My next three reviews will be of the winners of the Tiptree, Clarke and BSFA Best Novel Awards published in 2000 and winning in 2001, starting with Tiptree winner The Kappa Child.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

The temperature inside our station wagon was unbearable. We might have cooled our bodies by turning on the heater full blast. Past the point of bickering, my sisters and I stuck helplessly to the vinyl, too hot to bother avoiding the gluey smear of skin on skin.

A complex novel of a Japanese-Canadian girl whose family moves from British Columbia to the harsher landscape of Alberta, trying and failing to farm rice there. The Kappa is a Japanese water creature; the protagonist becomes mysteriously pregnant; she and her sisters are oppressed by their father and by the heat. The plot threads overlap and I found it a little hard to keep track, but I did enjoy the vivid writing. You can get it here (for a price).

The Kappa Child won the James Tiptree Jr award in 2001. As far as I know, Goto was the first writer of colour to win it (I count half a dozen since). The other shortlisted works were all novels, unlike in some years: Dark Light, by Ken MacLeod; The Fresco, by Sheri S. Tepper; Half Known Lives, by Joan Givner and The Song of the Earth, by Hugh Nissenson. I am sure I have read the MacLeod and I have probably read the Tepper, but have not heard of the other two writers let alone their books. For what it's worth, The Kappa Child seems a more obvious Tiptree choice than MacLeod or Tepper. My next two reviews will be of the Clarke and BSFA winners that year, Bold As Love and Chasm City.