Other Stories

The Best of Bookers - Shortlist Announced

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize, and as I noted some time ago in a post that I not can't find, three judges have put together a shortlist of what they consider to be the six best Booker winners since the prize's inception. Said shortlist was annuonced this week. The lucky nominees are:

• The Ghost Road Pat Barker (1995)
• Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie (1981)
• Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey (1988)
• Disgrace JM Coetzee (1999)
• The Conservationist Nadime Gordimer (1974)
• The Siege of Krishnapur JG Farrell (1973)

Now, here's the kicker. I haven't read any of them. In fact, I only own one of them (Oscar and Lucinda). Therefore, the chances of me making giving an informed opinion on any of the above are, frankly, slim to none. I can, though, give my opinion on books that aren't on the list. Pointless? Possibly. Possibly not.

Firstly, I would like to express my relief and profound thanks to the judges for not selecting Life of Pi. Rarely has a fiction book made me actually angry, but this one did. I was also angry at the judges who chose it that year over Sarah Waters's Fingersmith. Now, I am not a person particularly confident in my writing abilities; as much as I harbour the novel-writing dream (along with God knows how many other readers), I do not think my writing is yet good enough to start showing to anyone other than my boyfriend and my cats. I am not that arrogant. However, reading Life of Pi, I found myself thinking "I could do better than this. I could definitely do better than this" all the way through. And don't get me started on the ending, OK? Just. Don't.

However, I am sad not to see AS Byatt's bloody fantastic Possession on the list, which remains pretty much my favourite Booker winner, like, ever.* In fact, I must reread it soon, when I have got over the reading block. Speaking of the reading block, I have taken all the novels away from the bedside table and have stacked them in a neat pile in the corner. In their stead lies a small pile of short story and poetry collections, thus: The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith, The Collected Stories of Grace Paley, The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore, The Collected Novels and Stories of Kate Chopin, and The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. I must say that so far the plan is working rather well. Last night I managed to read one story from the Grace Paley, one by Lorrie Moore, and one by Kate Chopin, while this morning before I got up I read one from the Zadie Smith volume, and a few Edward Lear poems.  I think I might have cracked it.

*The "like" is ironic. I promise. 

I return, and the Orange Prize Shortlist

Afternoon people, I am back home in Oxford. It's been a bit of a frantic few days, and as much as I adore London and had a great time at the Book Fair, the relief as the bus rolled back into Oxford was palpable. It was lovely to get back into my house, to see Boyfriend and the mogs, and to just... be home. Phew.

I hope you've been following my exploits over at OUPblog, and there's most posts to come about my time at the LBF over there, so keep checking back. I got some excellent freebies, including another nice bag, some Guinness World Records mints in a fancy tin which I broke within 5 minutes, and two books (one of which I'm giving to mum as it's not my thang), not to mention crabcakes on the first day. Yummy. The book which I'm keeping for myself is a proof copy of Chris Cleave's new novel, coming out in August (I think): The Other Hand. I read his first novel, Incendiary, a couple of years ago and was very impressed. The fact that as I sit here now I can remember a good slice of that book is testament to his talent I think. I'm looking forward to it.

I also picked up a bundle of catalogues from other publishers, so I can start forumlating my wishlist for the autumn fiction frenzy.

But, to business. The Orange Shortlist has been announed, and the lucky nominees are:

Nancy Huston Fault Lines

Sadie Jones The Outcast

Charlotte Mendelson When We Were Bad (Hooray!)

Heather O’Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals

Rose Tremain The Road Home

Patricia Wood Lottery

Lots of first time writers, Charlotte Mendelson, and The Outcast, which I heard on Radio 4 the other week, and was rather taken by. Good list!

Now, back to Yeats for the last essay push.

Nicola Barker shortlisted for The Ondaatje Prize

Just a quickie post to say that Nicola B might have missed out on being nominated for The Orange Prize this year, but she has been shortlisted for the 2008 Ondaatje Prize.

The Ondaajte Prize is awared by the Royal Society for Literature, and is for "works of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which is "of the highest literary merit", and judged to convey a sense of place". The prize is £10,000, and the winner will be announced on 28 April.

That shortlist in full:

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• Paradise with Serpents by Robert Carver
• The Whisperers by Orlando Figes
• On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein
• Sea Holly by Robert Minhinnick
• The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

Good luck NB!

The Orange Prize Longlist

I'm sorry, I just can't bring myself to say Orange Broadband Prize. I'm still trying to get over the Whitbread now being the Costa. Damn corporate sponsors.

Anyhoo, the longlist has just been announced for this year's prize, and it appears to be a boom year for new talent:

Anita Amirrezvani -- The Blood of Flowers
Stella Duffy -- The Room of Lost Things
Jennifer Egan -- The Keep
Anne Enright -- The Gathering
Linda Grant -- The Clothes on Their Backs
Tessa Hadley -- The Master Bedroom
Nancy Huston -- Fault Lines
Gail Jones -- Sorry
Sadie Jones -- The Outcast
Lauren Liebenberg -- The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam
Charlotte Mendelson -- When We Were Bad
Deborah Moggach -- In The Dark
Anita Nair -- Mistress
Heather O'Neill -- Lullabies for Little Criminals
Elif Shafak -- The Bastard of Istanbul
Dalia Sofer -- The Septembers of Shiraz
Scarlett Thomas -- The End of Mr Y
Carol Topolski -- Monster Love
Rose Tremain -- The Road Home
Patricia Wood -- Lottery

I must admit that many of these are brand new to me. I have heard of a few though, and have read exactly one and a half: When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson, which I very much enjoyed and so hope it makes it to the shortlist, and half of The Gathering by Anne Enright, which I, er, gave up on. The Scarlett Thomas novel is sitting upon my shelf at home, patiently waiting for me to get around to it.

I'm all for new talent being trumpeted, but where is Ali Smith's AMAZING Girl Meets Boy? Where is Darkmans by Nicola Barker? Am also vaguely surprised not to see What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn, if only because it's been up for every other prize in the known universe.

Ah the heady days of the 2006 prize when I had read all but one on the shortlist. Don't think that'll be happening this year, somehow. This is because I have done the, ahem, responsible thing (not) by completely changing my mind about my uni essay topic with only 5 weeks to go before it has to be handed in. From gothic novels and science, to Yeats's early poetry and the occult. Thus, I am buried deep under a pile of Yeats poems and various library books, and will be until the end of April.

It also means that I ploughed through the seemingly endless 130 pages of The Island of Doctor Moreau for no reason. It may have been better than the other HG Wells I have read, but I still didn't exactly enjoy it, and I can say here and now that I will not be picking up another of his novels unless I there is no way to avoid it.

The British Book Awards 2008

The shortlists for The British Book Awards 2008 were published yesterday, and here are the shortlists that interest me:

Readers Digest Author of the Year

• Khaled Hosseini (for A Thousand Splendid Suns)
• Doris Lessing (for The Cleft)
• Ian McEwan (for On Chesil Beach)
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (for Half of a Yellow Sun)
• David Peace (for The Damned Utd)

KIRSTY SAYS: If Doris Lessing doesn't win, then something is seriously wrong with the world.

Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year

• Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Imperial Life in the Emerald City)
• Catherine O'Flynn (What Was Lost)
• Stef Penney (The Tenderness of Wolves)
• Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
• Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

KIRSTY SAYS!: My money's on Catherine O'Flynn. And I has no idea that Stef Penney was still sufficiently "new" - didn't The Tenderness of Wolves win the Costa LAST year? We've had AL Kennedy's winning novel since then! Ah well, I'm sure the judges know best.

There are several other categories, of course: Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year (ie the books they've done for the book club), WH Smith Children's Book of the Year, Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, Sainsbury's Popular Fiction of the Year (the sponsor should indicate what kind of books we're talking about here), PLAY.com Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year (ie celebrity biogs and Nigella Lawson), Tesco Biography of the Year (hello Russell Brand), and the Lifetime Achievement Award. Last year John Grisham won it.

Whatever happened to the Literary Fiction prize they used to have? I mean, I know one can argue that prizes are meaningless yadda yadda, but wouldn't it be nice to see this country's really rather great literary output being acknowledged on prime time TV? Hurrumph.

Happy World Book Day!

Happy World Book Day everyone.

It's rolled round again, it seems like only last week I was sending everyone e-cards celebrating this the bookiest of days. Having been keeping abreast of the WBD website recently, I see the e-cards aren't in attendance this year (or if they are, I haven't found them yet), but instead there has been frenzied voting in the 'Books to Talk About' poll. There was originally a shortlist of 10 books (and a long list of 100!), which were:

• Steve Aylett, Lint
• Jenny Downham, Before I Die
• Eliza Graham, Playing with the Moon
• Priya Basil, Ishq & Mushq
• Joshilyn Jackson, Gods In Alabama
• Candi Miller, Salt & Honey
• Pauline Rowson, In Cold Daylight
• Rupert Thomson, Death of a Murderer
• Jonathan Trigell, Boy A
• Angela Young, Speaking of Love

Nice to see the independent publishers so well represented, though I confess that out of these ten titles I have actually only heard of fourthem, and one of those is only because the author is my boss's cousin. I haven't read any of them, though one lone paperback from this list has been sitting quietly on my shelf for about two years now. Lucky for me, I have scored a direct hit, and the book in my possession has just been announced this morning as the winner.

Take a bow, please, Boy A by Jonathan Trigell! (cue applause)

Now, I admit that I am at a disadvantage when talking about this list because I haven't read any of them, and know absolutely nothing about six of them, but it seems to me that if we were voting for "books to talk about", then Boy A is almost unrivalled in its controversial subject matter. It is the story of a 24 year old man, who has just been released from a young offenders' institution, after spending nearly all of his childhood inside for a crime he committed while a youngster. Cue obvious comparisons to the James Bulger murder, the perpertrators of which were infamously released into the community once they were in their twenties, with new identities and lifelong anonymity. If a book is going to polarise opinion as to its taste and decency then I'd put my money on this one. Can you empathise with someone who has committed a horrific crime, no matter how young they were when they did it? Does it mean they were "born evil"? There must be few novels more controversial than this (though I grant you that Death of a Murderer has Myra Hindley on the front cover, so chances are it might be giving Boy A a run for its money). Perhaps this new focus on the novel will give me a nudge to finally get around to reading it (though as those of you who read yesterday's post will know, the last thing I need right now is to make a start on another book).

Just one thing though, and I am perfectly willing to accept that I am a self-confessed cynical moobag sometimes, this is the only one of these novels that's been filmed and shown on television, right?

Strictly Come Booker

This morning I see that there is news of a "Best of The Booker" prize to be awarded this year. The prize has been going for 40 years now, and this prize is to be a celebration - much like they did when Midnight's Children won The Booker of Bookers 15 years ago.

It'll work like this: a panel of judges will draw up a shortlist of 6 previous Booker winners, then we the reading public will vote for the winner in some kind of Strictly Come Booker stylee (phone vote scandal purely optional, I hope). The shortlist is to be announced in May, and the winner announced in July.

So, what is likely to be on the list? God help us if it's any of the last few years' winners, I have had a decidedly dodgy relationship with them. The last one I actually really enjoyed was The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (and that's not even one of her best, IMHO). If The Life of Pi is on the shortlist then I shall refuse to vote on principle. Can Midnight's Children be on the shortlist, or is it unfair for him to win The Big One twice? If it's not on the shortlist, then does that completely negate the prize he won before? Is the way out of that particular quandary to say that the shortlist is the considered opinion of whoever the panel are going to be? *shrugs* I dunno.

But let's not focus on the negatives. What gems might get a revitalised audience? I've been having a scan through the archives on the Booker website, and I personally would be a little bit chuffed if Kingsley Amis got a nod for The Old Devils (1986 winner), or Possession by AS Byatt (1990). If How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman (1994) gets picked then it might give me the kick up the bum I need to actually pick it up off the shelf and read it.

I await with interest to see what titles are selected. But God help us all if it's Life of Pi.

Costa Prize Winner...

Congratulations to Glasgow writer (and stand up comedienne) AL Kennedy for scooping the Costa Prize last night, for her novel Day.

It is the story of a World War II veteran who has to confront his demons when he is an extra in a Prisoner of War movie. Apparently (I say apparently, for I haven't read it... yet) the novel is Kennedy's response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The judges called it a "masterpiece", and even said there were "shadows of James Joyce" in it.

Now, I'm rather happy that she won. I've enjoyed the novels of hers that I have read. But the judges comparing her to James Joyce is surely a shot in the foot? Can't help thinking that some people might be put off if they think it's like Joyce.

*shrugs*  Just a thought.

What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn

What Was Lost is a story based around the fictional Green Oaks Shopping Centre, somewhere near Birmingham (at least, I assume it's fictional, I'm sure someone will correct me if it's not). It opens in 1984 with Kate Meaney, a child who wants to be a private detective with her toy monkey Mickey as her sidekick. She stakes out Green Oaks, making copious notes on her observations and following suspicious looking characters.

Cut to 21 years later, and Kate has been missing ever since 1984. Suddenly the image of a little girl in a camouflage jacket with a bag containing a toy monkey starts appearing on the security screens while Kurt is on the nightshift. Elsewhere, in the centre's back corridors, disillusioned deputy manager of Your Music, Lisa, finds a toy monkey shoved behind a pipe. They come together in their search for this mysterious child, causing all sorts of personal revelations, weird coincidences, and haunting images along the way.

What Was Lost has been lauded all over the place recently, with countless nominations for various literary prizes. Thing is, this didn't strike me as a literary novel. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it - I did, I thought it was great fun to read, and happily falls into the "page-turner" category - but literary? I just didn't think it had enough weight for that.

Also, going by the author's biog at the back of the book, she'd used all the environments she'd been in in real life to base parts of the story in. Not that there is any law against that or anything, but it just seemed like she used all of her background to fill in the gaps between the characters and the centre itself. She seemed to use all of it in one book. As someone said on a message board I frequent, I hope she hasn't used all her ideas in one book.

But, on the positive side, it was a neat, fun story. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to people. I'm just not sure that it's quite in the "prize-winner", literary category for me.

You like me... You *really* like me!

The lovely Sara over at A Salted has given me A Roaring Lion Award for Powerful Words! See?

Hurrah! I never win anything, as they say. Thank you Sara.

So, here's the deal. I have to pronounce my views on the top 3 things that make writing powerful. And here they are:

1. Believability (if that is indeed a word) -- you can be the most technically brilliant writer in the world but if you don't make what you're writing believable then you're more or less buggered, aren't you? By "believable" I don't mean "realist". Your story can be set on Mars and be populated by 20-legged, genderless, pink chickens, but you have to make us believe in that world. Though I confess that if you're story is about genderless pink chickens with too many legs, you are going to be have to be bloody good to get me to even entertain the notion of reading it.
2. Excellent characters (which may come under the heading of "believability", I don't know.) -- as is proven by The Gathering and Negative Space, I have little time for irritating people inside fiction or outside it.
3. Balls -- I think you have to be fearless to be a writer. To put yourself out there for judgement takes balls in my book (which is why I'm too scared to show anyone what I write).

And now I have to pass the Roaring Lion Award on to 5 other bloggers... but at the moment I can only think of one: Dovegrey Reader, whose blog was one of the ones that inspired me to give this book blogging lark a bash in the first place.

The Whit...COSTA Shortlists are out!

It's arguably the next biggest book prize after the Booker, so I was waiting with reasonably baited breath to hear who made it onto the Costa shortlists last night. (By the way, am I the only one who still have to remind themselves it's the Costa Prize and not the Whitbread Prize?)

So, without further ado...

Novel

• Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett
• Day by AL Kennedy
• Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson
• The Road Home by Rose Tremain

First Novel

• A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
• Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
• Mosquito by Roma Tearne

Biography

• Rudolf Nureyev by Julie Kavanagh
• Agent ZigZag by Ben McIntyre
• Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• Fatty Batter by Michael Simkins

Poetry

• The Speed of Dark by Ian Duhig
• The Space of Joy by John Fuller
• Look We Have Coming to Dover! by Daljit Nagra
• Tilt by Jean Sprackland

Children's

• The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley
• Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick
• Crusade by Elizabeth Laird
• What I Was by Meg Rosoff

What do we think? Well, my little feminist heart is leaping with joy to see the First Novel category entirely populated by women. 'Mon the girls! And it's also nice to see so many independent publishers represented. And isn't Catherine O'Flynn doing well? Booker Longlist, Guardian First Book Award list, and now the Whit...Costas. Now for me to actually read the flippin' thing.

Embarrassingly, it was my choice this month for my book group. I chose it because it conformed to our book group rules: paperbacks only, nothing over 400 pages. I also chose it because I bought it when it was on the Booker longlist, then promptly never got around to it. And I still haven't. My fellow book groupers have been discussing it merrily, and I have been keeping up (our group is conducted via Facebook, because we're all terribly trendy young things, and, like facebook is, like, where it's at, innit, like? *twiddles hairs, pops gum* Oh, and because it's also very convenient when one of your number is living in Alloa). I feel terribly guilty. I know it's awfully bad form to choose a book then forget to read it. However, all reports have been glowing, so at least I haven't inflicted a terrible choice upon everyone else then run off to hide behind the sofa.

Nikita Lalwani's book, Gifted, is the only one from the lists that I have read. My review is to be found here. I liked it, but is it winning material? Hmm, can't say I'm terribly sure. And how wonderful to see AL Kennedy on the Novel list. While I haven't read this one, I have enjoyed the two or three books of hers that I have read, so I'll be watching closely to see how she gets on.

The winner of each category will be announced on January 3, with the overall winner will be announced on January 22. Last year it was Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves (which I was planning to read at some point till I caught the last episode of the dramatisation on Radio 4 by accident, and now I feel like I've already read the last page).

The Gathering - Anne Enright

I'm so disappointed that I felt the need to abandon The Gathering. I thought, as regular readers will know, that this would be right up my particular literary street. Bleakness. Family strife. Normally, I love it. Not this time, however.

I know I was cheating on it with The Woman in White, but it still took me two weeks to get to page 100. The narrator, Veronica, is possibly the most irritating narrator I've come across this side of Negative Space by Zoe Strachan (interestingly, both narrators are dealing with the death of a brother.  I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day... am I surpressing something?). But an irritating narrator in itself shouldn't be enough to make me cast aside a book, crying "enough!"... should it?

In this case, it was far from just the narrator. It was also the style of the writing. Now, I like lyrical prose as much as the next Woolf-fanatic, and comparisons to Ali Smith's writing style in this novel are understandable, but - and here I'm going to sound really quite bitchy - the point is that Ali Smith does lyrical well whereas I just found Anne Enright's attempt really quite forced and derivative. There was absolutely no narrative drive in The Gathering.

I like a strong narrative. This might sound strange coming from someone who lists Mrs Dalloway as her favourite book, but the point is that Mrs Dalloway has a lot more to say for itself. The storyline is a tool to talk about bigger themes, the bigger picture, the human condition. The Gathering didn't seem to do any of that. It just seems to be a lot of schmancy prose, short sentences, random paragraphing and occasional "shocking" swear words or sexual references. I didn't feel she did any justice to her subject matter.

Plainly people will disagree with me. Obviously, it won the Booker, but I just felt deeply let down by a book that is a triumph of style over substance. A lot of hot air and posturing with nothing to back it up. Or, at least, the 100 pages I managed to struggle through was...

Looking on the (sort of) bright side, it does continue my almost-unbroken pattern of not enjoying Booker winners. Darkmans woz robbed.

And the winner is...

The Gathering by Anne Enright!

Well, blow me, a book that I actually quite fancy reading wins the Booker for the first time in years! It was described as bleak and depressing, and "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie". Ticks my boxes!

Too many exclamation marks. Sorry. But between this and Ms Lessing taking the Nobel, it's been a fantastic week for female writers, and this makes me happy.

Meanwhile, Your Blogger appears this week in the hallowed pages of book trade rag The Bookseller. I am doing a mini review of the magisterial Poor Things by  Alasdair Gray in the Reading Pleasures slot on the opinion page. God, I'm getting everywhere at the moment.

The Booker Shortlist

Well, the shortlist was announced yesterday afternoon, and this year's lucky nominees are:

• Nicola Barker -- Darkmans
• Anne Enright -- The Gathering
• Lloyd Jones -- Mister Pip
• Ian McEwan -- On Chesil Beach
• Indra Sinha -- Animal's People
• Mohsin Hamid -- The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Now, I haven't read any of these yet, though I am in the process of reading Darkmans (and LOVING it).  But just from my meanderings around the literary blogosphere I know the biggest surprise is probably the exclusion of The Welsh Girl, which pretty much everyone I saw loved, apart from Sam Jordison at The Guardian. It's currently lying in my teetering TBR pile, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

But don't take my word for it. There are full reviews here, here, and here.

I think that the dark horse of the list is probably The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which hasn't had quite the same buzz as some of the others. It didn't particularly leap out at me, but best of luck to Mohsin Hamid all the same. Check out DGR, Booklit's and John Self's reviews of that one.

And then we come to the Ian McEwan book, which has been fuelling controversy at every turn. Is it too short and technically a novella? Is it just a bit rubbish compared to his other books? Is it because Saturday didn't get picked the other year? Who knows. I still don't really fancy reading this one, controversy or no controversy, for the same reason I stated when the longlist came out: Radio 4's Book at Bedtime -- it can make you buy a book, but it can also persuade you not to bother.

And now the real Booker debate begins... roll on October 16th.

Booker Update

I have another one of the longlist on my to-read pile now. Gifted by Nikita Lalwani. All because of one review.

It is a ploy to bankrupt me, financially and in time.

The Man Booker Longlist

Well, it's rolled around again. The Man Booker longlist was announced last night:

• Nicola Barker - Darkmans
• Edward Docx - Self Help
• Tan Twang Eng - The Gift of Rain
• Anne Enright - The Gathering
• Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• Peter Ho Davies - The Welsh Girl
• Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip
• Nikita Lalwani - Gifted
• Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach
• Catherine O'Flynn - What Was Lost
• Michael Redhill - Consolation
• Indra Sinha - Animal's People
• AN Wilson - Winnie & Wolf

I confess that I have read none of these, and actually only heard of 6 of them, so I can't comment on their worthiness. What I can say is that I have been keen on reading Self Help for a while, and the Amazon "if you like this, try..." keeps suggesting I read What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn so often that it's starting to feel slightly like bullying.

I can't say I'm in a terrible rush to read the Ian McEwan. I do tend to enjoy his books (apart from Enduring Love, which I still haven't managed to finish), and I really enjoyed Saturday. I thought he woz robbed when it didn't make the Shortlist last year. However, I heard extracts from On Chesil Beach on Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 and it left me somewhat cold.

(Note to self: remember to search out Penelope Lively's book, Consequences, which was on Book at Bedtime a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed that.)

I've heard good things about the Peter Ho Davies and Lloyd Jones books too. But really, I can't buy anymore books. My MA starts in just under two months, I need to be getting on with my reading list...