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In a few short weeks the winner of the 2011 Booker Prize will be announced. The long list this year was very eclectic and includes a thriller, four debut novelists, three Canadians, and a lot of speculation about the judges and their intentions for this year’s prize. There have been rumblings about how the list tends to lean toward the plot side of writing rather than more literary (although I think a great book has both) and I have seen a number of comments about “the ordinariness” of the works on the list. As usual, book tastes do differ so here is a recap of the short list first, so you can make your own decisions. The rest of the long list will be included in a subsequent post.
Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes: Barnes is a well established author with three previously short-listed books to his credit: Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005) A letter from a lawyer has thrown middle-aged, divorced Tony Webster for a loop. The mother of Veronica, Tony’s old girlfriend, has left him something in her will and this forces Tony to look back at a very uncomfortable weekend in his long ago past – a past he has put to rest and built a comfortable, uneventful life for himself. Unfortunately his memory of exactly went on that weekend is hazy leaving him with only a vague sense of being uncomfortable. Unfortunately circumstances force Tony to look deeper into his past which, of course, impacts his present day life.
Availability in the USA: Publishing date of Oct. 5th in Kindle, hardcover, and audio editions.
Quote from a review in The Telegraph:
It would be a mistake to dismiss this as a mere psychological thriller. It is in fact a tragedy, like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which it resembles. Webster remains in character throughout, as does Veronica, who is not only the prime mover but also major victim. The explanation, when it comes, is unforeseen, almost accidental, and hedged about with a wealth of humdrum detail. Its effect is disturbing – all the more so for being written with Barnes’s habitual lucidity. His reputation will surely be enhanced by this book. Do not be misled by its brevity. Its mystery is as deeply embedded as the most archaic of memories.
Blog reviews:
Jamrach’s Menagerie: A Novel by Carol Birch: Also an established author, Birch has been previously long-listed for her work Turn Again Home (2003) and her current novel was also long-listed for this year’s Orange Prize. Jamrach’s Menagerie is a work of Historical Fiction combining a legend of an escaped circus tiger in London’s east end and real life entrepreneur Charles Jamrach with the sinking of the Whaleship Essex. Jaffy Brown is the young boy Jamrach rescues from the tiger and he is later sent on a sea voyage to the Dutch East Indies to capture a dragon.
Availability in the USA: Currently available in hardcover, paperback, audio and Kindle editions
Quote from a review in The Guardian:
It’s easy to get distracted while you’re reading Carol Birch‘s 11th novel, and distraction is part of its point: in 19th-century Wapping, there are enough strange sights, pervasive smells and sounds and curious characters to keep most novelists – and readers – going strong for three times the number of pages that there are here. But beyond the blood, brine and slime that swills down the Ratcliffe Highway, above the stench of the rotting fruit and vegetables and the excrement of a thousand animals, lies a rather subtler story of the hazy line between camaraderie and rivalry and of the bonds both forged and broken in extreme adversity.
Blog Reviews
The Sister Brothers by Patrick Dewitt: This is Canadian Dewitt’s second novel and is set in the 1850’s during the California Gold Rush. Charlie and Eli Sisters are gunslingers hired to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm. Along their journey they have a series of violent encounters as well as having one brother fall in love. The novel goes beyond a simple western and provides a “revisionist” view the old west with touches of both humor and pathos.
Availability in the USA: Currently available in hardcover, paperback, audio and Kindle editions
Quote from a review in The Telegraph:
The writing is superb, with each brief chapter a separate tale in itself, relayed in Eli’s aphoristic fashion. The scope is both cinematic and schematic, with a swaggering, poetic feel reminiscent of a Bob Dylan lyric, while the author retains gleefully taut control of the overall structure.
There’s more than a whiff of morality to this unfolding of greed and chance; and a softening in its conclusion with a deliberately winsome Little House on the Prairie-type finale.
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan: Also a Canadian, this novel is set in both 1940 Paris and Germany in the 1990’s. Sid and Chip (African-Americans) are members of a Jazz trio caught in Paris after it falls to the Germans along with the third member of the band Hieronymous Falk, a young, black German and rising star in the emerging Jazz Scene. Falk was arrested by the Germans in Paris and never seen again. In the 1990’s Sid and Chip meet in Germany at the showing of a documentary about Falk and have to confront their past and their hidden feelings of betrayal.
Availability in the USA: No publication date listed
Quotes from a review in The Guardian:
Despite the book’s blurb tantalising us with promises of a black German experience, this novel is really about Sid and his version of events that led up to Hiero’s arrest. It’s also about his strained relationship with Chip. But as black jazz musicians they are already a familiar motif in American culture, and there’s a touch of central casting about their portrayal. And while Sid’s slangy vernacular is often charismatic, elsewhere the novel is problematic.
Far more interesting is Hiero, whose memory hovers like a spectre over the novel but is never properly realised. Like other Afro-German citizens, he is made stateless by the Nazis, and his could have been the story with the power to move and surprise. But we never really get to know him except through the jaundiced gaze of Sid.
In spite of this, Edugyan really can write, and the final chapter is redemptive.
Blog Reviews
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman: This is the author’s debut novel although he has produced several screenplays. Harrison Opuku is both narrator and protagonist of Pigeon English. He is 11 years old and has recently immigrated to London, England where he lives with his mother and sister in a crowded and often violent housing project. When a boy is killed and the police entreaties for witnesses are meet with silence, Hari and his friend Dean (an fan of CSI) decide to investigate upsetting the delicate balance his mother has managed to achieve in order to keep her family safe and secure.
Availability in the USA: Available in both hardcover and Kindle editions
Quote from a review in The Guardian:
t’s neither possible nor desirable to write lightly – or light-heartedly – about knife crime, and Pigeon English, for all its humorous touches, doesn’t. What it does do is to rid the subject of its portentousness, to root it firmly in a milieu where kindness and catastrophe, laughter and viciousness coexist. It is under no illusions about the effects of external violence on Harri’s life; in his school breaktime, he merrily plays a game called suicide bomber, in which “you run at the other person and crash them as hard as you can. If the other person falls over you get a hundred points. If they just move but don’t fall over it’s ten points. One person is always the lookout because suicide bomber is banned.”
Blog Reviews
Snowdrops is both a very good novel and a slightly disappointing one. Good, because the writing has tremendous pace and energy. (For all Nicholas’s faults, he’s amusing, compellingly honest company.) Disappointing, because it adds little to what we already know about life in Putin’s Russia: the cascading vulgarity of elitny shops and restaurants; the flesh bars with their painted girls and dwarves in tiger-stripe thongs; the top-to-bottom corruption; the gangsters. This isn’t to say Snowdrops never brings us news, just that it’s equally happy reinforcing negative stereotypes and flinging casual racial abuse. For example: “[Russians] could wallow in mud and vodka for a decade, then conjure up a skyscraper or execute a royal family in an afternoon.”
Blog Reviews
Other resources:
The Booker Prize Short-List complete with Synopsis
Hurray for the Bravest Booker Long List in a Long Time – article in The Telegraph
KevinfromCanada – discussion of the short list
Thanks for the shoutout! I really do think that Half-Blood Blues was very well done indeed. I’ve since finished The Sisters Brothers, too, and I enjoyed it very much. A little too much for comfort, actually. I really shouldn’t have been laughing at those things. Heheh. But in Eli’s eyes…well, the world looks different. (Hm, now that I write that, I realize that I was amazed, too, by Carol Birch’s ability to pull me into some very distasteful elements of a story as well. Scenes on the seas…) I’m looking forward to your longlist post!
By a stroke of luck, I received Sense of an Ending this week from the library, where I had put in on hold a while back.
Love the way you organize the discussion here, allowing us to go to other sites for their comments.
I have read On Canaan’s Side (from the longlist) and really liked it.