The Man Booker Longlist - some thoughts

I was asked recently to come up with my own longlist for the Man Booker prize and then jauntily told I'd be 'scored' on my predictions. Of course I wasn't trying to predict anything - how could I, when I've only read a fraction of the reported 154 submissions? I read about 60 novels a year and frankly that's quite enough. My list was just that - my own favourite 13.

As it happens, though, my score was low. Only Alan Hollinghurst and - a dark horse this - D J Taylor's Derby Day were on both lists. My first feeling upon looking at the real Man Booker longlist was bafflement. Who on earth were all these people? I hadn't heard of half of them. In a sense, Man Booker judges can never get it right. Too many established names and they're playing safe, not enough and they look wilfully out of touch.

Then I started looking at who was left off, and my bafflement increased. Justin Cartwright has bad luck with the Booker and Other People's Money sadly didn't buck the trend. But it took several reads of the list to realise that the unthinkable had happened. Yes, they really had overlooked Edward St Aubyn's At Last, the novel around which a steady buzz has been growing ever since publication a few months ago to rapturous reviews. Andrew Miller's Pure is another notable omission. There's no Ali Smith, John Burnside, Philip Hensher, Helen Oyeyemi, Amitav Ghosh...

My first Tweeted responses to the list (I was still in shock) were met with a few how-can-you-criticise-before-you've-read-them-all comments. Well, for one thing, the Man Booker longlist is published in order to boost sales and create word of mouth. While it might be nice if there were a three-week comment moritorium while we diligently work our way through all 13 titles, meanwhile, back in the real world... And obviously it's legitimate to comment on books that we have read, found brilliant, and which we feel have been mysteriously snubbed.

One publisher's loss is another publisher's gain, of course, and I tip my hat to Seren, Oneworld and Serpent's Tail who no doubt richly deserve their placing. It's hard to talk about omissions without offending people who are on the list, which is not my intention. I look forward to reading the longlisted titles. 

On further inspection the list comes into focus and there are some intriguing inclusions. I hadn't read Sebastian Barry's novel (will now) but he is hugely gifted, and I had also overlooked the Julian Barnes, which I've been told is superb. I'd already earmarked Pigeon English to read: it's gone to the top of the pile. Carol Birch is sadly underrated and Jamrach's Menagerie sounds wonderful. Jane Rogers is also a safe pair of hands (interesting to see she's now with a small publisher, Sandstone Press). Snowdrops created a buzz on publication. It's also good to see the strong Canadian presence.

It's been noted that there are four debuts on the list, and books from several independent publishers, who god knows, need a boost. I'm sure the judges are aware that the Man Booker is not a best first novel prize, or a prize for plucky independents, or a Fairy Godmother, 'with one tap of the wand I can make you famous' prize. It is for literary quality, and only literary quality. With that in mind, if all the longlisted books are as good as At Last we are in for a glorious booky summer.

Here's my own list of thirteen:

The Death of Eli Gold by David Baddiel
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
Other People's Money by Justin Cartwright
The Blue Book by A L Kennedy
Gillespie & I by Jane Harris
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
Childish Loves by Ben Markovits
Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar
Pure by Andrew Miller
There but for the by Ali Smith
At Last by Edward St Aubyn
The Knife Drawer by Padrika Tarrant
Derby Day by D J Taylor

It's open to the accusation that they are mostly established names, but then they're established for a reason. Of course it reflects my own reading, making this a neatly circular exercise: these are the sort of books I pick out, and therefore, I like them... The benefit of judging any prize is the way it takes you out of your literary comfort zone - the only way we find new stuff, after all.

Nevertheless, I think this is a pretty good list. And if I were to come up with a shortlist, St Aubyn, Bainbridge (provided the deceased are eligible) and Miller would be on it: three concise and contrasting pieces of artistry that represent the very best of British fiction.

Golden Age or last gasp?

Is the book dead? It's the major question of our time, with most of us booky types insisting that it isn't, perhaps with more hope than confidence. In this turbulent era, it surely can't be a coincidence that recently there has been, to my mind, an extravagant rise in the quality of hardbacks. I have a pile of new books on the desk in front of me which bears this counterintuitive notion out.

Yesterday I received a finished copy of Andrew Miller's new novel Pure, published next month. The cover image is based on Goya's print, 'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters', although the sleeping man has been embellished with gilded buttons and cuffs, buckles to his shoes and a bow in his hair. The design runs over to the back cover, placing the man in a large, bare room, at a table with a pen, candle and jug, and a set of mathematical rules and compasses, while the birds of nightmare swoop and circle above. Outside the window is an 18th century city scene. (The illustration is credited to Royston Knipe.)

It's not just a question of the cover image, but the whole conception: the fine etched lines that give the grain of linen to the cover (there's no dust jacket); the pleasing contrast of the black birds, the grey tones, and the touches of green and gold on the title and man's coat; the way the spine displays the corner of the table with  loaf and knife. It's a delicious artefact, and I can't wait to tuck into Miller's tale of a fetid and groaning Parisian cemetery, and the 18th-century architect charged with clearing it.

Miller is published by Sceptre, who as you may remember did such a brilliant job with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and in much the same way: dispensing with the dustjacket, making the texture of the cover an intrinsic part of the design, and wrapping the illustration (by Joe Wilson) round to the back cover. Sceptre's fiction designs are consistently excellent, as are those of John Murray, also part of the Hodder group. My next example is Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke, the follow up to the Man Booker shortlisted Sea of Poppies. This has a conventional dustjacket, but there's nothing conventional about the illustration in deep blues with sinuous white lettering. The hint at blue and white Chinese pottery and the junks silhouetted in the distance express the next stage of the Ibis's journey as it enters Chinese waters with its heterogenous runaway crew. The floral motif is echoed on the beautiful jade green endpapers and at each chapter heading. Well done, John Murray!

More conventional perhaps, but still striking, is Weidenfeld and Nicolson's treatment for Clare Morgan's forthcoming novel, A Book For All and None. It's good to know that a publisher can still invest like this in a debut. There are no coloured endpapers or chapter-heading embellishments, but the Art Nouveau design in turquoise, yellowy-cream and crimson is striking and beautifully articulated across three areas: front, back and spine. The motifs of lighthouse, waves and books point elegantly to its Woolfian subject. The confident design (Nadina Gray)  proclaims, quite rightly, that the author, an Oxford academic, is one to watch.

Another fiction debut, Alice Albinia's Leela's Book, has been thoughtfully realised by Harvill Secker.  The dustjacket image of Ganesha has a cutout to display the pretty patterned cover within. The book would look just as attractive without the dustcover (which is just as well, as I'd deduct points for the white jacket - they look grubby almost immediately).

Albinia is not a total novice; her first book, Empires of the Indus, was well-received (she is married to the writer Tristram Stuart, the 'TS' of the dedication page). Again, such care and attention signal that this is a major new talent; this is a book to cherish, something that will stay around for years on your shelf, rather than vanishing into the ether.

But will they sell? A friend of mine, a senior Waterstone's bookseller, does a great horror-film scream (eyes wide and terrified, hands clawing the air) at any book jackets he thinks are hopelessly uncommercial. We are frequently at odds - the books I think most exciting visually are frequently dismissed with a brusque: 'Won't sell.' But I think all of these would get the thumbs up from him.

So instead of kowtowing to the populist demands to make everything cheap, cheaper, cheapest, some publishers at least are fighting back with beautiful artefacts that demand to be cherished. Looking at these lovely volumes, you'd never think publishing was in crisis. Would you?

PS My comments refer to the UK editions. To my mind, American book designs are almost always duller and more conventional than the British equivalents, though their standards of book production remain high. There are some glorious exceptions but.... have a quick trawl through Amazon and see what I mean.