Thursday, July 28, 2011

Man Booker 2011: Alan Hollinghurst too literary for this Booker

The longlist for the Booker Prize 2011 has been announced, and most of the choices reflect the populist tastes of the judges.

Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst Photo: Ellie Foreman-Peck
When the judges were announced for this year’s Man Booker Prize, critics were quick to point out that four of the five — Stella Rimington, Chris Mullin, Susan Hill and Matthew D’Ancona – had written thrillers, and that only Gaby Wood, the head of books at The Telegraph, was a traditional highbrow choice.
So is this the year the Booker went populist? Would Ruth Rendell make the list — even Lee Child?
At first glance, these fears seem unfounded. Apart from Anne Enright and Philip Hensher, all the big-hitters are there. Alan Hollinghurst, who won the prize in 2004, returns with The Stranger’s Child, about a Rupert Brooke-style poet whose work resonates across the 20th century. Though the bookies have him as favourite, the subject is probably too literary for him to win again.
Also present is Sebastian Barry, who was unlucky to miss out in 2008 for The Secret Scripture, and whose new novel On Canaan’s Side looks at Irish history through the eyes of an ageing woman.
I have a sneaking feeling this might be the year of Julian Barnes — nominated three times but never victorious. His short novel The Sense of an Ending, follows a group of old school friends after one, Adrian Finn, commits suicide. The narrator, Tony Webster, is left his diary in his will and goes back to explore his relationship with his friend and the woman they loved.
Much of the rest of the list leaves one scratching one’s head. Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, a debut based on the story of Damilola Taylor, the murdered Peckham schoolboy, is cleverly done but really a novel for teenagers.
There are thriller-ish aspects to A D Miller’s Snowdrops, a debut set in an amoral Moscow; Patrick McGuiness’s The Last Hundred Days, about the final days of Ceaucescu, and Jane Rogers’s The Testament of Jessie Lamb, a dystopian novel in which pregnant women are dying mysteriously. The presence of D J Taylor’s Derby Day is baffling. One can only think one of the judges is a horse racing nut.
So while the judges’ more populist tastes can certainly be seen in their list, they have also given themselves enough wiggle room to carve out a respectable shortlist, which is to be announced on Sept 6.

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