Booker shortlist: how the critics and bookies see it
The short-list for this year’s Booker Prize is popular with readers but the critics aren’t convinced
THE WINNER of the Man Booker prize will be announced tonight. Judges have been criticised for "dumbing down" their selection this year and choosing readability over literary merit, but the public don't seem to mind. This year's Booker line-up is the biggest selling since records began. Here's a round-up of the six contenders.
1. Julian Barnes – The Sense Of An Ending
Bookies have installed Barnes as the 5/4 favourite to win the prize The Sense of an Ending. The shortest book of the six is about childhood friendship and the imperfections of memory. Booker judge Gaby Wood said: "In purely technical terms it is one of the most masterful things I've ever read." Anita Brookner agreed, calling it "brief but masterful" in The Telegraph.
2. Carol Birch – Jamrach's Menagerie
Second favourite at odds of 2/1, Birch's Dickensian tale revolves around a legend about a tiger who escapes its shipping crate to prowl the streets of Bermondsey. Gaby Wood says it does that "wonderful trick of evoking that world so well that there's no uncertainty about where it's set". But The Independent critic D.J. Taylor wasn't convinced, saying: "While crammed with elemental traumas and high-grade derring-do, Jamrach's Menagerie lacks any fundamental narrative pivot."
3. Esi Edugyan – Half Blood Blues
It has been described as part of an old story that has never been told before, and is third in the bookies' line-up at 5/2. Canadian Edugyan's novel revolves around a fictional black German jazz musician, arrested in a Paris café in 1939 and never seen again. Judge Susan Hill calls it "a wonderful, vibrant, tense novel about war and its aftermath". But despite the tantalising promise of "a black German experience", Guardian critic Bernardine Evaristo says that "the Afro-German story is once again sidelined".
4. Patrick deWitt – The Sisters Brothers
The first Western novel ever to feature on the shortlist sits at odds of 6/1. Canadian author and first-time nominee deWitt's tale is a journey through the underworld of the 1850s Californian gold rush. The Telegraph's Catherine Taylor called it "a triumphantly dark, comic anti-western", while Booker judge Chris Mullin called it chilling and gripping "from beginning to end".
5. Stephen Kelman – Pigeon English
Debut novelist Kelman's story of an 11-year old immigrant boy from Ghana, who witnesses a murder, sparked a bidding war between publishers. Bookies place it at 11/2. Booker judge Matthew d'Ancona says "it fizzes with doubts and anxieties about the way we live now". But The Independent's Alex Wheatle asks "why it had to take a white author to explore the black underprivileged to finally attract the attention of a major award".
6. A D Miller – Snowdrops
The biggest-selling novel from the shortlist, Snowdrops, had sold 11,800 copies by late September, but bookies rate it an outsider at 8/1. The Moscow-set psychological thriller is viewed through the eyes of an English lawyer living in the city during the Russian oil boom. Booker Judge Dame Stella Rimington called it "enthralling", but Telegraph critic Philip Womack compared it to a set of Russian dolls – "polished and painted, but empty inside". ·
