Book news - Man Booker Prize shortlist

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2008 was announced today.

The shortlisted books are:

Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture
Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs
Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

The judging panel is chaired by Michael Portillo, former MP and Cabinet Minister. Other judges are Alex Clark, editor of Granta, novelist Louise Doughty, James Heneage, founder of Ottakar's bookshops and Hardeep Singh Kohli, the TV and radio broadcaster.

Before I Die

by Jenny Downham


I rarely read books twice. I know I will read this again, and again. I also know I will cry each time and that once more I will be affected by it long after I put it down.
The title (and indeed the cover picture of the edition I read) give a fairly big clue as to how the book might end. But the journey towards what becomes clearly inevitable is so beautifully written that it is impossible not to want to accompany the central character, sixteen year old Tessa, every step of the way, no matter how sad. It is written in her teenage voice and I think that is part of the magic of the book. Because you see, feel, hear even smell the situation through her eyes it is impossible to step back. The book doesn't patronise; it is uncompromising and unrelenting in facing up to her terminal illness and yet it is more about life and living than it is about dying. It is also filled with much humour which makes it feel all the more poignant

Tessa has a list. The list includes most of the things that teenagers feel they have all the time in the world to do. She wants to do everything on the list before she dies but the prognosis is bleak. She may not have much time. She asks her best friend Zoe to help her. Zoe agrees but refuses to allow Tessa's illness to redefine their friendship, and refuses to feel sorry for Tessa. Their friendship is not cute and girly it is gritty and real. It is what Tessa clings to as she watches the fear in her parents' eyes increase, as the doctors run out of the right things to say. And then Tessa meets Adam, the boy next door. With time of the essence their relationship takes on an intensity few of us may ever experience.

I won't give away any more. You must read it. Even thinking about it as I write this review is giving me goosebumps. It is extraordinary, poetic and perfectly heartbreaking.

reviewed by Lynne McAllister

Not the End of the World

by Kate Atkinson


Kate Atkinson has entitled this collection of short stories ‘Not the End of the World’. It is ironic then, that in the first story in this collection it evidently is the end of the world.

‘Charlene and Trudi Go Shopping’ is a story which makes full use of Atkinson’s deeply sensual and evocative language. It is full of visions, tastes, and sounds which explode onto the page and echo the bombs and sirens that are hidden behind the vivid tapestry that she has woven.

Like every good collection of short stories, this book has contrasting light and shade: from the deep sadness of ‘Tunnel of Fish’ to the rage of ‘Dissonance’ via the intrigue of ‘Transparent Fiction’.

One of my favourites in this collection is ‘Sheer Big Waste Of Love’. In this story we get to hear about the experiences of Addison, whose family give a whole new meaning to the word dysfunctional. In Addison, the author has created a subtly sympathetic character that we see through his own eyes as both child and adult.

Atkinson is arguably at her best in ‘The Cat Lover’, a truly astonishing tale with a startling premise and an ending that is both shocking and inevitable. This story also shows her at the height of her descriptive powers as she creates a world with elements of the real and the normal counterpointed with fantasy. She has also created some of her most beautiful imagery. ‘The queen of the north country visited the city … ice-crystals trembled like diamonds on her furs and when she shook out her cloak she left a storm of snowflakes in her wake.’

My only reservation about this volume is that the worlds that Kate Atkinson creates in her fiction can be so complex that they really need a whole novel in which to be explored. Some of them seem to burst the seams of the format of the short story. Anything that promotes the cause of the short story has to be a good thing though, and here we have a master of the art of fiction showing how it should be done.

reviewed by Helen M Hunt

The Daughter Game

by Kate Long

Kate Long's books always keep me reading. I read Swallowing Grandma on a transatlantic flight and it entertained me for the whole journey. I especially enjoy her witty, realistic dialogue, and sharply observed characters.

Her most recent novel, The Daughter Game, doesn't have so many laugh-out-loud moments as the others, but I still picked it up first thing in the morning in preference to my laptop.

The book starts with a scene where the main character, Anna, melts her headmaster with a flamethrower – letting us know that she has a good line in imaginary vengeance, and setting the tone for this lively, warm, and funny though sometimes disturbing book.

Anna is a successful school teacher, but her apparent confidence hides conflicts. She has a history of miscarriages, and is increasingly dissatisfied in her childless marriage to an ex-teacher who is now a full-time writer. All of the pressures lead her to question everything about her life, from her relationship with her dead mother to her longing for a child.

She has an affair with her brother-in-law, but he wants more from her than she can give. In school a friendship with a promising new female student becomes too intense as Anna sees her as a daughter figure.

Anna’s journey takes us from classroom to staff room, from her middle-class home to a rented caravan to a run-down slum, and I travelled with her all the way.

I have to admit I was rooting for a different ending, but the one in the book makes sense, and I guess it shows I was involved with the characters.

Reviewed by Alison Merricks

Book news - Best of the Booker

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has won the public vote for Best of the Booker prize, as widely tipped.

I'm afraid I never managed to get more than twenty pages into that one.

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

by Christopher Brookmyre

If you took all the profanity out of a Brookmyre novel it would be half the size and read like a telegram. His prose is not for the faint of heart or the weak of character; they are all full of lyrical passages that make you feel the characters can see you and that they know you. It is for this reason that Rubber Ducks is Brookmyre’s stand out work to date. While it doesn’t have the wing walking thrill of Be My Enemy or the character subtleties of Sacred Art of Stealing, it is a master class in narrative structure: the reader sees what s/he is supposed to while being shown everything.

It will come as no surprise, then, to find out it is about the world of magic, psychics and spiritualism. You will be forgiven for assuming that the book is pro-woo after reading the first person narrative of the first character but this is only the first of many things you will be wrong about (and I’m not just talking about the plot). We hear Jack ‘toddler in a supermarket’ Parlabane’s voice first hand (along with many other’s, in more than one sense of the word) and it is no less vibrant or visceral than usual.

Rubber Ducks will keep you guessing what’s on the next page while you wonder about what was on the last page so you will miss the hidden piece of the jigsaw on the page you’re reading. It’s the most fun you can have without feeling guilty for laughing; and if you do find the only impossible event in the book, you went one better than me.

reviewed by Alison Roughsedge

Submarine

by Joe Dunthorne

Fifteen year old Oliver Tate is the narrator in this first novel by an author who is already known for his poetry. I don’t know why, but I have a sense that he – the author – would be irritated to have his creation compared with Adrian Mole; but that character does provide a useful point of reference. The difference is that, some years on, it’s Oliver’s parents who are of the same generation as Mole, and are just as ineffectual, and filled with the same self-doubt and angst. Not so Oliver, whose patient attempts to nudge them into line comprise one of the many irresistible and perfectly judged threads of comedy.

While Oliver is not scouring the dictionary for obscure words to add to his already outlandish vocabulary, he is cutting a swathe through the life of his staid provincial town, armed with a lethal combination of knowingness and naivety. He is nothing if not candid, and some readers may feel there is too much information on offer in places – particularly in his determined campaign to rid himself of his virginity, “before it becomes legal.” But his shell of adolescent cynicism is never quite opaque enough to hide an attractive character. In the presence of a girlfriend’s parents, he describes himself as “appalled by my inability to seem anything other than pleasant.” I found his teenage preoccupations authentic and sharply funny, and the writing wincingly observant. I’ll be looking out for more from Joe Dunthorne.

reviewed by Christopher Bazalgette