It's been a strange year for the Booker Prize: there was a betting scandal, but other than that nobody seemed especially excited. Dovegreyreader didn't review the longlist and what were we to do without a female point of view? It was a loss to the publishers not to have her reading along. I noticed less raucousness among Booker bloggers this year--nobody can seriously regard Kevin from Canada or Asylum as rowdies--and there were fewer big names on the shortlist. I enjoyed Peter Carey's novel, but neglected to read the others on the shortlist, having eliminated three of the longlisted novels with the usual strangled "De gustibus non est disputandum."
There's been much ado about Howard Jacobson's novel being the first comic novel to win the Booker Prize. Fortunately, Jacobson pointed out in an interview with The Guardian that this was not true. "Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils won in 1986. That was comic. Even Salman Rushdie [who won with Midnight's Children] knows he is writing in the comic tradition of Rabelais and Cervantes."
The National Book Award finalists have also been announced today. The fiction finalists are:
Nicole Krauss's Great House
Lionel Shriver's So Much for That
Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America
Jaimy Gordon's Lord of Misrule
Karen Tei Yamashita's I Hotel
Perhaps I'll read one or two of these, but I've read so many contemporary books lately that I am longing for the classics.
4 comments:
I haven't read any of these, but I would put my money on "The Great House". The reason I suspect this book will win is because Krauss's last book "The History of Love" was rather under-covered and under-appreciated, and now everyone realizes this was one of the great books of the last few years. Therefore they will give the award to "The Great House" to honor her previous book.
I don't know about any of these writers except Peter Carey.
Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer. Isn't he another of the New YOrker 20-under-40s?
Yes, they are married. Jonathan Safron-Foer got a lot of praise for his forst book "Everything is Illuminated" which I didn't like that much. But I keep hearing good things about Krauss' first book, and have been tempted to read it. The New York Times had a positive review of "The Great House", but they tend not to criticize any of the expected big books, because they consider themselves part of the book industry.
I'm intrigued that I Hotel is published by Coffeehouse Press. I haven't seen that around, alas.
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