Long list, short list, hit list

Speaking Volumes

Like war veterans, they will meet in small clusters to share their war stories: the hopeful self-published novel that features Adam and Eve as the main characters, and in a stunning twist, Jesus Christ as well; the umpteenth novel about a woman in a dark room confronting the spectre of a mid-life crisis; the new novel that blends technobabble with dour philosophy; the box of books lying unopened that they overlooked and had to read in the two days before the long list was announced.

This is not entirely exaggeration. When DJ Taylor penned this year's more or less obligatory account by a Booker judge of what the process is like, he could not prevent a certain hollowness from creeping into his sentences. It was the voice of a man whose soul had been subjected to a terrible ordeal. "Books "" even very good books "" are sickly things when seen en masse," he observes early on.

And he can barely repress a shudder when describing the thing itself: "On the one hand there is a terrible sense of everything blurring "" plots, characters, even lines of dialogue from individual novels bleeding effortlessly into each other so that all that remains is a kind of gargantuan film set on which three dozen movies are being made simultaneously. On the other, your scent seems mysteriously to sharpen, to the point where no authorial confidence trick seduces, no shift of motive or resolution escapes your grasp. In a crime novel the culprit's identity shines out from the second chapter."

Pity the judges. They have wrung every ounce of enjoyment from the stack of books in front of them until they're left with just the pith "" it's up to the rest of us to savour the juice. And that there is in plenty.

The Booker is one of the few literary prizes in the world that issues first a long list, then a short list, before announcing the winner. This ploy, no doubt dreamed up in the fiendish brain of a marketing genius, ensures that the Booker remains in the news for well over three months. Even speculation over who's going to be the next Nobel Literature Laureate doesn't go on that long.

This year's long list has been described as "inclusive", which is something of an understatement. It has everything from a novel about a writer whose love for animals made it hard for her to stomach the human race (Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, to a book about an autistic boy (Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) to Monica Ali's immigrant-in-London saga, Brick Lane.

There are big names in plenty: Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Graham Swift and Coetzee. There are surprises: what, no Peter Carey? There is, of course, gossip: Tibor Fischer cruelly dismissed Amis' Yellow Dog last week, calling it embarrassingly bad. His piece in the Daily Telegraph caused some comment, particularly since he opened it with a petulant whine about his agent, Andrew Wylie.

(The latter has been compared variously to a shark and a jackal, with animal lovers protesting that neither species shares Wylie's particular talents.) The judges politely indicated to the media that they disagreed with Fischer's opinion. Fischer's own novel didn't make the Booker cut, so perhaps it hasn't been a very good week for him.

And after Yann Martel's surprise win last year, no one dares to write off the less luminous names, from Jonathan Raban to DCB Pierre to Damon Galgut. We've heard the gun go off, some of the sure shot bets have already stumbled at the gate, and as dark horses go shoulder to shoulder with thoroughbreds, all that literary editors and commentators in the UK will say, warily, is that it's anyone's race.

Somewhere in the depths of London, a bunch of over-read judges are discovering that they may have cut down over a hundred books to a mere 22, but that doesn't mean they can forsake the printed page. These have to be rendered down to six, and then a winner chosen.

Their lives as they knew it are mortgaged irrevocably for the next few months. After that, they may never read again, or at any rate, never with that first fine careless rapture "" but that's the price you pay for being on the panel.

The Booker prize long list

Monica Ali, Brick Lane

Martin Amis, Yellow Dog

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Carol Birch, Turn Again Home

Melvyn Bragg, Crossing the Lines

JM Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

Julia Darling, The Taxi Driver's Daughter

Gerard Donovan, Schopenhauer's Telescope

Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor

Barbara Gowdy, The Romantic

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal

Francis King, The Nick of Time

Shena Mackay, Heligoland

Clare Morrall, Astonishing Splashes of Colour

John Murray, Jazz etc

Julie Myerson, Something Might Happen

Tim Parks, Judge Savage

Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore

DCB Pierre, Vernon God Little

Jonathan Raban, Waxwings

Graham Swift, The LIght of Day

Barbara Trapido, Frankie & Stankie

(NB: The series on science writing will recommence next week. With David Quammen included, to the reader who asked plaintively why he was being left out.)

nilroy@lycos.com