The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2006 was announced Thursday afternoon (pasted from the site ):
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
St Aubyn, Edward Mother�s Milk (Picador)
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)
When the longlist was announced, David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green was the bookies’ favourite to win the prize outright, so its failure to make it to this stage is a surprise. (Several months ago, I promised the Three Monkeys Online site a review of the novel–if you’re reading, Andrew, I know you lost hope a long time ago but I will hand in that review…promise).
On the back of several rapturous reviews , I bought a copy Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, also a longlist casualty. Previously I thought that this work was a strong contender because a) it’s by a woman writer (and a woman hasn’t been awarded the prize since 2000, when the winner was Margaret Atwood) b) it deals with the “legacy” of 9/11 (big theme) and c) it was praised in the U.S. (Brits seem to have an inferiority complex about American fiction).
I have to admit that all of the above are strictly extrinsic factors–at the time of writing, I’m on page 6 of the book. Even for me, this is a little early to be making (cough) aesthetic judgments.
Heavyweight Peter Carey, with Theft: A Love Story, has also fallen by the wayside, along with Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer.
I don’t really know all that much about the books still standing. A while ago, I read this TLS review of Edward St Aubyn’s novel. Being told that “St Aubyn sometimes goes at his dislikeable toffs in a none-too-subtle fashion. His overdressed ninnies and billionaire dullards are given reams of dialogue exposing their tedious witlessness and even more tedious wit” didn’t exactly compel me to discover this author. Overall, with its apparent focus on very rich, very jaded, and very unpleasant individuals, the book sounded as if it operated in such a hoity-toity realm as to make even uberposh 2005 winner, Alan Hollinghurst, seem like a bit of an oik.
A nugget I discovered today: M.J. Hyland is a women and her book is set in Dublin, the grim version. See here .
Finally, despite all this jabber about “bookies’ favourites” how many people actually put money down on a bloody literary prize? If they do, most of the transactions probably occur in the freeing anonymity of cyberspace. I can’t imagine many lit-nerds queuing up behind some tatooed bloke punting the children’s allowance on the 3.30 at Haydock, summoning up to nerve to ask what are the latest odds for Edward St Aubyn…