Booker candidates
No sooner had we got used to the broad and unusually strong Man Booker longlist of 17 books, than the five judges whittled it down to a final six novels and the composition of the real race took shape. The carnage we expected before the announcement of the first list was saved for this week with neither the favourite, Ian McEwan's Saturday or the always-involved Salman Rushdie clearing the final hurdle. By hinting that these two weren't even in the final eight, the judging committee sent a message of 'not even close' to these vaunted books. For Rushdie, in a week of heavy promotion for Shalimar the Clown, it must have been a bitter way to mark the book's publication. Taking their places on the list were two surprise Irish inclusions in John Banville's The Sea and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way (above). We were also offered two women, both named Smith, with Zadie's (below) third novel On Beauty joining Ali Smith's experimental work The Accidental. Rounding off the list are the favourites; Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Julian Barnes' Arthur & George. In May we identified Never Let Me Go as the book from this summer that you could truly love, and will have our fingers crossed that he will repeat his 1989 victory when he won with The Remains of the Day. Early favouritism may harm Barnes as it did David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas last year. The UK papers have the usual insider knowledge that the judges have already a good idea who will win which may bode well for Zadie Smith's On Beauty, an American set tribute to Foster's Howard's End. At Village we will be looking at the race and competitors over the next three weeks.
American publishers are looking at a gloomy autumn as the third quarter of 2005 arrives and no work of fiction has defined 2005 or even caught the public's attention. The biggest selling works – The Da Vinci Code, The Kite Runner and Nicholas Sparks' The Wedding have been around for years and there have been no heavyweights of the quality of 2004's Gilead or The Plot Against America, which are fighting out for the Quills Best Book award. Much-hyped hopefuls like Safran Foer's Extremely Loud, Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days have disappointed. The biggest success has been Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, a literary vampire tale that's keeping Anne Rice fans happy until her new book arrives. Other anticipated successes from Patricia Cornwell, Scott Turow or Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle are at the 'pulpier' end of the market leaving a big gap in heavyweight fiction which is being filled by the Man Booker nominees until something exciting sticks its finger in the literary hole. This has meant that some books get more attention then they might otherwise have expected, like Nicole Krauss' History of Love or Kermit Roosevelt's Grisham-like thriller In the Shadow of The Law. Inevitably, this month saw the arrival of five Sudoku books in the Top 100. Maybe we're not so different to the Americans after all.
Perhaps due to the fiction vacuum, sales of non-fiction have been very strong with titles like David McCulloch's Washington history 1776, or both of Malcolm Gladwell's books Blink and The Tipping Point selling well. If George W was interested in studying modern politics, choosing his holiday reading (see last week) would have been effortless this summer. The shops are full of big non-fiction titles. Industry insiders are apparently surprised by the sales figures for Bob Woodward's The Secret Man, allegedly hurt by Mark Felt's revelation that he (Felt) was Deep Throat. Sales for Woodward's 2004 book, the Iraq war-themed Plan of Attack were much stronger. Bush is more likely to feature in ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's God and Religion in American Politics. Even if this doesn't appeal, there is a biography of prospective 2008 Democratic candidate Joseph Biden, or the newly published memoirs of Trent Lott. The former majority leader has trashed many of his ex-Republican colleagues in Herding Cats, A Lifetime in Politics. The autumn lists are heavier, with non-fiction in a season which offers numerous John Lennon books to mark his 25th anniversary in December and a new memoir from Frank McCourt, hoping to repeat the Angela's Ashes success with Teacherman, a memoir of his American days.
The dreaded summer season for news is finally over – real news is back in the papers and Morning Ireland starts at 7am again. In the desperation faced by journalists over the summer months you may have noticed several filler articles on the dilemmas of throwing away books, reorganising your shelves, using charity bookshops etc. In return for inflicting these soft features on us we can only hope they encountered a similar fate to the man who sold a box of books to a second hand dealer in Philadelphia which contained a copy of The Great Gatsby. USA Today reports that this copy identified the hero as jay, rather than Jay, Gatsby. This dropped capital identified the book as a priceless first edition, now selling for $50,000 on eBay. A cautionary tale for idea-free feature writers.