The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Byng bashes Booker judges

30.07.08 Philip Jones and Benedicte Page

Canongate publisher Jamie Byng has launched an astonishing attack on the Man Booker Prize judges after the title submitted by the publisher--Helen Garner's The Spare Room--failed to make this year's longlist.

Writing in the online forum on the Man Booker Prize's website, Byng stated: "I cannot respect a judging committee that decides to pick a book like Child 44, a fairly well-written and well-paced thriller that is no more than that, over novels as exceptional as Helen Garner's The Spare Room or Ross Raisin's God's Own Country."

Byng wrote, "one has to be philosophical about these things", but added that he was "certain" that The Spare Room was a modern classic that would continue to be "read and enjoyed and appreciated long after all of us are dead".

He told The Bookseller: "One is entitled to care about a book if you are its publisher."

However, Byng praised the inclusion of the Salman Rushdie, Sebastian Barry and Steve Toltz novels.

In other reactions to the longlist, the Guardian's Claire Armitstead said that "overall, we should applaud the Booker's focus on first-time novelists". She assesses: "The negative side of this is that novelty doesn't last, and there's little enthusiasm for nurturing writers through those tricky second and third books. The positive side is that it allows fresh voices to be heard, carrying new worlds and new sensibilities into the traditionally rather parochial world of English language fiction, thereby changing and enriching it."

John Sutherland asks on the Guardian website: "So what's the point of the longlist? . . . In short, the longlist is good for business. It boils the kettle." He misses Adam Mars-Jones's Pilcrow. "Because, I hypothesise, if you do the math - or, to be more precise, the geography - there is only room for, at best, two echt 'English' male novelists," he writes. "Invisibly, slots have been created. And very narrow slots they are."

In the Independent, Boyd Tonkin wonders why James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy was left off the list, but mainly praises the titles that made it. "Some less predictable contenders merit a cheer," he adds, and of Child 44, he says: "With his Stalin-era investigator in Child 44, Tom Rob Smith achieves what has so far eluded the Rankins and Jameses: a penultimate-round Booker run for an upscale detective novel."

Blog: The Booker circus

Canongate Man Booker Prize Prize Home Jamie Byng Philip Jones and Benedicte Page

Comments on this article