Meh, it's the Booker Prize

We read the shortlist, so you don't have to

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Coming up at Backstory

• Live music every Thursday in November — free, no booking necessary

  Come at 6.30pm; music starts at 7pm. Browse the upcoming line-up

• Christmas shopping nights — with live music, drinks & mince pies

  Thursdays 14th & 21st December, join us from 6pm. No booking needed.

• Janice Hallett — The Christmas Appeal

  Wednesday 29th November, 7.30pm

  Meet the “Queen of Cosy Crime”. The author of The Twyford Code and The Appeal discusses her new festive mystery.

• MATT: The Best of Matt 2023

  Wednesday 6th December, 7.30pm

  The award-winning cartoonist for the Telegraph discusses drawing the world's ups and downs which he always does with a gentle humour, never malice.

• Paul Caruana Galizia — A Death in Malta

  Monday 18th December, 7.30pm

  The very inspiring investigative journalist Paul Caruana Galizia joins us to discuss A Death in Malta, his book about the assassination of his mother Daphne, a campaigning journalist in their native Malta. It’s an astonishing story about one family’s quest for the truth, and about the fight against corruption in a modern European country.

• Coming up at the Non-Fiction Book Club: Christina Lamb (Our Bodies, Their Battlefield), Bianca Bosker (Cork Dork)

• Coming up at the Fiction Book Club: Andrew O’Hagan (Mayflies)

• SOLD OUT: James O’Brien (22nd Nov)

AS AN AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST myself, I hardly need to be reminded that some gongs are exceptionally well deserved. But prizes are odd beasts, particularly literary ones. It might be fairly obvious which books ought to be in contention for the Orwell prizes for political fiction or non-fiction. But what makes this book Booker-worthy and that one not? Should it demand something of the reader, or yield under her gaze? Should it be epic or polemic, or just a great read? Should it — God help us — have something new to say about the world we inhabit?

Judging by the difference in length, tone and subject matter between this year’s shortlist and last year’s, these are questions that are not settled even by the prize’s judges from one year to the next. And perhaps they shouldn’t be. Perhaps all a shortlist really should be is a list of books that made a panel of well-read people go “blimey!” for one reason or another. The cause of the reaction changes; the point is merely that the book should elicit one.

The big bash to announce this year’s winner is still a week away, but I think it’s safe to say that Balham’s reaction to the 2023 shortlist has been somewhat less than “Blimey”, at least if sales are anything to go by.

In the 17 days between Backstory opening and last year’s winner being announced, we sold 114 copies of the six shortlisted novels. In the same period this year, we have sold a total of eight copies of this year’s shortlisted books. (Yes, 8.) One of the books sold no copies at all. During the last 17 days, we sold more copies of 138 other books — including that literary classic Don’t Wake Santa — than the best-performing Booker nominees.

Partly this is because the shortlist are all in hardback, whereas four of last year’s list were already in paperback. (Maybe something for future panels to think about, if the intention is for the picks actually to be read?) But this is only a partial explanation: our bestselling hardbacks shifted 30, 18 and 11 copies respectively during those 17 days. We are selling hardbacks, just not the six the judges have picked.

Of course, popularity and prize-worthiness are not the same thing. And, for what it is worth, I am confident that whatever book is eventually chosen will see a big sales spike: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida was the second lowest-seller during the comparable period last year, but went on to sell dozens and dozens of copies once it was picked the winner.

But it is interesting to note that the books that were judged Booker contenders last year also seemed to strike more of a chord with readers. And only one of the books on the Booker longlist — In Ascension — was chosen by any of our booksellers (Rory, in this case) as one of their books of the year.

So, for a bit of fun, I asked the team to pick one of the shortlist each to read. The results are interesting. There are a couple of Booker picks that we seem to think have been unfairly overlooked by you, the customers. But mostly, we think you’ve got it about right: the sales figures and our reviews both come out sounding about the same… meh.

Here are our mini-takes:

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Lynch imagines a dystopian Ireland where the government is turning to tyranny and a mother must choose between family and freedom. Eilish finds herself making impossible decisions for her family when her husband, a trade-unionist who has gained the attention of the secret police, goes missing. She could flee and save her children but abandon her severely ill father. She could try and find her husband if he isn’t already dead. Prophet Song ponders the dreadful reality of war-torn countries, and asks for empathy in a world full of persecution. The prose is long and breathless, without breaks in the paragraphs, which I found difficult to relax into. This book is timely and haunting but maybe doesn’t quite reach the heights of innovative dystopian novels like The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984. Rory

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

This book defies categorisation and definition: part fable, part prose poem, all-powerful, Study for Obedience is surreal narrative fiction at its best. The unnamed narrator, who we see travel to a new country to care for her older brother, is up against it — her new neighours are at best wary of her, and at worse downright xenophobic. She cannot speak their language, despite her evident intelligence and commitment to trying, and all her clumsy attempts to communicate are taken as threatening. This study gets to the root of what obedience can be: dangerous, political, and gendered, if we take the narrator’s word for it. Bernstein’s command of language is eerily enchanting, and while I wouldn’t take this one to the beach, I’ll definitely revisit this novel when I need a gentle but powerful hit of spookiness. Megan

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

The beginning of this family-centred story drew me in with intriguing, flawed characters, each with their own problems to work through and their own journeys to take. However, at a whopping 643 pages, it was just too long for me to maintain interest. The second half of the book drifted from literary fiction to melodrama as the plot took increasingly dramatic and unrealistic turns. I was really counting on the end to deliver resolution and redeem the story for me, but it ended mid-scene with no resolution. Perhaps there is some deeper literary meaning in the second half that I missed, and perhaps someone else will be more patient! Darby

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

Western Lane tells the story from the point of view of Gopi, whose mum has just passed away. She and her two sisters are left in the care of their father, who clearly loves them but isn’t great about talking about feelings.  Instead, he decides they need a hobby and starts to take them to the local leisure centre to learn how to play squash.  They go each day and he puts them through hours of training; at home they watch videos of Pakistan squash champion Jahangir Khan.  It is clear that out of the three siblings Gopi is the one with a talent for the game and soon it is just her that he concentrates his training efforts on, setting her apart from her siblings.  

While this is going on Gopi is aware that her childless aunt and uncle are keen that one of the siblings go and live with them, something which none of them want.  This is a book about grief, siblings, paternal love and triumphing over adversity. It could have been really cheesy but Maroo avoids cliches, and instead writes in such detail about the small things and what is unsaid that you fill in the gaps yourself and really feel for Gopi. Denise

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

This grew on me… And then grew away from me again. The story is inspired by Malaga Island on which a small colony of people from various backgrounds and of mixed ethnicity lived during the second half of the 19th century. The first section of the book was heavy going, due in part to the Steinbeck-esque saga of generations, in part to the stretches of stream-of-consciousness. While I’m sure more erudite readers (e.g. Booker Prize judges) will have found the Ciceronian-length sentences technically impressive and artistic, I struggled to follow them without my mind wandering as freely as the syntax.

The second section, however, was much more my speed: coming-of-age, the innocence of young love, the brutality of prejudice. And then we were back to meandering sentences and people not doing very much. I understand why this made it onto the Booker list; it certainly achieved the Booker quota of highbrow literary references and it had an intriguing premise and an experimental style. Unfortunately, my reading experience was severely dampened by a writing style that was not compatible with my attention-deficient brain. Amy

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

This is a good example of a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up without the Booker imprimatur. It’s a debut short-story collection with an off-putting cover and dialect-heavy prose that takes a while to get used to. But I’m glad that I did pick it up. It reminded me a little bit of the experience of reading Milkman, the 2018 Booker winner set during the Northern Ireland Troubles: the two books have little in common in terms of style and content, but they both demand a perseverance on the part of the reader that ultimately pays off with a glimpse into (for me, anyway) lives very different from my own. The short stories take up different perspectives around two transformative events for one family: their decision to swap life in Jamaica for Miami and, two decades on, the physical (and slower-burning emotional) devastation unleashed when a hurricane upends their lives. Escoffery paints the family vividly and sympathetically. It adds up to a thought-provoking read. Tom

Tom