Annabel deserves fiction prize

By JODI DELONG | Governor General's Award
Sun, Nov 14 - 4:53 AM

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Books/1211841.html

Reading fiction is perhaps the most subjective of literary tastes; what sends me into raptures of delight leaves you cold, and vice versa. Interestingly, the five finalists for the Governor General's Award for fiction manage to elicit the spectrum of responses in me.

Kathleen Winter's Annabel (House of Anansi, $32.95) is one of those novels that settles into my heart and my bookcase as a permanent, must-read-regularly work of exquisite beauty. Set on the ruggedly magnificent and desolate coast of southeastern Labrador, Annabel tells the story of an intersex child (or as the term was during the time of the novel's setting, hermaphrodite) born to Jacinta and Treadwell Blake. The child is raised as the Blakes' son Wayne, although Wayne's biological complications challenge the family to its very core.