When Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow received a phone call last week informing her she had been longlisted for the Booker prize for her debut novel, it was such a shock she didn’t know what to do.
She and her husband, Steven, had planned a trip to the garden centre and, uncertain how to celebrate such extraordinary news, decided to go anyway. They bought a palm, which Steven christened “the Booker”, and planted it in the garden at their home near Margate, Kent.
Lloyd-Barlow, 49, was nominated last week alongside 12 other writers for the most prestigious literary prize in the UK and Ireland for her first book, All the Little Bird-Hearts, which was published in March. She is one of four debut novelists on the list.
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