MAN Booker Prize Shortlist

The MAN Booker prize shortlist, probably the most eagerly anticipated media event of the book publishing world has been announced, and not without some surprises. Former winners Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and J.M Coetzee have failed to make the shortlist, though Booker favourite and former winner Kazuo Ishiguro has won through. The shortlist is as follows:

The Sea by John Banville
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
A Long Long Way by Sebastein Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Accidental by Ali Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I am certainly surprised that McEwan and Coetzee didn't progress, as I greatly enjoy both of those writers, but the Booker judges do have to strike a balance against rewarding old luminaries for continued outstanding work, and casting the spotlight on very talented but relatively unknown authors who might otherwise slip through the cracks. Still the omission of McEwan's Saturday comes as a bit of a shock considering the glowing review it received from John Sutherland, chairman of the judges. Having read it, I can attest that it is a very powerful novel, with McEwan's usual sharp precision with words and characterization, though perhaps a bit too fixed and structured for the judges taste.

The bookmakers have put Julian Barnes as the favourite to win for Arthur & George, and despite not having read any of the books on the shortlist, I probably agree with them. The Booker committee do have a slight tendency to reward author's for consistently good peformances by giving them the award, which need not necessarily be for their best work (such as McEwan finally winning for Amsterdam) and Barnes has been shortlisted twice before. Barnes recent work such as the collection The Lemon Table has marked a progression for him as he has become a much more subtle novelist, much more controlled than the usual verbal pyrotechnics an smart, intellectual writing he is known for. Arthur and George fits into that bill nicely and if it is awarded the Booker it would be recognition of Barnes' success in adapting and modifying his writing and the improvements that entailed.

I have always wanted to make it a goal to read all of the shortlisted books from a single year in order to compare my own feelings about which was the deserving winner with the actual outcome, and this looks like a good year in which to do it. I really enjoy Julian Barnes' writing and I have heard that "A Long Long Way" is a very fast paced exciting novel, whose storyline of an Irishman fighting for the English in World War I definitely appeals to me, and ties in with the large amount of war fiction that I have been reading recently. Ishiguro I am not immensely fond of, but he writes wonderfully elegant and very traditional prose which is never boring. The only one on the list I am rather hesitant about is Zadie Smith - I admit to not likeing either White Teeth or the Autograph Man, neither of which I have completed. So, the gauntlet is laid down. After all, what is reading 6 books compared to the 120 odd books that the Booker judges had to wade through in order to make it this far?