It's that time of year again.
As I'm sure you already know, the Man Booker Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday evening. Book bloggers across the land are gearing themselves up to embark on their annual Bookerthons, while the broadsheet newspapers are responding in exactly the same way they do every year (i.e. with a series of mostly banal articles that engage with the books themselves not at all). The Bookies have already set the odds, as predictable as ever (McEwan is currently 3-1). Equally as predictable is my own response: a mixture of enthusiasm and dread. I try not to get excited about book prizes, I really do, because I'm so often disappointed. But, if I'm honest, I'm helpless to resist.
I think it's because I love lists, and lists of books especially. Show me a list of books and before you know it, I'm hard at work placing 'holds' at the local library, or flexing my credit card at The Book Depository. A list demands you tick things off it; a list demands you 'work through' it. Also, I like the idea that prizes can be participatory and engaging; I want to believe that the Booker (like the Orange) is about the constituency of readers of contemporary fiction and their opinions as well as the judges' final decision. We have no say in the outcome (how different would things be if we did?) but we have the opportunity to open up a dialogue with the process.
In the event, I think this year's list is quite exciting - lots of new blood, a wide range of settings and subjects, and deliciously chunky:
Darkmans by Nicola Barker (4th Estate)Don't you love that cover? And the title too? I read a review of it in the Guardian not too long ago and my interest was piqued; not enough to spend £17 on it, but enough to place a reserve at the library. Hopefully it'll be in soon, although as I undertand it, tis' quite the beast of a novel - 838 pages, drugs, Ashford and John Scogin, jester in the court of Edward IV. I especially like the idea of the interplay between the medieval and the contemporary - of course - and Nicola Barker sounds like a fascinating novelist:
'Through six novels and two short-story collections, she has made a virtue of dangerous play. She is a serious writer, certainly, maybe even a "serious" one, but it is difficult to think of another contemporary novelist who will so relentlessly pursue the truth and then punctuate it with a honking red nose, who will expose real pain and human complexity while at the same time squirting water in your eye. Each of her works brims with electricity, energy and invention, with rude humour, originality and contrariness. She is not to everyone's taste, but isn't that good reason to cherish her all the more?'
I have mixed feelings about this one, described as an 'Anglo-Russian' novel. I have a review copy, very kindly sent to me by Picador, and the synopsis is interesting... but I haven't felt inspired to pick it up. Perhaps it's because I only have one of those bright yellow proofs? I know others in the blogosphere have read it and some have enjoyed it, other haven't been overly impressed. I'm probably going to pick it up later this week.
The Gift Of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon) I've read about this one over at Dovegreyreader, and am heartened by the fact that Tan Twan Eng lists Ishiguro, Rushdie and Vikram Seth amongst his favourite authors in the interview Lynne did there. The setting sounds promising as well - Penang during WWII, from a Malaysian point of view, with a half-English, half-Chinese protagonist. Another one on the library hold list.
So, this is one of several longlisted books that I've never heard of. I had to hie my way to the Random House website for a synopsis:
'The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn’t the drink that killed him – although that certainly helped – it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother’s house, in the winter of 1968. His sister Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while.
The Gathering is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright’s unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations – starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman – showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars.'
I see that A.L. Kennedy liked it a lot.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton) Ah, the obligatory post-9/11 novel: a young Pakistani, educated at Princeton and living in New York, experiences a crisis of identity following the attacks on the World Trade Centre and returns home to Lahore to grow a beard. It has just arrived in the library for me and I'm preparing myself to give it a chance this weekend. No promises though.
A book I've read about here and heard excellent things about elsewhere, indeed, everywhere. Apparently leisurely and richly texture, it's another book with a WWII setting, although this time in remote Wales. Little birds tell me this has a good chance of short-listdom and I'm eager to get my hands on a copy - the library wait list is rather long though, and I don't suppose I'll get it for at least a month or more. *sigh* *hint, hint*
Danielle is reading this at the moment and enjoying it a lot, but I'll admit this is another entrant I've never heard off. A synopsis, I hear you cry!
'Numbers have filled Rumi Vasi's world since she first learned to count. But it was on a trip to India at the age of 8 that her mathematical powers acquired their almost supernatural significance. When she returned home to Cardiff her destiny was sealed: she was now, and would forever be, the town's 'maths prodigy'.
At 14 Rumi is firmly set on the path of a gifted child, speeding headlong towards Oxford University. As her father sees it, discipline is everything if the family has any hope of making its mark on its adoptive country. However, as Rumi gets older and the family's stark isolation intensifies, numbers start to lose their magic for the young teenager: she abandons the rigid timetable of her afternoons to seek out friendship and replaces equations with rampant spice abuse. As her longing for love and her parents' will to succeed deepen so too does the rift between generations.'
Which sounds pleasantly parochial. Still, I'm not a huge fan of coming of age stories with their baggage of 'teenage dislocation' and 'the loneliness of childhood'. We shall see - the library has a copy awaiting me.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)Another pretty, pretty cover and you know how I'm wooed by that. It's been reviewed very favourably in the blogosphere, by Dovegrey, John Self and Cornflower, and York Library is hopefully going to deliver it to me. There are a few people ahead of me, but patience is a virtue.
Aha! A book I've not only heard of, but also read. See here.
Strike two. See here.
Consolation by Michael Redhill (William Heinemann) Oh look, another book I've never heard of, and another play on the interpenetration of past and present. I like that kind of thing. (Can you tell I'm tiring...) So maybe I'll like this...tis at the library waiting for me.
This has a delicious first line: "I used to be human once." But I hear it has a narrator called Animal, who speaks in a Yoda-like patois...which perhaps isn't my cup of tea. Still, its set in semi-alternate India and I'm willing to give anything a try. Unfortunately, York library only has a copy of her first novel and not of this second. It may be that I'll buy it if it appears on the shortlist but miss out otherwise.
The obligatory longlister that isn't yet available - it is published on 16th August.
'Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1925–40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth.
Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany’s most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot.'
I like A.N. Wilson's popular history, with its anecdotal energy and enthusiasm, but I've never read any of his fiction. Perhaps a marriage of the two will be excellent? Apparently the Daily Mail likes it, which is not much of a recommendation, but otherwise I'm on virgin territory. Anyone want to send me an ARC?
Shall I attempt to predict a shortlist at the early point? I'd say, from what I've read and what I've heard: McEwan, O'Flynn, Barker, Lloyd Jones, Peter Ho Davies and...erm...the Wilson.
Any thoughts?
~~Victoria~~