The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

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Clark: 'You don't get to answer back'

01.08.08

Booker judge Alex Clark says that judging this year's prize "isn't as easy as it looks" and regrets that she doesn't "get to answer back".

Writing her first blog post for the official Man Booker Prize website, she wonders whether after years working as a literary journalist, she is "poacher-turned-gamekeeper or vice versa" and adds that the process is an "exhilarating ride".

Commenting on the usual flood of comment on the longlist selection, Clark writes: "The comments, both positive and negative, that have appeared in newspapers and online in the last couple of days have hardly taken me by surprise - in fact, I think they've been largely well-informed, interesting and engaged, with only occasional moments of bilious ill temper - but there is one obvious sacrifice that being a judge entails: you don't get to answer back. In other words, as much as any of us might be itching to explain precisely why book x was omitted or book y included, what we admired about this novel and found disappointing in another, we must simply keep our mouths shut."

Alex Clark blog

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