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Novel approach yields refreshing Booker longlist

A couple of weeks ago - and I apologize if this sounds irritatingly rarefied - I was having lunch with a friend, a former Booker Prize judge. We were discussing the formidable problem facing this year's jury (Howard Davies, Wendy Cope, Giles Foden, Ruth Scurr and Imogen Stubbs) in their search for the finest novel of this year. Hasn't it, we asked, been a disappointing year for fiction? And how would they find enough books to muster a longlist of any gravitas?

Well, never underestimate bookish types. The longlist, announced last Wednesday, is an impressively robust answer to a dilemma that I find it hard to believe didn't perplex them as much as it did us. Chucking out the big names - forthcoming and much-trumpeted novels from Michael Ondaatje, JM Coetzee and Jonathan Coe, among others - and replacing them with several writers unknown to even the most devoted disciples of contemporary fiction has yielded one of the most unpredictable and exciting contests for some years. For readers keen to sample new voices unmediated by an excess of hype and criticism, this is the place to look.

It's a moot point whether booksellers feel the same way. In previous years, the longlist has been a flabby beast whose arrival has failed to translate into an appreciable uplift in sales. This year, for the first time, it was scaled down to a more manageable "Booker Dozen" - in reality, 13 novels. The idea, I would guess, was to deliver a nice, tidy package of books for bookshops to plonk on to their front-of-store tables in the quiet summer months. They can still do that, but with perhaps less gusto than if the list had been peppered with household names: the book trade fights notoriously - some might say shamefully - shy of the unknown, unless it is pretty, young and wearing a skirt.

The skirtless Ian McEwan is hardly unknown; in fact, he ranks among the most recognizable of today's writers, hence his immediate elevation to the status of favorite. Nine years ago, he won the prize with Amsterdam, a tiny slip of a book. The victory was thought by some to be a consolation prize for the fact that neither Black Dogs nor Enduring Love had won. This year, On Chesil Beach, another tiny book, is in contention. Will it triumph because neither Atonement nor Saturday prevailed? Its many fans would rail against that simplistic summary, but it is not without basis. My view is that McEwan, a vastly accomplished novelist who can count diligence and clear-sightedness among his attributes, has nevertheless experienced a quite breathtaking over-inflation of his reputation. It is not his fault - it is ours.

Other better-knowns include AN Wilson, Peter Ho Davies, Anne Enright and Nicola Barker, my favorite. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend her novel, Darkmans, but I would suggest that you book a month off work and read it with some herbal sedatives by your side. It is brilliant but exhausting, and it is also more than 800 pages long.

Of the others, it is difficult to read the runes. One can discern a strong interest in the past (Ho Davies and Wilson have both reimagined the life stories of Nazis, while Tan Twan Eng takes us to Penang in 1939) and in culture clashes (not least Mohsin Hamid's story of a Pakistani man caught in America after 9/11 or Edward Docx's family tale, set in both London and St Petersburg). But to attempt to excavate patterns is to mistake the judges' purpose, which has surely been to confound expectations. Good for them.

BOOKER'S DOZEN
THE CONTENDERS

THE FAVORITE

Ian McEwan

On Chesil Beach

Set on the wedding night of a young couple in the summer of 1962, McEwan's 11th novel lingers over emotional and physical detail with a tragic sense of the inevitable, examining the consequences of the couple's painful inability to communicate their fears and desires.

The REST

Nicola Barker

Darkmans

838-page epic of linguistic ingenuity and disturbing humor set in Ashford, Kent; features a father, a son and King Edward IV's court jester.

Edward Docx

Self Help

Docx's second novel careers between London, Paris, New York and St Petersburg, unraveling the history of a family with a secretive past.

Tan Twan Eng

The Gift of Rain

Debut novel set on Penang in 1939, contrasting ideas of free will and predestination in English, Chinese and Japanese cultures.

Anne Enright

The Gathering

Enright's fourth novel tells the story of Veronica Hegarty as she deals with her dysfunctional Irish family and the ghost of her dead brother.

Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Political-personal tale tracing the changing attitudes of a Pakistan-born New Yorker towards his American life.

Peter Ho Davis

The Welsh Girl

Debut novel set in a Welsh village during the World War II, exploring issues of belonging, alienation and identity.

Lloyd Jones

Master Pip

2007 Commonwealth Prize-winning fable about escapism, subversion and civil war, set on a tropical island in the South Pacific.

Nikita Lalwani

Gifted

Sensitive rites-of-passage debut following 10-year-old Cardiff maths prodigy Rumi as she struggles with her talent and her parents.

Catherine O'Flynn

What Was Lost

Orange Prize nominee's compelling urban ghost story tracing the disappearance of a little girl lost in a shopping center.

Michael Redhill

Consolation

A tale of memory and loss that shifts between present-day Toronto and the city in Victorian times.

Indra Sinha

Animal's People

Dark, unsentimental work inspired by the stories of survivors of the Bhopal disaster, narrated by the

19-year-old Animal.

AN Wilson

Winnie & Wolf

Fictional history of Wagner's Welsh daughter-in-law, Winifred Williams, who falls for the charms of Adolf Hitler.

Source: The Guardian
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