The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

A review by Rayyan Al-Shawaf

"Johanna who?"

Many Canadians scratched their heads on receiving word that The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud, had won their country's prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2010. It wasn't only because Canadians found her name difficult to pronounce -- prior to The Sentimentalists, Skibsrud's debut novel, she was a virtual unknown, with a single collection of poetry to her name.

Yet there it was. The tiny Nova Scotia press that had put out Skibsrud's book of poetry had so few copies of the novel in circulation -- 800, to be exact -- that most people could not get their hands on it. That issue was quickly resolved -- the book has since become a bestseller in Canada -- and now The Sentimentalists is being published in the US courtesy of W.W. Norton.

Emotionally satisfying as it may be to see an underdog win a major literary award, much of the hoopla surrounding this book seems unwarranted. It's not that The Sentimentalists is a subpar novel -- one could do a lot worse. ...

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