A Booker shortlist that’s less Who’s Who and more Who’s That?
Jake Kerridge assesses the six remaining runners and riders for the biggest prize in literary fiction
The most controversial aspect of this year’s Man Booker shortlist may be the fact that the most controversial titles on the longlist have failed to progress to the second round. The real point of the world’s pre-eminent literary prize, after all, is not so much to anoint the best novel of the year as to get people talking – and arguing – about literary fiction.
From the objections some made to the inclusion of Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, the first graphic novel to get the Booker nod, you’d think it was the Beano Annual that had been longlisted. But those who feel the prize should confine itself to celebrating the written word can breathe easy: Sabrina, a crime story that’s also a pungent analysis of the fake-news phenomenon, is not on the shortlist. Neither is Belinda Bauer’s Snap,a superb thriller regarded by many grumblers as too generic to be longlisted.
My own gripe is that my favourite, Sally Rooney’s Normal People, is not shortlisted. This unconventional love story by the woman regarded as the first great millennial novelist was, until now, the bookies’ 3-1 favourite. The second (5-1) favourite, Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, has also reached the end of its Booker journey.
Ondaatje was the only previous winner on the longlist – for The English Patient in 1992. His exclusion from the shortlist shows an admirable tendency on the part of the judges not to be overawed by reputations, as he was the only longlisted writer to be anywhere near the status of a household name in the UK.
So to many readers, the six shortlisted authors are less a Who’s Who of modern literature than a Who’s That? This year’s prize will be an exercise in star-making, and attention can now be more easily focused on the quality of the books themselves.
The judges have complained that many of the books this year were insufficiently edited and too long. The shortlist comprises fairly standardlength novels: no 900-page Behemoths like Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1, but no mimsy novellas either.
American authors, who have tended to dominate the prize since they first became eligible in 2014, have a healthy showing again, with Rachel Kushner (The Mars Room) and Richard Powers (The Overstory) shortlisted. Also
nodded through are Anna Burns’s Milkman, set during the Troubles; the unsettling melodrama Everything Under by Daisy Johnson; and The Long Take, a novel in verse by the veteran Scottish poet Robin Robertson.
My money’s on Kushner, but my heart now favours Washington Black, by the Canadian Esi Edugyan. We will see which triumphs on Oct 16.