Click on the link for my review of each of the finalists:

While I’d love to see Station Eleven win, I can’t see it happening.  For me it’s a toss-up between All The Light We Cannot See and Lila.  The Doerr screams award winner with its lyrical writing, it unconventional love story and its wartime setting.  I had major issues with the book but I can’t pretend that it’s not the sort of sweeping, epic, tear jerking novel that usually ends up with a movie deal and a trophy.  I’d be surprised if it didn’t take out the award.

Lila, though, is a good contender.  I might not have heard of Marilynne Robinson, but critics and judges in the US most certainly have.  She’s previously won a Pulitzer and Orange Prize and was a National Book Award finalist for Home.  Given her form, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her add the National Book Award to her trophy cabinet.

That said, if I have to choose I think the winner will be All The Light We Cannot See.  Of course I’d like to see one of the other three novels – Station Eleven, An Unnecessary Woman and  Redeployment – trump the Doerr, but I can’t see it happening.

While I have my reservations about All The Light We Cannot See and Lila, I’d still rate this as a strong shortlist.  There isn’t a single theme that links all the novel (which for the sake of variety is possibly a good thing) but structurally they have similarities.  The four novels take a non-linear approach to story-telling with heavy use of flashbacks.  What used to be an innovation, telling stories out-of-order and a blurry delineation between the past and present, is now just another tool in the writer’s kit.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do wonder whether this a new trend or something that’s been trending for some time.  Others more versed with the literary scene will have a better idea.

What I can say with some confidence is how rarely a non-linear structure is used by genre writers.  This years Hugo winner, Ancillary Justice, borrowed the non-linear approach for its first half, but didn’t sustain the effect.  That, however, is the only example I can think of based on the forty or so genre books I’ve read this year.  Which does play into the idea that genre writing, in the main, is conservative in its content and stylistic approach.  It’s something I’ll keep a note of as I read through next years batch of award listed books.