The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

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Booker judges inch to safer territory

07.09.07 Philip Jones

Ian McEwan "survives Booker cull" is the Guardian's headline to its Booker shortlist piece. After a longlist peppered with independent presses and new authors, the newspaper reckons that the Booker judges have "inched back towards safer territory" with the shortlist.

Ladbrokes has installed McEwan as its 6/4 favourite, followed by Nicola Barker at 3/1. William Hill has opted for unknown New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones' novel Mr Pip, which it has put as 2/1 favourite to win. According to Graham Sharpe, of William Hill, "it’s a two-horse race" between McEwan and Jones.

Boyd Tonkin, writing in the Independent, says that the "epoch-making" longlist has given way to a much safer shortlist: "They [commentators] detected a deeper change in the weather that would at last send the conglomerate houses, and their bankable stalwarts, into the literary shade. With the 2007 shortlist in, has that Booker revolution happened? Only up to a point. Every title in the final six comes from a leading corporate publisher."

In the Telegraph, the Man Booker organisers denied that poor sales of some of the longlisted titles demonstrated dwindling interest in the prize, first launched in 1969. Ion Trewin, the administrator, defended the selection of barely known authors and forecast that sales would pick quickly once the shortlist was known. He said: "One of the joys of this prize is identifying talent for the future."

Reuters reports that New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones was the target of an unprecedented gamble as the shortlist was announced. Graham Sharpe, spokesman for bookmakers William Hill, said of the Jones novel: "In a quarter of a century of Booker betting I cannot recall as spectacular a gamble. We could be looking at our first six-figure payout in Booker history."

Meanwhile, the Times wonders if McEwan's Chesil Beach is too short to qualify as a novel. Sir Howard Davies, the chairman of the judging panel, said of the book: "We don't think it’s at all slight in terms of its emotional steps. It’s a very tight and very taut novel." Although it was focused on a few hours in one scene, it reflected “huge depth in characterisation”, he added.

Philip Jones Booker Prize