Booker longlist revisited

A follow-up to my blog of a few days ago, saying that we shouldn't get too excited by the Booker longlist, and making a few predictions as to who might be on it. Now that the longlist has been announced, what are my thoughts? In some ways it is good that the judges have decided to pare down this year's list, announcing only 13 books as opposed to the usual 20 plus. If there are only 13 books that they feel are in with a chance of coming close, then why list more than that? On the other hand, if there are only 13 books on the longlist—barely twice as many as will end up on the shortlist—it does rather expose the pointlessness of the exercise: what's the value in announcing 13 books and then, a month later, reducing it to six? Why not just scrap the longlist?

I was right about McEwan making the list (that wasn't hard) but wrong in predicting that "big names" such as Pat Barker, Jonathan Coe and Hari Kunzru would be on it. As has been widely commented elsewhere, this is an amazingly low-key list, in a low-key year for fiction. I am pleased that my one outside tip, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, earned favour with the judges. One thing that strikes me is how few of the longlisted novels are set in contemporary Britain. Only four of the 13 wholly or partly are: Edward Docx's Self-Help, Nicola Barker's Darkmans, Nikita Lalwani's Gifted, and Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost. The other novels are either set in other countries (Ireland, India, Canada) or are set in Britain but are historical (with the second world war, as ever, looming large).

One doesn't want to labour this point—it has been made before—but this does suggest either that contemporary Britain isn't very interesting, or that novelists aren't doing a good job of making it so.