booklit

Following on from the 25th Anniversary ‘Booker Of Bookers’ in 1993, comes the 40th Anniversary ‘Best Of The Booker’, in which a panel of judges have saved the public the bother of whittling down all forty-one eligible titles to a more manageable six. Or, to put it another way, ensured that Life Of Pi, which would likely top a proper public vote, can’t win.

The shortlist, then, is:

• The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1995)
• Oscar And Lucinda, Peter Carey (1988)
• Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee (1999)
• The Siege Of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell (1973)
• The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer (1974)
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)

The panel of judges were the biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, (chair); writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup; and John Mullan, Professor of English at University College, London.

In addition, Glendinning said:

‘It was a great experience, revisiting all the Booker and Man Booker Prize winners, and very tough arriving at the shortlist - but we really feel that the six novels we picked represent the best fiction-writing of the past forty years and that each one of them will stand the test of time. As to which of the six is the most important, and the most enjoyable, the Best of Booker - that is up to the readers to decide.’

While I’ve only read one of the titles listed, the list seems fair by all accounts, as all of the titles share a certain reknown that many other Booker winners don’t (Paul Scott’s Staying On anyone?) but I’m saddened to see that Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day didn’t make the final cut. Perhaps this shows what we’ve known all along regarding Booker judging panels in that they are out of touch with the readers. But we all know that the most popular book isn’t always the best book otherwise Harry Potter books would have been regular candidates for the regular Booker. So public be damned. Although it will no doubt come to pass that Midnight’s Children, as it was in 1993, will continue to reign as the Best of the Booker.

One other thing: it is strange to see Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist listed as potentially the Best of the Booker since it couldn’t hold its own against Stanley Middleton’s Holiday, back in 1974, when both books scooped the prize. Middleton, where are you now?

Whittled down from over 100 titles to a longlist of 17 announced in January, the titles were again reduced in March to a final 6. And now, in a ceremony this evening, the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced. The 2008 Prize has gone to Paul Verhaeghen for his own translation from the Dutch of Omega Minor, published by Dalkey Archive.

Since the £10,000 prize is split between both author and translator, Verhaeghan is eligible to the full amount but, instead, declined the money, much as he had done with the Flemish Culture Award. Instead, referencing the war in Iraq, he has asked for the money to be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union because:

“Withholding the tax portion of those 10,000 pounds from the US Treasury will shorten the war by a mere eye-blink-its cost is currently 3,810 dollar per second-but the ACLU can use that money to great effect in their legal battles against torture, detainee abuse, and the silence surrounding it.”

You can read his full non-acceptance speech on the Dalkey Archive site.

There’s not much I can say on the book as I’ve not read it. I’ve not even seen a copy in any book stores although I’m sure that will soon change. I’m a tad unhappy with myself for not reading it - or, indeed, any of the six shortlisted titles - as I had intended to do. But as one of my countrymen once said, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley” and I’ll just have to accept that.

If anyone is interested in discussing Paul Verhaeghen’s Omega Minor, there’s a thread on it over on the World Literature Forum. There’s also one on the subject of the prize itself.

When it comes to Jorge Luis Borges, I’m more aware of him and his contribution to letters than I am versed in him. A few short stories from Labyrinths is about as far as I’ve delved, but his legacy extends far beyond his own works and he has, in some form, appeared in the works of others. As Jorge of Burgos in Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose or Zampano in Mark Z. Danielweski’s House Of Leaves. In both instances the character, like Borges, is a blind man

Borges became blind in later age and would ask people to read for him. One of the many who did just that is Alberto Manguel who, when sixteen, received the request and would read books and poetry aloud to Borges for the next four years. In With Borges (2006) Manguel reminisces over this period of his life, giving accounts of the man himself interspersed with fragments of narrative, both of which combine to provide an interesting, if slight, portrait of arguably Argentina’s greatest writer.

It’s an intimate picture, depicting the close relationship between the two, Manguel admitting the influence Borges had on his understanding and appreciation of literature:

…the conversations with Borges were what, in my mind, conversations should always be: about books and about the clockwork of books, and about the discovery of writers I had not read before, and about ideas that had not occurred to me, or which I had glimpsed only in a hesitant, half-intuited way that, in Borges’s voice, glittered and dazzled in all their rich and somehow obvious splendour.

And while Manguel does talk of his experiences, much of the book is given over to the character of his mentor, a man to whom books were everything (”his world was wholly verbal: music, colour and form rarely entered it”) and, far from being a writer, was the perfect reader of the world:

For a man who loved to travel but who could not see the places he visited…he was singularly uninterested in the physical world except as representations of his readings. The sand of the Sahara or the water of the Nile, the coast of Iceland, the ruins of Greece or Rome, all of which he touched with delight and awe, simply confirmed the memory of a page of the Arabian Nights or the Bible, of Njals Saga or of Homer and Virgil.

It’s fascinating to imagine this, the imagery of man who can’t see. Yet in his head were words - passages of prose, lines of poetry; always retrievable - being constantly edited, reshaped, and rewritten. Manguel sprinkles his recollections with a few anecdotes about Borges’ capacity for recollection and composition, and how he used it to satisfy a wry sense of humour.

Amongst all the facts and stories, one of the more interesting - and surprising - aspects of Borges, Manguel notes, was his library:

For a man who called the universe a library, and who confessed that he had imagined Paradise ‘bajo la forma de una biblioteca‘, the size of his own library came as a disappointment…

But what was in it contained “the essence of Borges’s reading” - encyclopaedias, dictionaries, volumes of epic poetry, and novels by Joyce, Kipling, Chesterton - and Manguel also provides a sizeable list of those Borges rejected (e.g. Proust, Balzac, García Márquez).

Manguel finds space to talk about Borges time with Adolfo Bioy Casares (”the most important relationship in Borges’s life”) and, talking of their collaborate efforts, the Casares’ home life, and the magnitude of their conversations, in aspects of science, religion, and the arts. There’s even a funny story regarding the death of Casares’ dog that, in true Borgesian humour, complements the themes that dominate his literature.

Amongst all the names - of friends, of books - Manguel recalls more poignant moments spent discussing the other infinities of life. Like being a tiger. But at the same time hints at moments of cruelty and casual racism. Overall, though, Borges comes in for much praise - not just for his work, but for renewing the Spanish language by way of borrowings from other tongues. Interestingly, though, he is remembered as a man who had little regard, in a physical sense, for his own work. That he should go down as a reader of the world over one of its writers certainly feels apt. On whether history remembered him at all, he was indifferent:

…it was his work, his material, the stuff on which his universe was made, that was immortal, and for that reason he himself did not feel the need to seek an everlasting existence. “The number of themes, of words, of texts is limited. Therefore nothing is ever lost. If a book is lost, then someone will write it again, eventually. That should be enough immortality for anyone.”

Although, only sixty pages in length, Manguel uses each one effectively and produces a wide ranging picture of a man, his city, his loves, his hates, and his philosophy. In Borgesian terms it need never have been written at all:

“[Borges] likes to imagine a universe in which magazines and books are not necessary because every man is capable of every magazine and book, of every story and every line of verse. In this universe…every man is an artist and therefore art is no longer necessary…“

He was a man that could cheat death by being infinitely possible: in life, in literature, and in memory.

In my love of books I’ve been a member of many book related communities on the web these past five years. Most of these tend to be general book forums, encompassing as much as possible. To me, this can lack focus and while it can encourage larger membership, the chances of two or more people reading - or at least having knowledge of - the same book is less than a focused subject.

Aside from the general book forums, there are communities online for thrillers; communities for sci-fi, horror, and fantasy; communities for romance; and even communities dedicated to a specific series of books or author. Nowhere online did I find an online forum for the discussion of translated literature.

So to this end, I’ve created World Literature Forum, which I hope will offer an area of the internet for people to discuss, review, recommend and publicise translated works. Fingers crossed.

In a world where books come and go at a seemingly increasing rate, so fast that by the time the Booker, Costas, and Orange have been won, attention turns to the next year’s hopefuls, praise be to the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. This is one award that feels more laidback, if only because the titles making its longlist, as regards publication, are quite a bit behind the crowd.

Nominations to the longlist come from participating libraries worldwide, which gives the award a unique slant, since titles in other awards typically are nominated by their publishers. And what a longlist it was, coming in string with a phenomenal 137 titles. Who’d be a judge? But judges there are, and they’ve whittled down the list to a more manageable eight.

The shortlist for 2008 is:

• The Speed Of Light, Javier Cercas
• The Sweet And Simple Kind, Yasmine Gooneraratne
• De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage
• Dreams Of Speaking, Gail Jones
• Let It Be Morning, Sayed Kashua
• The Attack, Yasmina Khadra
• The Woman Who Waited, Andreï Makine
• Winterwood, Patrick McCabe

Of the titles, half are in translation, which is something else that makes the IMPAC Dublin an interesting award. But while it offers up a number of titles that may have been missed first time round, there’s still the sense that in the fast moving world of publishing, the titles, no matter how timeless they may come to be, are a little dated. Whoever wins won’t care, though, as the prize is €100,000 (split 75%/25% to author/translator in instances of translated works).

The winner will be announced on 12th June, 2008.

Having had the experience of reading Gordon Burn’s fiction - Fullalove, a novel about a hack journalist intruding on the bereaved to get a story - and his non-fiction - Best And Edwards, a literary account of the lightning quick and slow burn deaths of Duncan Edwards and George Best - and favouring the latter, it now seems Burn is intent on blurring the lines between both as his new book, Born Yesterday: The News As A Novel (2008), is exactly as the subtitle implies: the news…as a novel.

It’s a strange conceit, taking real life events and making a fiction of them, but in a roundabout way that’s exactly what happens everyday in the newspapers, on television, on radio. So here, with “the curiously intimate knowledge the world garners about an unknown figure” Burn, with himself as narrator, finds himself obsessing over important news stories and reporting back not the truth, but what susbtitutes for truth these days.

The news. Always something - usually unpleasant - happening far away to a stranger; to somebody else, somewhere that we’re lucky not to be.

The news, in this case, is predominantly focused around July 2007, in which Britain underwent “a summer of disappearances, absences, some voluntary, others not” and its cast of characters should be recognisable to anyone who followed the larger news stories of the year: Kate and Gerry McCann, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Smeaton, and Kate Middleton. Add to these the stories of floods, foot-and-mouth outbreaks, and meaningless stabbings and shootings and it shows the bleak landscape of a year fresh in the memory.

As is common in Burn’s work he turns his attention to the notion of celebrity and works with Warhol’s dictum that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. And the fifteen minutes of many characters here come by horrific circumstances.

With John Smeaton (”working-class, Scottish, plain-talking man of the people”) it’s the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport and his taking the fight to a flailing terrorist that elevates him in the public eye, first as a media sensation, then political pawn:

By his second visit to number 10 in October, SuperSmeato was wishing he could just stay at home with his Xbox for a week. Have a few nights in his own bed. Even better, he would be up in the north of Scotland, fly-fishing. His mobile would be back at home, switched off, and nobody would know where he was.

In opposition to Smeaton’s media rise, there’s the tale of the McCanns, Kate and Gerry (”controlled, collected, articulate, focused”) who sought to use the media to help find their missing daughter, Madeleine, only to find themselves, because of the way the presented themselves, turned against:

‘We’re normal people,’ Kate McCann protested when her family’s transition from being unknown to well known, and the perks that come with the transition - a hotline to senior members of the government, for example - were just starting to raise resentments: the first signs of a backlash were beginning to become apparent in eruptions of public volatility and paranoia.

The largest news story running through Born Yesterday, however, is the handover of office from Tony Blair (”One minute [he] was part of the national static, and the next he was gone.”) to his Chancellor, Gordon Brown (”an analogue politician in a digital age”). Where the Blair government was much like the media in spinning on the truth to its own ends, always presenting an optimistic mask, Brown’s tenure started differently:

The crises that piled up around Gordon Brown in his first weeks of office - the attempted terrorist attacks on London and Glasgow, the summer floods in the midlands and the north, foot-and-mouth: fire, flood and pestilence, a marvellous start for a son of the manse, as a number of people pointed out - these gifts from the gods required him to be thunder-faced, decisive, dogged, statesmanlike. The one thing they didn’t require him to do was the thing he had always had a problem with: they didn’t require him to smile.

As narrator, Burn is regularly out and about, and in the opening scene is walking through a park sometimes frequented by Margaret Thatcher and it’s here that we get the first sense of the novel’s purpose:

In office, Mrs Thatcher never read newspapers. She only read what her press secretary Bernard Ingham told her was in them. Out of office, though, the rumour mill insists she has all the papers brought to her every morning, when she sets about them with a marker pen, highlighting idiocies, striking through innaccuracies, furiously scribbling comments and corrections in the margin.

One can only assume that Burn himself echoed this action, working his way through the news of 2007 to produce Born Yesterday and instead of making corrections, made connections. For while it ultimately means nothing, he can’t help but linger on the fact that Gordon Brown, Madeleine McCann, and the first suspect in her disappearance, Robert Murat, all have problems with their eyes; or that Gerry, Kate, and the terrorists in Glasgow and London were all, to some extent, involved in the medical profession. In getting behind these connections, Burn offers up musings that add depth to what we get from newspapers, television, and radio:

It is often said that today’s abundance of media images create a screen between the individual and the world, and that this is the source of the feeling we all increasingly have of seeing everything but of being able to do nothing. The media gives us images of everything - but only images.

Despite how high profile the stories recounted in Born Yesterday are, they still make for compelling reading in the way, Burn as prose stylist, evokes the misery of somehow being involved. Sometimes it can venture into duller territory, when providing backstory, but overall its a interesting work, full of memorable characters, literary references, and an excellent eye for detail. By giving an account of exactly what was going on in 2007, it must surely be the definitive state-of-the-nation novel.

Here begins my Roth odyssey. And where better to start than the beginning? So, with that obvious logic in mind, the first in an oeuvre spanning twenty-eight books (a mix of fiction and non-ficton; of standalone and series novels) is Goodbye, Columbus (1959), a novella of around one hundred pages that won the National Book Award in 1960. Bundled with it are five more short stories, each complementing the greater work in theme and style. One may assume by its length that this was Roth stepping up, stretching those muscles in search of a novel.

In reading around the book it’s interesting to note that it caused controversy in its day for the unflattering portrayal of some Jewish characters. But with Roth himself coming from a Jewish background, and the stories showing hints of autobiography, it would seem he was at least in a position to be critical about the Jewish lifestyle. Of particular delight, is that in almost fifty years it has lost none of its bite.

In Goodbye, Columbus there’s a young Negro who comes regularly to the library where Neil Klugman works and sits each time with a book of Paul Gaugin’s exotic paintings, dreaming of Tahiti (”That ain’t no place you could go, is it?”). It’s a fitting metaphor for the novella’s main focus, the summer relationship between Neil, a poor boy from Newark, and Brenda Patimkin, a spoiled girl whose father, having laboured at his business, has moved the family on up from Newark to an affluent suburb.

Neil gets invited to the local country club twice: first by his cousin, where he meets Brenda; then by Brenda herself, after asking her out. Despite their social differences, they come together - Brenda doesn’t ask many questions - and find their fondness for each other growing:

We came back to the chairs now and then and sang hesitant, clever, nervous, gentle dithyrambs about how we were beginning to feel towards one another. Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them - at least I didn’t; to phrase them was to invent them and own them. We whipped our strangeness and newness into a froth that resembled love, and we dared not play too long with it, talk too much of it, or it would flatten and fizzle away.

That the froth only resembled love is no doubt fitting for this coming of age story. Given the frequency with which they engage in sex in her parent’s house, it’s clear that lust is more appropriate. Regardless, it fills a summer. But all good things come to an end and the ultimate breaker in the relationship is perhaps dated for readers of a more promiscuous age, eliciting more shoulder shrug than shock. Nevertheless, one can’t forget the novella is of its own time and, riding a wave of strong writing and excellent dialogue, it does it well.

The coming of age theme is reflected by way of Brenda’s athletic brother, Ron, introduced in said pool “like a crew-cut Proteus rising from the sea.” Ron’s at that stage in life where marriage is on the mind, but he’s nostaligic, looking back to past glories. Aside from music, his favourite record is a recording of his last day at school (”‘Big Ron’s last game, and it’ll be some time before Buckeye fans forget him’”) in which a voice offers a rallying cry to the university, reflecting on growing up:

“For many this will be their last glimpse of the campus, of Columbus, for many many years. Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls. But not from its memories. They will be the concomitant, if not the fundament, of our lives. We shall choose husbands and wives, we shall choose jobs and homes, we shall sire children and grandchildren, but we will not forget you, Ohio State. “

Walking out into the world echoes the other major thread running through Goodbye, Columbus: assimilation. The Patimkin’s are a Jewish family and while they try hard to maintain their traditions, they find themselves, at the same time, trying to hide their heritage. The father thinks nothing of paying thousands to have the bend in his childrens’ noses fixed. Ultimately, Neil, a lapsed Jew, can’t assimilate into this family and, like Ron’s class of ‘57, it’s time to leave. “No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head, if you can’t afford the fare.”

Of the other stories, each tackles contemporary issues of post-war Jewish life, mirroring Goodbye, Columbus’ notion of assimilation. The Conversion Of The Jews, about a young boy who questions Jewish teaching, is an obvious standout for its controversial conclusion, but it’s Defender Of The Faith, about a Jewish sergeant trying to help other Jewish soldiers under his command with their army life, that feels more complete. The others are lesser players, the final, Eli, The Fanatic, proving itself predictable and an unsatisfactory ending to the whole package. But while it’s Goodbye, Columbus, it’s hello to me, this new explorer on the sea of Roth.

Alain Elkann has, in the last thirty years, published over twenty books spanning essays, biography, and fiction. Envy (2006) is the first, as far as I’m aware, of his works to be translated into English and given that much of its action takes place in London, it may well have made itself a prime candidate for introducing him to an English speaking audience. That it’s central concern, as implied by the title, is a universal one probably helped too. And being published in the’ Pushkin Modern range ensures the container is as good as the content.

Envy tells the story of Giacomo Longhi, an Italian writer, who, having heard much about him, wishes to interview the great English artist, Julian Sax. It’s not that easy, though, as Sax isn’t the sort who likes granting interviews and there’s a wall of people - friends, relatives, other artists - who all know him, promise to ask him about the interview, invariably coming back with apologies.

Julien Sax (”a seductive man with a disturbing gaze”) is seen as the world’s greatest living artist and details about him emerge from all manner of associated people. He is “the grandson of Ludwig Sax, the most important scientist of the last century!” and, as one person notes:

“He has an ambiguous relationship with money and with women. He is very reserved and arrogant too, in a certain sense. But he is undoubtedly an extraordinary artist.”

When people get on to the subject of Sax, they linger long on the details of his life:

His turbulent past, moments of great debauchery, his vast brood of illegitimate children, his rebellious side, and his arrogance, were all subjects that triggered endless anecdotes.

These aren’t merely details, but clues, for Elkann is describing, in all but name, Lucien Freud. But the novel is not so much about Sax as it is about Longhi’s perception of the man and it’s this that produces the more interesting sections of self-analysis as he tries to understand why he envies the artist:

I am interested only in Sax because I realise I envy him, I envy the security of a talent confirmed by critics, collectors and market prices all over the world. The great, recognised artist is perhaps the only man who does what he wants, lives as he wants, while his life becomes a legend. Perhaps I haven’t really admitted this even to myself, but I’d like my life to be a legend too.

Throughout the novel Longhi has, on discovering where he dines, plenty of opportunities to introduce himself to Sax but is too hesitant. In his eyes, the artist is “a part of an extinct race, that of the great personalities” and this may go some way to explaining his timidity. At one point he spies a woman interviewing him and resolves only to sit at the next table and listen in.

In discussing how he’s unable to get Sax out of his head, a friend suggests that he write a novel about him. And in a piece of dialogue, Elkann uses this opportunity to show the reader why his novel uses thinly veiled characters rather than explicitly name them:

“Are you sure that this obsession of yours doesn’t hide a desire to write a book about him?”
“No, as long as he’s alive that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because I would have to tell the whole truth.”
“But people write novels because they are imaginary stories, you can tell the truth in them.”

Thus Envy becomes the planning of a story - a crime novel, with Sax as victim. Essentially it’s a retaliation against the fear that, like many women before her, his wife will submit to the artist, become his lover, only to be discarded.

Through his work, he can dominate any woman: the most sophisticated, the most cultured, or the coarsest, who on seeing herself portrayed reacts with either love or hate, but in both cases feels mastered and flattered. Literature today no longer has that power.

Surely autobiographical in nature, Envy is an interesting treatment of its subject matter and provides a strong grounding for many of its ideas. While there’s the sense that more could have been said, especially on the subject of art and of being an artist, the conclusion is satisfying - to Longhi’s novel, and to Elkann’s. Literature’s power may be waning, but it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

It’s that time of year again. No, not Easter, but for the announcement of the UK’s least interesting literary prizes. With the Man Booker there’s the sense that publishers are submitting the best of the best (if never to see them win) and the Costas, let’s face it, are there to mop up the best of the rest. But the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction? It proudly claims to be “the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman”. But what relevance does it have today when even by its own admission, as per its FAQ page, it’s set out what it achieved to do (especially with women scooping the Nobel, the Man Booker, and the Costa Best Book in 2007) :

At the time it was set up the considerable achievements of women novelists were often passed over by the major literary prizes.

The founders of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction wanted to do something about that. Which they did, very successfully.

Many years on from its creation and nobody can say women novelists are passed over by the major literary prizes.

As happens every year, a battle of the sexes (with each side infighting, too) arises and there’s no exception this year with novelist Tim Lott firing the opening salvo by declaring the prize “a sexist con trick”:

Women are predominant, in terms of numbers and power, in most of the major publishing houses and agencies. They sell most of the books, into a market that largely comprises women readers. They are favoured by what is overwhelmingly the most important publishing prize (the Richard and Judy list), and comprise most of the reading groups that drive sales. Girls in schools are more literate than boys, and pupils are taught reading mainly by female teachers promoting mainly female writers.

Following up on this, in the Times were John Sutherland’s claim that “ghettoising women writers did them more harm them good” and A.S Byatt’s declaration of the award being sexist and that she doesn’t allow her novels to be submitted for consideration. Anita Brookner, apparently, also feels the same. Back in 1998 Nadine Gordimer refused to be shortlisted for the prize on the grounds that it recognises only women writers. Either way, Times editor, Erica Wagner, has tried to get the last word in, urging detractors to “get over it”:

Get over the idea that prizes given to novels – of any kind, stripe, gender or nationality – can, in any way whatsoever, be described as “fair”.

Wagner’s claim is that if they have done anything wrong it’s the appointment of Lily Allen to the judging panel. Big deal! Referring back to the FAQs, the prize is exclusively judged by women “to celebrate women’s critical views as well as their writing”. Although it’s all supposition about Allen’s critical ability, the prize doesn’t set such a bar on its judges - as long as they have views.

On discussing the creation of the longlist the chair of the judges, Kirsty Lang, claims that the misery memoir has infected fiction penned by women:

Reading 120 books I did find myself thinking, ‘Oh god, not another dead baby’,” said Kirsty Lang, as the longlist for the prize was announced. “There were a hell of a lot of abused children and family secrets.”

The others responsible for this year’s longlist are Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, writer Bel Mooney, novelist Philippa Gregory, and singer Lily Allen.

The longlist, then, is as follows:

• The Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani
• The Room of Lost Things, Stella Duffy
• The Keep, Jennifer Egan
• The Gathering, Anne Enright
• The Clothes on Their Backs, Linda Grant
• The Master Bedroom, Tessa Hadley
• Fault Lines, Nancy Huston
• Sorry, Gail Jones
• The Outcast, Sadie Jones
• The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, Lauren Liebenberg
• When We Were Bad, Charlotte Mendelson
• In The Dark, Deborah Moggach
• Mistress, Anita Nair
• Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill
• The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak
• The Septembers of Shiraz, Dalia Sofer
• The End of Mr Y, Scarlett Thomas
• Monster Love, Carol Topolski
• The Road Home, Rose Tremain
• Lottery, Patricia Wood

So twenty titles, seven debuts, and no place for big hitters like A.L Kennedy’s Day, Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, or Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods. Given the complaint about misery memoirs, it’s a wonder Anne Enright’s The Gathering made the cut.

The sad thing is that by directing the prize at women writers and readers it is effectively depriving itself of the women writing the types of books the prize would no doubt like to promote but have the sense to see that it has met its own goals and ran its course and that positive discrimination is still discrimination. And if a women takes the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction when it’s announced next month then that must surely put another question mark over the Orange Prize’s relevance.

The shortlist will be announced on 15th April, 2008, with the eventual award ceremony taking place on 4th June, 2008.

When it comes to writing a novel, there are two approaches: doing it for the art and doing it for the money. In James Meek’s novel, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent (2008), Adam Kellas is doing it for the money. And why not? His career as a warzone reporter is fraught with danger and journalists in his line of work go from one contract to the next. Writing a commercial thriller and the subsequent sales would give him the security he needs in order to sit down and write the books he really wants.

And security is what he needs, what with a divorce behind him, adding to a history of relationships which never work out and he finds difficult to get over. One such affair was with an American journalist, Astrid, during his time in Afghanistan. Yet one day, while boarding a helicopter, she jumps out as it’s taking off and he never sees her again. It’s no surprise that such a lack of closure should play on his mind. That he should let it guide him, well that’s another matter.

So when he receives an email from Astrid asking him to come and see her, he doesn’t think twice about boarding a plane, without even so much as a coat. (”He had wanted to see her for a year and now she asked to see him, and he was coming.”)

The subsequent journey fills the greater portion of the novel, although little of the journey is described. Not because it would be boring, but because Kellas is too busy wrestling with recent events to notice what’s going on. Women have left him, he’s quit his job (the book advance is a six figure sum), the war is getting to him, and in one explosive set piece, he lays waste to his best friend’s house. It’s no surprise, therefore, to hear the announcement of ‘we are now beginning our descent’ as the plane comes into New York. But for Adam Kellas, he has already begun, casting off partners, his job, and friends along the way.

That Kellas was inadequately dressed for the season marked him as a loser. The suit and shoes were plain enough warning in themselves that here was someone in themidst of their descent from security to insecurity, a man yet to settle in his new location on the bottom.

Like Kellas, Meek is no stranger to reporting from undesirable countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. So, with the benefit of experience, the sense of place brought to the novel’s locations is impressive and feels authentic. One can almost imagine the half-buried Soviet machinery “digested by the tissue of the road” and the feeling of being there, as it happens, with other journalists pushing for stories in the face of tragedy really shines through:

A barefooted Afghan man in grimy grey clothes and a gold c