Younis’s style is much simpler than the award-winning mystery writer, Sara Paretsky’s. Younis writes short sentences and funny dialogue, but so far it doesn’t have real depth.

I am on a short break from Fundamentally.   It’s a likable book, but I must get back to the classics or I’ll go insane.

Let me know if you have read other books on the list.