Which books are you taking on holiday? Let us solve your packing dilemmas with our summer books competition: Waterstone’s will provide five lucky readers with five books of their choice from the 77 titles (including audiobooks) recommended by our writers in this issue, subject to availability. To enter, simply read the summer books pages and answer the questions below.
1 Connect Caleb’s Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks, with another fatal crossing in 1969.
2 In the acknowledgements to The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal thanks a novelist who, in turn, thanks him in a novel shortlisted for the Man Booker. Name that book and its author.
3 Before Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Finkler Question, only one Jewish man had been shortlisted for the award. Who was he and what was the novel called?
4 Name the character that the actor Rob Lowe, author of Stories I Only Tell My Friends, played in the soap opera Brothers and Sisters.
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5 Who connects the books I Remember Nothing and Obama’s Wars?
6 An earlier version of the story that Ben Macintyre relates in Operation Mincemeat was made into a film in 1956. What was it called?
7 The Pale King by David Foster Wallace was reconstructed from his notes after his death. Name the book by a British novelist published this year that was produced in a similar way.
8 Started Early, Took My Dog is the fourth of Kate Atkinson’s novels to feature the detective Jackson Brodie. What was the first, and in which city was it set?
9 Philip Roth has just been awarded the Man Booker International Prize. Which other two authors mentioned in our summer books listings were also in contention for the prize this year?
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10 Which fellow crime writer did Val McDermid, the author of Trick of the Dark, fall out with over his disparaging remarks about women writing more graphic scenes of violence than men?
E-mail your answers, with your name, address, phone number and your choice of five books, to bookscomp@thetimes.co.uk with “summer books” in the subject line, or send a postcard to Summer Books Competition, The Times, 3 Thomas More Square, London E98 1TT. Entries must be received by 10am on Monday, July 11. One entry per person. Open only to UK and Republic of Ireland residents.
For full terms and conditions visit thetimes.co.uk/competitions
Answers
1. It is set on Martha’s vineyard where Ted Kennedy was involved in a fatal car crash crossing a bridge; the Chappaquiddick incident.
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2. The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
3. Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
Also accepted: Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room, David Malouf, Remembering Babylon, Mordecai Richler, St Urbain’s Horseman and Solomon Gursky Was Here
4. Senator Robert McCallister
5. Carl Bernstein was married to Nora Ephron, author of the first and professional partner of Bob Woodward, who wrote the second.
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6. The Man Who Never Was
7. The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
Also accepted: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd, Titus Awakes by Mervyn Peake, Maeve Gilmore and Brian Sibley
8. Case Histories, Cambridge
9. Philip Pullman, John Le Carré
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10. Ian Rankin
Winners
Rohan de Silva (Solihull), Arleen McCombie (Peterhead), Roger Gilburt (North Shields), Judith Timmis (Gloucester) and Gillian Schwab (Hampton Wick).
Congratulations! Waterstone’s will be in touch over the next two weeks to organise your prize.