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The MAN Booker Prize 2006

Who will win the MAN Booker Prize 2006

  • Kiran Desai: The Inheritance Of Loss

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Kate Grenville: The Secret River

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • M.J. Hyland: Carry Me Down

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Sarah Waters: The Night Watch

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Edward St. Aubyn: Mother's Milk

    Votes: 3 37.5%
  • Hisham Matar: In The Country Of Men

    Votes: 2 25.0%

  • Total voters
    8
  • Poll closed .
Here's the Man Booker Prize longlist for anyone who's interested:


BookerPrize website

Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber)
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water (Doubleday)
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life (Bloomsbury)
Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape)
Lasdun, James Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape)
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus)
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury)
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children (Picador)
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green (Sceptre)
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man (William Heinemann)
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me (Faber & Faber)
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton)
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton)
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)
 
Thanks, blueboatdriver. I've read Edward St Aubyn's Mother's Milk and James Lasdun's Seven Lies, and highly recommend both. I hope they make it to the shortlist (announced 14 September). I have Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights here waiting for me; I've loved his last four novels and this is said to be even better. Also about to start Sarah Waters' The Night Watch.

David Mitchell is favourite, though the critical view seems to be that it's not his best. But then that didn't stop Ian McEwan from winning with Amsterdam in 1998.
 
Ooh thanks Blueboatdriver, just in time for a trip to the bookshop tomorrow.

Black Swan Green, was Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime' a little while back, it didn't really inspire me to go and read it for myself.

The only other one I've heard of is Theft: A love story, which is languishing unread, somewhere on my shelves.
 
Thanks, blueboatdriver. It's so reassuring to know that they're still writing them faster than we can read them. :)
 
I wonder what the longlist would be if actual companies were only allowed to submit two books for consideration, rather than separate imprints under the same parent.

As it goes, I read In The Country Of Men by Hisham Matar at the weekend and it's distinctly average. I'm currently reading Get A Life by Nadine Gordimer and nothing, despite being over a third of the way in, has happened.

I've got a bunch of other books longlisted and will try to read as many as possible before the shorlist is announced. Cue me getting bored very fast. :D
 
Stewart said:
I wonder what the longlist would be if actual companies were only allowed to submit two books for consideration, rather than separate imprints under the same parent.

Depends on what you mean by 'actual companies.' The imprints all have their own editorial teams and their own 'identity' so just because they're owned by the same global conglomerate, doesn't mean they're effectively the same. Usually they are under the same umbrella solely because they've been bought out, so it's not as if anyone's creating new imprints just to expand their possibilities. Random House for example own Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, William Heinemann, Harvill Secker (which in itself was previously two imprints: Harvill Press, and Secker & Warburg) and Doubleday, and have five books on the longlist. Penguin owns Hamish Hamilton and Viking, and have four books on the longlist. Not bad going then for true independents like Canongate, Bloomsbury and Faber to have two each on it.

Don't forget also that as well as the two-books-per-imprint rule, they're also allowed on top of that to submit any book by a previous Booker winner and anyone who's been shortlisted in the last 10 years.
 
Fair enough, Shade. Ta for the info.

An update on my Booker status, since I'm not bored yet. I've got ten of the books to have made the longlist. These are:

  • In The Country Of Men, Hisham Matar
  • Get A Life, Nadine Gordimer
  • Be Near Me, Andrew O'Hagan
  • So Many Ways To Begin, Jon McGregor
  • Carry Me Down, M.J. Hyland
  • The Inheritance Of Loss, Kiran Desai
  • Theft: A Love Story, Peter Carey
  • The Secret River, Kate Grenville
  • Black Swan Green, David Mitchell
  • The Night Watch, Sarah Waters

Of these, I've read the first five. Well, in the case of Jon McGregor's So Many Ways To Begin I've read only forty pages but that was enough to make me decide that that was enough of him.

In The Country Of Men is the story of a Libyan boy during the late 1970s. It showcases the oppression of the Libyan people with regards to secret police, people admitting their guilt to crimes on television, public execution in the masculine state. But, in contrast, it paints Libya as a land of sweet swelling spices, of happy families, a place where friendships flourish. With these opposites you may well think that Matar is doing for Libya what Hosseini did for Afghanistan by writing a nostalgic novel about their country of origin. And you'd be right. In The Country Of Men, while a better piece of writing than The Kite Runner, features little action and the majority of the story centres around the house of the narrator. The book is billed as being the story of a nine year old boy and, based on the simplicity of the narrative it could well be so but there are times throughout when the narrator states that he is telling his story from long ago. Indeed, he's twenty four. An adult telling a story in a childish style may be okay if he's slow or mentally disabled but there's nothing wrong with the guy. And his recollections are so lacking in sentiment that, like The Kite Runner, this is an ethnic exercise in empty nostalgia.

Get A Life by Nadine Gordimer begins with the story of an ecologist recovering in his parents' home after radiation treatment for thyroid cancer has left him as a walking, talking Chernobyl. At his parents' in order to protect his wife and child. But, as he recovers, the parents take centre stage in the story, go their own ways, and then, once that story is over, in pops another one about an ecological problem in Africa. It's quite a messy volume and, because of Gordimer's distant prose, thankfully short. But there's something about the book that I liked; perhaps the way in which Gordimer's narrator was able to move in an out of characters' thought patterns and external description with ease. Not that I would recommend it to anyone.

Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan is the closest to me in geographical setting. It tells the story of an English priest who has come to a small Scottish village where industry has long since departed and religious bigotry is rife. The priest befriends a couple of local delinquents and falls into their world as he realises what he has missed out on by giving his life and career to God. But, after a few drinks here and there, the priest forgets that he's pushing sixty and his cute little friend is only fifteen. Thus he does what most priests do and the case ends up in court. Predictable storyline but that's not what Be Near Me is about. It's about hopelessness, religion, taking control of one's life. The writing is strange in this one in that it opens with some of the most implausible prose I've read, both description and dialogue. Yet, once passed this I was able to enjoy the novel (perhaps because of the setting) and only noticed the occasional passage where the author strained for effort.

So Many Ways To Begin by Jon McGregor was just boring lists of adjectives strung in a line like the priest above's beads in order to make the most boring of objects interesting. It doesn't work. After forty pages I had no sense of character, place, or story. Saying that, it is set in Coventry so perhaps he has captured it better than I think. ;)

Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland is the story of an eleven year old boy who has a gift for detecting lies. Whatever you say, he can tell if you are lying. His main obsession is the Guinness Book of Records, notably the new 1972 edition. He hopes that one day he'll get into the book, perhaps for his lie detection abilities. He seeks to improve this gift and reads book after book on the subject. Yet all around him, the boy's family life is exploding. His father hasn't had a job in years, his grandmother (with whom they stay) is tiring of their residency, and his mother has her own problems to deal with. Slowly, and with complete innocence, the boy widens the gaps between the family and they begin to fall apart by his own hand. The novel, like Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha or The God Boy has him obvserving the breaking up of a happy family without truly understanding what's happening. There's a darkness to the prose here, and this has been my favourite Booker read thus far, but I felt it could have done with something more authentic in the character's voice, some Irish colloquialism perhaps. You don't expect an eleven year old to be so well spoken. Especially not one with issues. And especially not an Irish one. :D

On now, to Kiran Desai's second novel, The Inheritance Of Loss. I haven't even read what it's about, like most of these Booker longlistees. I decided just to read as many as possible because they were all brand new authors to me. And reading the blurb may prejudice me against picking up any of them.

And, while the debate about whether Black Swan Green should win the Booker or not goes on, I find myself in the envious position of never having read Mitchell before. The criticism, mostly, says it's not as good as his last, Cloud Atlas. Well, if that's true, I'll read Black Swan Green and then the rest of the Mitchells in order.
 
Stewart, if and when you read The Night Watch please revive my thread on it and tell us what you think. I loved this book and thus far seem to be the only one of the site that's read it, and I'd love to discuss it!
 
Yes, I'll try to find my thoughts on it and repost them in the appropriate thread, if they're not already there, Prairie_Girl.
 
Well, I just finished Kalooki Nights and was pretty disappointed. I love dark comedies and this one had incredible potential but at 400+ pages and a very sluggish pace it ended up being primarily tedious. I just started Black Swan Green and am looking forward to the short-list coming out this week.

Anyone else here read Kalooki?
 
I got about a third through it and gave up, mmichelle. And I say that as a big Jacobson fan: any of his last four novels (from No More Mr Nice Guy to The Making of Henry) are better than Kalooki, in my opinion.
 
The Shortlist has been announced.

  • The Inheritance Of Loss, Kiran Desai
  • The Secret River, Kate Grenville
  • The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
  • Carry Me Down, M.J. Hyland
  • In The Country Of Men, Hisham Matar
  • Mother's Milk, Edward St. Aubyn
I'll take the St. Aubyn or the Hyland to win it.
 
You know, this is one of those cases where it would be nice to be able to see the poll results without voting. I have no way to vote intelligently since I have not read any of the books on the list, but I'm still nosey, and would like to see what the voters think..should I just cast a blind vote to satisfy my curiosity or just go to my grave with this little mystery unsolved?
 
I think there's a link for "View results" at the bottom of the poll, isn't there, abc? I can't see it now because I've voted (it's 2 for St Aubyn and 0 for everyone else so far, btw!) but I think that's how it usually works in these polls...?
 
I think there's a link for "View results" at the bottom of the poll, isn't there, abc? I can't see it now because I've voted (it's 2 for St Aubyn and 0 for everyone else so far, btw!) but I think that's how it usually works in these polls...?

You are correct, you can view results, it's at the bottom right corner abc :)
 
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