And the 2009 Winner is..........

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.

Are you surprised? I'm not.

It wasn't my favourite, but I am not surprised that it won...unlike last year, when the triumph of King Leary was quite a shock.

Edited to add this question: Are you going to read The Book of Negroes now because it won? Or, have you already read it?

Although The Book of Negroes was the only book I wasn't able to read before the show started, I still expected it to win based on the comments and ratings from people on this site that read it. I'm going to read it now - it just came in to the library yesterday - as it was the one that appealed to me the most when I first looked at this year's list of five books.
I was so relieved that Fruit didn't win. It was well written but not a story I enjoyed reading. I always find it surprising that books about boys coming of age are thought to be important enough for everyone to read, but books about girls coming of age are considered "chick lit".
No matter what you think of the books, it seems they seem to get eliminated in a really perverse order. I'm like you - after King Leary won last year, I was prepared for the worst this year and was relieved when we didn't have to relive that experience.
My favourite was Mercy Among the Children. Depressing though it was, it was still a good story well told and I felt badly that it went first. I also enjoyed The Outlander right up to the second last sentence but still don't understand the ending.

I didn't really get The Outlander ending either. After all the time Mary spent trying to free herself from her past, she seems so willing to surrender herself to someone else's lifestyle. But, it was one of my favourite books nonetheless.

I also loved The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant. I know I'm in the minority here, but I grew up in Montreal in the 1960s, and that book reminded me of home, and of the sense of being part of an extended family that included all the neighbours -- biologically related or not.

I have only read Book of Negroes. I enjoyed it. I started the Fat Woman, but it didn't grab me right away, and I had lots of other stuff to read, so put it aside. I'll give it another try sometime. I will definitely add all the others to my TBR pile. The program did its job with me, it introduced me to good Canadian books I might not have stumbled across otherwise (aside from Mercy, that won the Giller).

I just finished The Book of Negroes and loved it. It was a worthy winner.

I finished Fruit the other day, and all I could think about while reading it was, "I'm glad this did not win". It was ok, not nearly as good as The Book of Negroes. I have The Outlander on hold at the library, as it really interested me, and the defender of it did a great job. I could not imagine my mother reading Fruit, let alone everyone in Canada. Not a bad book, it just doesn't have the wide appeal of some of the others.