Me Cheetah: Man-Booker 2009 list

[Geoff_N]

Apologies if there is a 'proper' Man-Booker prize thread I've missed. I usually don't get around to reading the short or long list until they are either in paperback or the library. Not sure about Me Cheeta: My life In Hollywood by James Lever. Somehow stories written from the POV of animals are so contrived they don't appeal to me. Having said that I have won a minor award for a short horror written from the POV of a spoon, and have written on from the POV of a sparrow.

Also put off by the interview in today's Guardian in which James Lever puts down his own book and the miniscule  excerpt contains unnecessary adverbs.

So, I'll wait until one of you reads and loves it  before I do.

Does anyone fancy the others in the list?

The 13 books that make up the list are:

■AS Byatt – The Children's Book
■JM Coetzee – Summertime
■Adam Foulds – The Quickening Maze
■Sarah Hall – How to Paint a Dead Man
■Samantha Harvey – The Wilderness
■James Lever – Me Cheeta
■Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall
■Simon Mawer – The Glass Room
■Ed O'Loughlin – Not Untrue & Not Unkind
■James Scudamore – Heliopolis
■Colm Toibin – Brooklyn
■William Trevor – Love and Summer
■Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger

Geoff

[Rev. Austin]

I haven't heard of any of these books or authors.  I feel like a right proper uncultured swine! 

[Ed]

  Can't say I have, either, but then I don't suppose any of them contain zombies or, ghosts, or anything else that I particularly like in a book. The closest I've come to culture is reading The Time Traveller's Wife.

[Rev. Austin]

And the closest I've come to culture is reading the Sunday magazine in the Sunday Express.  ZING!

[delph_ambi]

Shame on you lot! Okay, I haven't heard of them all, but Hilary Mantel is a favourite of mine. Decidedly off-beat and spooky.

[Geoff_N]

My real life Book Group made me read Disgrace by JM Coetzee. It won Man-Booker in 1999. Set in South Africa, it tells the story of a white teacher who seduces a student and has to run.  He finds his daughter's farm, but fails to protect her from an attack. Not  set  up to be a horror book, it is nevertheless, unnerving in its reality and helplessness. Despair in the midst of hope. Light in the dark, but patchy. Excellent page-turning writing. The Disgrace is the protagonists, but also of others including victims. Very clever.

Which of Hilary Mantel is your fave, Delph?

Geoff

[delph_ambi]

Fludd. Must've re-read it loads of times. Funny and shivery at the same time. Picked the book up at random in a charity shop years ago.