No Rooney or Toibin – this year’s Booker longlist is all about the Americans
Australian author Charlotte Wood is in the running for the prize, but with a longlist featuring few bestsellers, who is this really for? | SEE THE LIST
This year’s Booker Prize longlist is all but guaranteed to reignite the row about opening up Britain’s premier literary prize to Americans. Six out of 13 authors are American, leaving room for only three from Britain and one from Ireland. There are none from the Indian subcontinent, Caribbean or Africa, except British-Libyan Hisham Matar.
You will often hear British writers complain that opening the prize up in 2014 was an error. America’s National Book Award and Pulitzer are open only to American residents. But Americans aren’t all delighted either. More than one US publisher has told me that a Booker listing was one of the few ways of generating excitement for books published elsewhere. In the past ten years Americans have cemented their dominance, confirming the fears of writers such as Julian Barnes and AS Byatt that whatever the prize gained in glitz it would lose in character. That’s no argument against the writers on this list. I just wonder who was left off.
We could also spend a while on the lack of household names: where are Sally Rooney (who has a novel out in September) and Colm Toibin, or bestsellers Pat Barker, Andrew O’Hagan and David Nicholls? No Elizabeth Strout either.
So it’s not a crowd-pleasing longlist. I have a few personal quibbles (Sarah Perry but not O’Hagan – seriously?). But overall, the judges have found something for everyone: stories of war and espionage, multigenerational sagas and a psychosexual thriller. There’s a tilt towards stories that span continents and decades, even centuries, which bears the imprint of the chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, author of the family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes. There’s comedy too, provided you like your humour dark.
My hope is that after last year’s divisive winner – Paul Lynch’s pretentious dystopian Prophet Song – the judges will seek something with more varied pleasures. For the past four years a man has won, and as much as I would like to see some variety, it feels as if we may not see a female winner this year. For me the prize belongs to Percival Everett or Matar – though I’ve yet to get my hands on Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake (out in September), which American critics are going wild about. A former Booker shortlistee, she might just steal it.
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape)
Following two electric short-story collections, the 42-year-old Irish writer has produced a thrillingly more-ish black comedy about a kidnapping in small-town Ireland. His crooks wear Crocs, eat Coco Pops and keep Zen rock gardens. Barrett puts hilarious words into their mouths, revealing a talent for capturing rural malcontents.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Daunt Originals)
The 35-year-old American’s debut reveals the struggles of teenage female boxers as they fight to win a tournament in Nevada. Written in short, snappy paragraphs, Headshot jumps between past, present and future to reveal how each boxer nurtures her hopes, fears and crazy thoughts. Our reviewer Laura Hackett said: “You emerge sweaty, pummelled and ready for your next fight.”
James by Percival Everett (Mantle)
The 67-year-old missed out after being short-listed in 2022 but this feels like Everett’s year. His bold reimagining of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is told from the perspective of the slave, Jim, who we discover is only pretending to be superstitious and illiterate so that his masters aren’t threatened. James has the potential to become another classic, conveying the absolute stupidity of slavery.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)
The British author, 49, follows a team of astronauts crammed into the International Space Station. The six – always “four inches of titanium away from death” – contemplate the Earth’s splendour, as continents pass beneath them. Our reviewer admired “Harvey’s stunning and rhythmical descriptions of this constantly unravelling world”.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Jonathan Cape)
It’s refreshing to hear a woman referred to as one of today’s “great American novelists”. Kushner, a 55-year-old Los Angeles-based author, has written an off-the-wall thriller about a ruthless secret agent hired to disrupt a group of ecoactivists in southwestern France. Early US reviews suggest a brainy spy novel with comic flourishes.
My Friends by Hisham Matar (Viking)
In his review David Sexton wrote: “This year’s Booker judges should begin their reading here, if they want to restore the prize’s value.” Lo and behold, they listened. The London-based Libyan author has a good chance of winning with his most political novel yet. This beautifully crafted book explores the bonds between three Libyan men living far from home. Matar, 54, is a gifted storyteller, his touch deft but delicate.
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud (Fleet)
Inspired by Messud’s Franco-Algerian family, this multigenerational epic is told by five voices over seven decades. On paper, everything about this meticulously researched saga by the 57-year-old American-Canadian appealed, but I found it flat and slow-moving.
Held by Anne Michaels (Bloomsbury)
The Canadian novelist and poet, 66, won the Women’s Prize in 1997 with Fugitive Pieces. Held revisits ideas about war and trauma, starting on a French battlefield in 1917 and spanning a century. Our reviewer was underwhelmed: “An amalgam of aphorisms in a fragmented format, Held fails to form a solid enough container to hold the reader.”
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (Harvill Secker)
The second novel from the 42-year-old (inspired by the Portishead song Wandering Star) captures three generations of a Native American family over 150 years, from the Sand Creek massacre in 1864 to the present day. We encounter a diverse cast of characters, each struggling with dispossession, erasure, addiction and the brutal legacy of forced assimilation.
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape)
The 44-year-old author of The Essex Serpent (2016) gets her first nod with this thickly plotted, sumptuously written book about faith, astronomy and loneliness. It’s the kind of virtuous, middlebrow novel of ideas that appealed to Waterstones Man (and Woman) in the Nineties – but sadly ruined by false jeopardy, hollow characters, a coyness about gay sex and far too much melodrama.
Playground by Richard Powers (Hutchinson Heinemann)
The Pulitzer-winning American, 67, writes big novels about big threats. Playground combines ideas about technology and the environment and, as is the fashion, puts a tech-bro billionaire at the heart of the action. Four people meet on an island in French Polynesia where a mysterious US consortium is planning to launch floating cities. Published in September.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking)
The first novel by a Dutch author on the longlist is a story of erotic obsession and revenge, by a 37-year-old debut writer. In the Sixties a lonely young woman finds her life shattered after her brother’s girlfriend comes to stay and she starts to feel aroused. The story asks hard questions about Dutch history, and the tone and texture are handled with real care.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Sceptre)
The 59-year-old Australian writer’s seventh novel is a spare, diary-like account of an atheist who has abandoned her city life and husband to live in a nunnery in New South Wales. A woman from her school days, now a celebrity nun, reappears to disturb the fragile equilibrium. The question at the centre is: do we turn away from suffering or do we help?
The Times
