November 2005
Top of the Crop
The race to win the 2005 Man Booker Prize is over
The Man Booker Prize, now in its 37th year, is one of the world’s most prestigious and high-profile literary awards for contemporary fiction. It has the power to elevate authors and publishers to an entirely new level, and that’s before the winner has even received their £50,000 prize. Winning books from previous years have gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists, like last year’s winner,
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.
The prize always provokes much debate and controversy, and this year was no exception. When the longlist of 17 novels was announced in August, British newspaper
The Observer called it “the richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969.” Among the novels on the list were works by four former winning authors—Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro. The six writers who then made it onto the shortlist announced in September, were John Banville (
The Sea), Julian Barnes (
Arthur & George), Sebastian Barry (
A Long Long Way), Kazuo Ishiguro (
Never Let Me Go), Ali Smith (
The Accidental) and Zadie Smith (
On Beauty). The biggest surprise for most literati was that Ian McEwan’s Saturday did not make it to the shortlist, as many people believed it would win the final prize. Instead,
The Sea by Irish author John Banville was announced as the winner, in what was an extremely close race. Read on to find out what we thought of our three favorite contenders.
ARTHUR & GEORGE ****
By Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape, 2005
With the ease of an accomplished novelist, Barnes has taken a new direction and delved into the mind of the most celebrated detective writer of all time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The novel begins with alternating tales of Arthur and George, two very different boys growing up in late-nineteenth-century Britain—Arthur, a promising scholar and athlete in Edinburgh, and George, the son of a vicar in a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor then a writer, and George a solicitor. The two are brought together when a miscarriage of justice sees George convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and imprisoned for seven years. Arthur campaigns to have George pardoned, both in the newspapers and in Parliament. With his characteristically intelligent prose, Barnes brings this long-forgotten case to life beautifully.
SATURDAY ****
By Ian McEwan
Jonathan Cape, 2005
If you’ve read novels by McEwan before, there is a good chance you will think he is a literary genius and will have trouble reading his new books without being biased from the start. This novel, though, is not one for the squeamish. It tells the story of one momentous Saturday in the life of Henry Perowne, a London-based neurosurgeon. The reader witnesses Perowne at work extracting blood clots, removing tumours and clearing blockages. But it is through his work, which he finds so satisfying, so familiar, and so exciting, that we learn most about his character. His relationship with his beloved family—his wife, Rosalind, and children Theo and Daisy—also gives us an insight into his personality.
The way McEwan manages to skilfully create the feeling of impending catastrophe makes this a very difficult book to put down. The only negative point is that some readers may find the level of detail a bit too much in places—although this is more a quirk of Perowne’s character than a flaw in the writing. With
Saturday, McEwan has produced another spectacular and very human novel.
SLOW MAN ***
By J.M. Coetzee
Secker & Warburg, 2005
This novel tells the story of Paul Rayment, a retired, divorced man who lives in an Australian suburb. When he is knocked off his bike, his leg has to be amputated above the knee. Rayment has huge problems coming to terms with the loss, not helped by the moronic nurses who look after him. That is, until Croatian immigrant Marijana is sent to nurse him. She is capable and respectful, and the fact that she is married with three children does nothing to dilute Rayment’s attraction to her. When he tells her about his feelings, she disappears. Her departure prompts the arrival of Elizabeth Costello, a novelist in her late sixties, who turns up on Rayment’s doorstep and moves into his spare room. It is at this point that the novel becomes somewhat surreal. Costello acts as an alter ego of sorts, although it is never really clear who she is and how she found Rayment in the first place. She did feature in Coetzee’s previous novel,
Elizabeth Costello, so perhaps her role is clearer to people who are familiar with his previous work.
Slow Man can be divided neatly into two parts—pre-Costello and post-Costello. The first part is engaging, intriguing and very enjoyable, the second loses its credibility and is a big disappointment.
All the books mentioned in this article are available to buy or to order from Words’Worth booksellers at Schellingstrasse 21a.
