Thursday, August 09, 2007

2007 Man Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist this year is a Booker's Dozen:

Nicola Barker - Darkmans
Edward Docx - Self Help
Tan Twan 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








No Gerard Woodward then. Hmmmm.
I would imagine Chatto and Windus must be disappointed - assuming they entered it for the prize, of course. They wouldn't have pinned their hopes on Blake Morrison and Rose Tremain instead, would they?

As always the bookies latched onto the most famous writer in the list (Ian McEwan, as usual) and installed him as the favourite. Remember: the bookies are always wrong. William Hill initially made Mister Pip the 20/1 outsider - I'm guessing those odds will shorten a bit by the time the winner is announced on October 16th.

The shortlist will be revealed on September 6th.

posted by PJE @ 12:38 AM 0 comments



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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Pass me a bottle Mr. Jones - you're gonna be a big star


Here we go again then. The judges have been busy reading the 110 novels entered for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the longlist is due out any moment. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the prize will be won by Mister Jones. But which one?

The hot favourite in literary circles is Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which has already won a couple of literary prizes, most notably the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. But there is another Jones in with a serious chance of winning this year - Aldous Jones, widower, retired art teacher and hero (for the want of a better word) of Gerard Woodward's third novel A Curious Earth.

From the moment I started reading A Curious Earth I was convinced I was reading this year's Booker Prize winner. It ticks all the boxes as far as I'm concerned, and it will take something really special to deny Woodward the prize. I haven't yet read his earlier novels August and I'll Go To Bed At Noon (which was shortlisted in 2004) but I certainly will.

posted by PJE @ 2:28 PM 0 comments



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