Alligator (Winner Of Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book)

Description: Lisa Moore's Alligator moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in a city whose spiritual location is somewhere in the heart of Flannery O'Connor country. Madeleine, the driven, ageing filmmaker whose mission is to complete a Bergmanesque magnum opus before she dies Frank, a young man of innocence and determination whose life is a strange anthology of unpredictable dangers Valentin, the sociopathic Russian refugee whose predatory tendencies threaten everyone he encounters Colleen, at seventeen, a hard-edged female Holden Caulfield, drawn inexorably to the places where alligators thrive.

Review: [She] is from Newfoundland - a rare and fortunate inheritance for any novelist. But she can also flat-out write, and would be a major find even if she came from Kansas Richard Ford, author of Independence Day Compelling and rewarding ... surprisingly emotional, rich with human feeling and insight. Moore has a keen ear for both dialogue and a well-turned phrase, and the writing is suffused with a reckless joy Robert J. Wiersema, Quill & Quire 'An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells Richard Ford, author of Independence Day



Prizes: Winner of Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book - Caribbean and Canada 2006. Long-listed for Orange Prize 2007.

Author Biography: Lisa Moore's book of short stories, Open, was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (in 2002) and became a bestseller in Canada. She writes a biweekly column in the Canadian Globe and Mail and lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with her husband and two children.