Here’s the 2009 Man Booker Prize shortlist.
- The Children’s Book by A S Byatt (Random House, Chatto and Windus)
- Summertime by J M Coetzee (Random House, Harvill Secker)
- The Quickening Maze by Adam Fould (Random House, Jonathan Cape)
- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
- The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)
- The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Little, Brown, Virago)
No real surprise, eh? Pity about Brooklyn, though…
There are good reviews of these novels on Kevin from Canada’s blog.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
It seems like a line-up of the usual suspects. The only two I’m really interested in (though I am in the midst of reading Wolf Hall & The Children’s Book) are Adam Fould’s and Simon Mawer’s books. I’m not familiar with either of the authors and they don’t seem to have gotten as much hype as other books on the list.
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By: tolmsted on September 9, 2009
at 2:13 am
Hi Tara, thanks for joining in the conversation :) Yes, it does seem odd that Fould and Mawer aren’t getting as much serious commentary, but I guess if one of them wins, that will change!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 9, 2009
at 6:34 pm
Thanks for the link, Lisa. It is interesting that Mawer and Foulds have been attracting the most attention on my blog — I suspect because the conventional press has paid more attention to Mantel and Byatt. I do think this is the most interesting Booker shortlist in recent years. There is a wide variety of books and, while each of them has faults, they are generally of very high quality. The jury does seem to like weighty books of historical fiction, which would point to Wolf Hall winning. I still like The Glass Room the best.
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By: KevinfromCanada on September 29, 2009
at 1:30 am
Hi Kevin, isn’t it interesting how literary blogs have changed the way shortlists impact on us as readers? Years ago, before the net, general readers outside the UK were unlikely to know about the Booker shortlist, or any other shortlist. There was never anything about it in the media, and it was in bookshops that we discovered – if we were lucky – the ones that didn’t win alongside the eventual winner. Now there is a rich and stimulating conversation about the shortlist books online, with reviews from all over offering different persepctives and bloggers championing their favourites. What’s also good is that it’s not ephemeral: the hype comes and goes each year but the conversation stays in cyberspace so that it can be enjoyed whenever the book finally makes its way down off the TBR. I love it!
And you know, Kevin, I think it’s fair to say that the litblogosphere has come to rely on *you* as the penultimate resource!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 29, 2009
at 7:52 am