Just a few weeks ago, Montreal author Alix Ohlin had never been a finalist for any major literary prize.
Now, her novel Inside is up for two of them: the $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, which revealed its finalists last month, and the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, which announced its short list on Monday.
"I'm totally thrilled, of course. I don't even know what to say. I'm just very happy," a stunned Ohlin, 40, said in a telephone interview shortly after Monday's Giller short list came out.
Inside (House of Anansi Press), Ohlin's second novel that also made Oprah's Book Club Summer Reading Pick list, features three main characters as it explores the theme of helping a person in crisis.
Its Giller competition includes Montreal-based Kim Thuy's debut novel, Ru (Random House Canada), an immi-grant tale translated by Sheila Fischman from the original French version that won a 2010 Governor General's Literary Award.
Halifax-raised, St. John'sbased Russell Wangersky, who made the Giller long list in 2006, is a finalist this year for his short story collection Whirl Away (Thomas Allen Publishers).
The 19th annual Giller short list is rounded out by the globetrotting thriller 419 (Viking Canada), by Calgary-based nov-elist and travel writer Will Ferguson, and the post-war immigrant story The Imposter Bride (HarperCollins Canada), by Montreal's Nancy Richler.
Jury members Roddy Doyle of Ireland, Gary Shteyngart of New York and Toronto-based Anna Porter read 142 works of fiction submitted by 51 publishing houses from across Canada. They deliberated via email and telephone, but never in person, to draft a long list of 13 titles in early September and then the five finalists.
