Well, that was a surprise. The two longlisted books I most wanted to get on to the Booker shortlist actually made it. I’d previously thought that Satin Island in particular wouldn’t have a chance of being selected – too terse, too prickly, too abstract to be a Booker book, and I had the feeling that A Brief History of Seven Killings wouldn’t make it either, mainly because the judges – who were definitely going to wave A Little Life straight through the starting gate – might baulk at shortlisting a second 700-page epic (the 2013 shortlist wasn’t big enough to include both The Kills and The Luminaries, after all, and although both are outstanding novels, for me The Kills still stands the test of time as the more outstanding of the two).
Well, I’m intending to read at least two more of the contenders before the final announcement, so I’ll report back once I’ve done that and give my final guess as to which of these six novels might actually win.
At the moment, I still have the feeling it might end up being A Little Life. As discussed in my previous post, I think that novel is all over the place in all kinds of ways and should definitely not take the prize. But, for reasons that elude me, it seems to have gathered a momentum that makes it unstoppable. And as I said before, it has Booker book written all over it.