The Novel Olympics – The Booker Long List

The Booker long list of 13 was announced last week.
There is something fascinating about lists. I read the discarded grocery list stuck in the ribs of a Tesco trolley. Perhaps you do too. What kind of person buys cheap beer, expensive cat food, two mega bars of chocolate and one tub of zero fat natural yoghurt? Or four pomegranates and a shed full of fresh orange juice?

We know that websites announcing the 20 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die are nothing but clickbait yet still we click. And the fact that the advert-rich content is bland and over-written doesn’t stop us from clicking on the next vapid Six Best, 12 Things You Should, 10 Things You Shouldn’t etc or is that just me. But here is a proper list. It tells us something about the stories we are telling each other or, at the very least, the stories that publishers think we want told. And it influences what we will be reading next.  

Last year’s winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, saw a 1500% increase in sales in the week following its win, it’s been translated into over 30 different languages and the publisher have printed 230,000 copies since he won. Ever for well-known authors, it must be career changing.

I admit I bought Prophet Song because of the Booker. I have an earlier one of Lynch’s books on the TBF (to be finished) pile but it hadn’t grabbed me. I thought I’d give him another chance once he won (I’m nice like that) and I an glad I did. I thoroughly recommend it but don’t fling it into your backpack as you head off to the airport. I don’t suppose any novel long-listed by Booker could be described as a beach read, but Lynch’s claustrophobic dystopian novel shouldn’t go anywhere near sand. Read it when you get back. It is disturbing and thought-provoking. More than that, it champions empathy and is a weapon against it-couldn’t-happen-here complacency.

There could be something equally powerful in this year’s list, but first a few numbers about the 2024 Booker:
156 books were read by the judges
136 pages is the length of the shortest book
8 of the books come from the Penguin stable of imprints (including 4 from Jonathan Cape)
8 of the authors are women
6 authors have made the Booker list in the past
6 books are set in the past
5 authors are American
4 books have been described as funny
3 books are debuts
2 are in the crime/thriller category
1 author I have read before
1/2 a book is how much I have read of that authors’ work.

Enough of my list, here’s the Booker Long List

• Colin Barrett (Irish) Wild Houses (Jonathan Cape)
• Rita Bullwinkel (American) Headshot (Daunt Originals)
• Percival Everett (American) James (Mantle)
• Samantha Harvey (British) Orbital (Jonathan Cape)
• Rachel Kushner (American) Creation Lake (Jonathan Cape)
• Hisham Matar (British/Libyan) My Friends (Viking)
• Claire Messud (Canadian/American) This Strange Eventful History (Fleet)
• Anne Michaels (Canadian) Held (Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Tommy Orange (American) Wandering Stars (Harvill Secker)
• Sarah Perry (British) Enlightenment (Jonathan Cape)
• Richard Powers (American) Playground (Hutchinson Heinemann)
• Yael van der Wouden (Dutch)The Safekeep (Viking)
• Charlotte Wood (Australian) Stone Yard Devotional (Sceptre)

I want to read James by Percival Everett. I won a copy of Huckleberry Finn at my local library when I was about nine and I loved that book. I think I still have it somewhere, but it would be unreadable now with its racist stereotypes and the use of the N word, although Twain was trying to hold a mirror up to such attitudes and show them up for what they were. James is a re-telling of the story from the point of view of Jim the runaway slave, Huck’s companion, on the Mississippi. The very title reveals how different this perspective will be, but I hope poor Huck still emerges as a bit of a hero.

And then there’s an American undercover agent sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a to infiltrate a commune of French radical eco-activists…

And revenge in County Mayo where a 17 year old tries to rescue her boyfriend…

And 10 more. Maybe this year I will get to read them all.

Picture credits:
The list on the road by David Ballew on Unsplash
All the rest are from https://thebookerprizes.com/