The Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlist

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2011 has just been announced – and this year’s choices are somewhat, er, contentious, to say the least.

While the inclusion of perpetual Booker bridesmaid, Julian Barnes, for his novel, The Sense of An Ending, was widely expected, other hot favourites have been controversially dropped, including Sebastian Barry’s On Canaan’s Side and Alan Hollinghurst’s highly praised The Stranger’s Child.

The shortlist features four British and two Canadian novelists (only authors from the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe are eligible for the prize, thereby omitting American authors)

The most surprising feature of this year’s shortlist is the inclusion of two debut authors - Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English and AD Miller for Snowdrops.

The full shortlist is as follows (whittled down from 13 longlisted titles):

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape)
Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury Books)
AD Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic Books)

(Pigeon English has been reviewed on this blog, as has Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, links below.
**Spoiler alert**: Thumbs up for Pigeon English, resounding thumbs down for Edugyan's offering.)

Those who did not make the cut:

Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Yvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

The winner of the 2011 Prize will be announced at a reception at London’s Guildhall on Tuesday, October 18th. The winner will receive a cash prize of £50,000, while the other shortlisted nominees will each get £2,500 with a designer-bound edition of the book.

Julian Barnes

For what it’s worth, my money is on Julian Barnes – The Sense of an Ending is his fourth appearance on a Booker longlist, so surely a win for him is long overdue. But, given the unpredictability of this year’s judging panel, who knows what will happen on the night!

Review of Pigeon English:
http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/05/cautionary-tale.html
Review of Half Blood Blues: http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/08/half-blood-blues-by-esi-edugyan-missed.html

UPDATE: And the winner is ... Julian Barnes for A Sense of an Ending.

Man Booker Prize 2011 - Longlist announced!

The books longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize have just been announced.

The 'Booker's Dozen' are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

The titles were chosen by a committee of five judges chaired by the author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.

The shortlist of six titles will be announced on September 6, while the winner will be crowned at London's Guildhall on October 18.

Click here for a LoveLifeFoodArt review of Pigeon English:
http://lovelifefoodart.blogspot.com/2011/05/cautionary-tale.html

A Cautionary Tale

Pigeon English is the debut offering from up-and-coming author Stephen Kelman. Set over a period of five months, the story is narrated by an eleven-year-old boy, Harrison Opoku, who has recently arrived in London from Ghana. Ostensibly about Harrison’s struggle to adapt to his new environment, the novel provides a damning insight into the many social problems, and the very real dangers, faced by kids living in inner-city housing estates today.

Fascinated by the recent stabbing of a boy from one of the local towerblocks, Harrison, inspired by TV shows like CSI, innocently sets about investigating the murder. In doing so, he unwittingly jeopardizes the safety of both himself and his family. Throughout the book, Harrison’s worldview is unfailingly optimistic and somewhat romanticized, and as such, he remains blissfully oblivious to the dangers that lurk all around. The reader, on the other hand, is painfully aware of the pitfalls he faces, and feels immense frustration that we cannot warn him of them.

Stephen Kelman

Among the novel’s most remarkable accomplishments is the authentic voice the author captures in his lead character. Apart from Emma Donohue’s Room, I cannot recall another writer who has so successfully ‘got inside the head’ of a child protagonist. Kelman’s depiction of Harri’s internal monologue is both unnerving and captivating.

Another of the novel’s successes is its convincing characterizations. Through Harri, the reader is introduced to an intriguing cast of characters, from the relatively harmless petty thief, Terry Takeaway and his pit-bull Asbo, to the ominous gang-members X-Fire (pronounced Crossfire) and Killa. This realistic portrayal of a cross-section of inner-city life adds a great degree of authenticity to the story. The one character that didn’t quite work was the pigeon – befriended by Harrison and cast in the role of his guardian angel, the paragraphs narrated by Pigeon seemed oddly out of place. The reader was left confused as to the pigeon’s relevance to the story until the very end.

Initially, the dialogue was baffling - a combination of Ghanaian English mixed with the grating and sometimes nonsensical slang favoured by London’s tough inner-city teenagers was more than a little bewildering. (Asweh, he was just a confusionist, innit!) Fortunately, any perplexity soon dissipated once the reader got to grips with the vernacular.

Pigeon English is a story that is both harrowing and uplifting by turns. At the end, however, the reader is left with a profound sense of heartbreak - not just because of Harrison’s fate, but also because we are only too aware that this is a story that plays out, in real life, every day, in the innumerable housing estates in our capital city and beyond.

4 / 5
Pigeon English is published by Bloomsbury.
With thanks to The Omnivore (http://www.theomnivore.co.uk)