:00:16. > :00:22.The Book Review Special, our preview of the biggest event in the
:00:22. > :00:29.literary calendar, once memorably described as posh bingo. The six
:00:29. > :00:32.novels short-listed for Man Booker Prize.
:00:32. > :00:39.Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English sees the tough world of the council
:00:39. > :00:44.estate through the eyes of a young Ghanaian immigrant.
:00:44. > :00:47.Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie travels on a more exotic adventure.
:00:47. > :00:51.Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers describes a physical and
:00:51. > :00:55.moral journey en route to a killing. Esi Edugyan explores racial
:00:55. > :00:58.identity in his World War II novel Half Blood Blues.
:00:58. > :01:01.Newcomer AD Miller phrupls the depths of the Russian underworld in
:01:01. > :01:06.Snow Drops. And in his fourth appearance on the
:01:06. > :01:09.short list, Julian Barnes minds the idea of memory in The Sense of an
:01:09. > :01:16.Ending. What does our panel make of the
:01:16. > :01:22.short list? And of accusations that the Man Booker is dumbing down.
:01:22. > :01:26.Joining me tonight to discuss everything are four Booker
:01:26. > :01:31.reviewers who couldn't be more bookish. The writer and academic
:01:31. > :01:35.Germaine Greer, Cambridge English graduate now better known for
:01:35. > :01:40.Downtonne Abbey, Dan Stevens. The former Telegraph literary editor
:01:40. > :01:43.and tauter in his own right Sam Leith and Joanne Harris author of
:01:43. > :01:48.Chocolate. Between us, Dan, Joanne, Sam and me
:01:48. > :01:51.have thousands of followers on Twitter and you can find the Review
:01:51. > :01:55.Show there, too. Jermaine has yet to join the party.
:01:55. > :02:00.Time for the first two weeks on the short list, boeut of which feature
:02:00. > :02:03.young boys but -- both of which feature young boys but in very
:02:03. > :02:09.different world's. Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English
:02:09. > :02:13.draws on the killing of Damilola Taylor for its description of gang
:02:13. > :02:16.life on a South London estate. 11- year-old Harrison Opoku an
:02:16. > :02:20.immigrant from Ghana decides he will solve the murder of a local
:02:20. > :02:25.boy who has been stabbed, helped by a friend and a guardian angel in
:02:26. > :02:31.the form of a pigeon, Harri sets out wide eyed but undeterred by the
:02:31. > :02:35.violence around him. Some difficult topics are brought up in the book.
:02:35. > :02:38.Were I to explore those through an adult's eyes perhaps the tempt
:02:38. > :02:42.Taigs would be for it to become a sermon. -- temptation would be for
:02:42. > :02:45.it to become a sermon. Harri is 11 years old, he doesn't that
:02:45. > :02:52.sophistication about him, that agenda. I'm able to present the
:02:52. > :02:55.world as he sees it, pretty much black and white.
:02:55. > :02:59.Me "Me and the dead boy are only half friends, I didn't see him very
:02:59. > :03:03.much because he was older. Co-ride his bike with no hands and and you
:03:03. > :03:08.never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer for him inside my
:03:08. > :03:11.head. It just said "sorry". That's all I could remember. I pretended
:03:11. > :03:16.like, if I kept looking hard enough I could make the blood move and go
:03:16. > :03:20.back in the shape of a boy. I could bring him back alive that way. It
:03:20. > :03:24.happened before, where I used to live there was a chief who brought
:03:24. > :03:28.his son back like that. It was a long time ago, before I was born.
:03:28. > :03:32.That's why it was a Mir kepl, it didn't work this time." Pigeon
:03:32. > :03:36.English is Kell man's first novel. He himself grew up on a council
:03:36. > :03:41.estate in Luton so knows first hand how hard life can be for children
:03:41. > :03:46.in a that world. Kids like Harrison they're presented with challenges
:03:46. > :03:50.in that kind of environment. They're presented with a lot of
:03:50. > :03:57.difficulties and temptations but despite all of that you can make
:03:57. > :04:01.the choice. Harri represents that essence of self-determination.
:04:01. > :04:06.In Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, eight-year-old Jaffy
:04:06. > :04:09.Brown also inhabits the backstreets of London, but this is a 19th
:04:09. > :04:12.century slum, dominated by the stench of the Thames.
:04:12. > :04:22.Jaffy's life is changed forever when he's carried away in the jaws
:04:22. > :04:25.of a tiger. He escapes with his life and finds a new identity with
:04:25. > :04:30.Mr Jamrach, the exporter of exotic animals. Before he knows it Jaffy
:04:30. > :04:35.is on a ship headed for the East independenties, a journey that will
:04:35. > :04:39.challenge everything he knows. incident propels him into the main
:04:39. > :04:44.story. Basically he's going to grow up G to sea and have adventures,
:04:44. > :04:47.the core of the story is how people behave in extreme situations, in an
:04:47. > :04:51.extreme survival situation. It's about also coming through that,
:04:52. > :04:57.coming back at the other side of this and how you live your life
:04:57. > :05:01.after facing something more extreme than any of could you say imagine.
:05:01. > :05:06."A pod of dolphins joined us off an island of white sand and cocoa
:05:06. > :05:11.palms, rode our bow wave joyfully for a mile or two. They left us,
:05:11. > :05:16.and took with them the time of stillness. After them the breezes
:05:16. > :05:19.got up in a jolly whistling kind of way. The waves began to rise
:05:19. > :05:24.against a mountainous region to starboard, breaking hugely over
:05:24. > :05:28.miles of shimmering strand that edged a dense green jungle." Birch
:05:28. > :05:32.uses the ocean as an ultimate leveler when Jaffy and his fellow
:05:32. > :05:35.crew's survival is threatened. was partly what interested me, how
:05:35. > :05:38.different people behave in those situations, not necessarily how you
:05:38. > :05:43.would expect. The people who turn out to be heroes are not
:05:43. > :05:47.necessarily the ones you might expect.
:05:47. > :05:51.Jermaine, let's begin with Pigeon English, the novel set in a modern
:05:51. > :05:55.council estate. How well do you think Stephen Kelman gets inside
:05:55. > :06:00.the hid, the mind of this 11-year- old boy? He doesn't get insigh the
:06:00. > :06:04.head of anything because he's making up the mind of this 11-year-
:06:04. > :06:08.old boy. It's his literary construct. There is no boy out
:06:08. > :06:15.there that he's examining and getting inside of. Isn't that what
:06:15. > :06:21.authors always do? Quite. But this is part of it. He makes the boy up,
:06:21. > :06:24.he also makes up the boy's naisent sexuality. He makes up the
:06:24. > :06:30.exploration of that sexuality and the strange behaviour of the girls
:06:30. > :06:36.who keep threatening to give him a blow job and all of that. He speaks
:06:36. > :06:41.a strange language which again is Stephen Kelman's tissue of Yardie
:06:41. > :06:46.speak and invented words and so on. I'm affray, I read it through the
:06:46. > :06:50.first time and I thought hmm but I felt I had to read it again, the
:06:50. > :06:55.second time I couldn't stand it. Sam were you as unconvinced? I was
:06:55. > :07:02.in favour of the idea of an author making stuff up! I thought the
:07:02. > :07:09.voice, with a great strength of this book is the voice and it is,
:07:09. > :07:13.God alone knows if this is actually how a 12-year-old Ghanaian kid in a
:07:13. > :07:17.London council estate would talk. But that doesn't really matter. It
:07:17. > :07:23.persuades you, I thought. It sticks with you in a way his little
:07:23. > :07:28.tpraigsz, heisation "I swear all the time" -- phrases. He says "I
:07:28. > :07:34.swear all the time." All of this, in the same way, the voice is
:07:34. > :07:37.entirely sustained for me. I thought it completely worked.
:07:37. > :07:42.think there's enough charm here to deal with the suspension of
:07:42. > :07:45.disbelief. You had to suspend your disbelief? A little bit. There were
:07:45. > :07:48.areas I wasn't sure this was a Ghanaian child speaking. You had
:07:48. > :07:51.the strong sense of it being a child. He had a huge charm and
:07:51. > :07:56.innocence and a sort of weird street wisdom as well with it. He's
:07:56. > :07:58.very appealing. I'm not sure I enjoyed the pigeon interludes,ity
:07:58. > :08:03.thought they were slightly unnecessary and in a style which
:08:03. > :08:07.rankled a little, I thought. But there's a lot of heart in there.
:08:07. > :08:12.Pigeon, the magical realism where the pigeon talks to me.
:08:12. > :08:16.Pious, dream-reading pathetic pigeon. It was completely
:08:16. > :08:18.unnecessary, it shoe horned in a message that could have been told
:08:18. > :08:22.with the narrative it was. Going back to what you said about getting
:08:22. > :08:26.inside the boy's head, the structure of the in a narrative and
:08:26. > :08:30.flightly nature of it was difficult to read at times but reflected that
:08:30. > :08:33.wild imagination of an 11-year-old boy. Where the book was successful
:08:33. > :08:38.was where you had this innocent childhood, almost just William like
:08:38. > :08:46.desire to be a young detective and find stuff out begins this very,
:08:46. > :08:51.very dark estate world, this Godless, hellish place that he's
:08:51. > :08:56.trying to understand. I think that worked very well. I suppose this is
:08:56. > :08:59.a world post-the riots, although the book was written before it,
:08:59. > :09:04.post the riots we're all very interested in what goes on inside
:09:04. > :09:09.the culture of gangs? Supposing that's what you find out. What
:09:09. > :09:14.really worried me about the book on second reading when the charm bit,
:09:14. > :09:20.I was no longer discovering this strange argo that the child thinks
:09:20. > :09:26.in, he's not actually speaking, he's a narrator. But then I really
:09:26. > :09:30.felt it was a co-option of a kind I couldn't go on with. The problem
:09:30. > :09:34.with slang per se is that it einvolves so fast by the time the
:09:34. > :09:38.book comes to publication, the slang is out of date. He's writing
:09:38. > :09:42.about a non-literary world. it's not the genuine slang is
:09:42. > :09:46.anyway. Some of it and some is not. Some is Ghanaian slang. Does it
:09:46. > :09:51.matter, Sam. I don't think it matters at all. It is a literary
:09:51. > :09:56.performance as you say. I think, actually, whatever weaknesses there
:09:56. > :10:01.are in the book the patois is its great strength. But it is an
:10:01. > :10:07.invention and we were tempted to take it for an insight which is
:10:07. > :10:11.what it isn't. It's not an insight into gang culture, the boy isn't in
:10:11. > :10:14.the gang culture. I never said that. Let's move on to the second book we
:10:14. > :10:19.want to talk about at the moment which is Jamrach's Menagerie, again
:10:19. > :10:23.a young boy but not against the background of a modern gang culture
:10:23. > :10:27.and there the author is trying not just to get inside the young boy's
:10:27. > :10:32.head but also Carol Birch needs to create the historical world as well.
:10:32. > :10:36.It's interesting that you say this, because I didn't feel it was a
:10:36. > :10:39.historical world at all. I felt it was a fantasy world, to me it was
:10:39. > :10:42.Moby Dick meets the voyage of the dawn treader, there are so many
:10:42. > :10:49.fantasy elements in there that are not really touch stones against any
:10:49. > :10:56.kind of reality we know, they're these kind of strange he sodic
:10:56. > :10:59.moments like fantasy set pieces. The realistic killing of whale,
:10:59. > :11:03.very emotional but then you have the dragon which is not quite a
:11:03. > :11:08.dragon which is pure fairytale, it is all evoked in this poetic
:11:08. > :11:13.elegant language which is to me is the language of magical realism.
:11:13. > :11:16.Much more Angela Carter than Sarah Waurtsz. I completely disagree. I
:11:17. > :11:23.couldn't find anything to like in this book, I was appalled to find
:11:23. > :11:27.it on the list. I thought the prose were overcrowded which at times did
:11:27. > :11:33.resemble a menagerie, but one where the author hasn't cleared the cages
:11:33. > :11:37.out for a while. The plot went nowhere, the narrator never
:11:37. > :11:41.expressed anything, as if written by a bad tourist pointing at the
:11:41. > :11:45.banal and missing the focus of these gorgeous adventures. They
:11:45. > :11:48.cross the Atlantic in two pages! In the middle of hunting this whale he
:11:48. > :11:52.has time to reflect back on his childhood, you think, no, this is
:11:52. > :11:57.not Moby Dick at all, I thought it was a mess. Could you say the kind
:11:57. > :12:02.of jostling or lightness of the prose was echoing Dickens in any
:12:02. > :12:07.way? No. You know who I blame for this
:12:07. > :12:10.book, I blame Peter Carey because what you do is, you take an
:12:10. > :12:15.interesting historic something that happened, and you false faoeu it,
:12:15. > :12:20.and then you add your own -- false faoeu it and add your own spin to
:12:20. > :12:25.it. There is a real story there, which is true that they went
:12:25. > :12:31.looking for the dragon and called it ora in the language of the
:12:31. > :12:33.islanders and there are all these shards of historic journalistic
:12:33. > :12:37.historic fact. Then you have the careful research into what the
:12:37. > :12:43.Thames was like and it turns out there was a real menagerie and the
:12:43. > :12:50.story of a boy taken by a tiger and so on and so forth. So it all gets
:12:50. > :12:53.put together in this pseudo fact, fact lit. I think we're back to
:12:53. > :12:58.pseudo fact, is it fiction? I think you're right, there is that graft
:12:58. > :13:02.you both see between fact and fiction. I thought, I'm slightly
:13:02. > :13:06.with Dan, the problem with it for me, it was fully imagine whether in
:13:06. > :13:09.fact or not, the voice, the problem was that this was supposedly a kind
:13:09. > :13:15.of middle 19th century urchin effectively going to sea and he
:13:16. > :13:19.writes like a creative writing graduate from UEA. Massively
:13:19. > :13:23.overwritten, great poetic descriptions of the moon and stars.
:13:23. > :13:28.Yet, when you get to the amazing movements he constantly says "I'm
:13:28. > :13:33.unable to describe this." You have these characters pop up on the ship
:13:33. > :13:38.unintroduced, suddenly Jeffrey climbs down the riging, who's
:13:38. > :13:43.Jeffrey? We're seeing a lot of this media this returning again and
:13:43. > :13:48.again, Sarah Waters books, what is it about this period of 19th
:13:48. > :13:52.century history or as would you say it, fantasy, why are we drawn to it
:13:52. > :13:55.as readers? We fantasise it because we do it in real life, we see it as
:13:55. > :13:58.a period where things are it still there to be explored and horizons
:13:58. > :14:02.to be conquered. Things were emerging and being invented. I
:14:02. > :14:06.think people think of it as a more exciting time than what we have now.
:14:06. > :14:09.Of course it's very tempting to be able to fictionalise these kind of
:14:09. > :14:12.Victorian streets we think we know from all sorts of other kinds of
:14:13. > :14:20.literature and make it our own. We'll move on to different horizons
:14:20. > :14:24.ourselves now. Both the aut Hearst of our next authors from our next
:14:24. > :14:27.two books come from Canada but strayed from their home turf.
:14:27. > :14:32.Patrick deWitt's second novel The Sisters Brothers follows the wild
:14:32. > :14:35.West Odyssey of Eli and Charlie, no notorious hitmen heading on
:14:36. > :14:42.horseback across the United States to gold rush California search of
:14:42. > :14:46.their latest quarry. You'll often see this scenario in serialised
:14:46. > :14:48.adventure novels, two grizzly riders before the fire telling
:14:48. > :14:53.their stories and singing stories of death and lace. But I can tell
:14:53. > :14:56.you after a full day of riding I want nothing more than to lie down
:14:56. > :15:01.and sleep which is just what I did without even eating a proper meal.
:15:01. > :15:05.." From start to enit was about taking liberties. That was the fun
:15:05. > :15:10.of it. I knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be historically
:15:10. > :15:15.accurate, necessarily. I never wanted it to be one of those type
:15:15. > :15:18.of books, I didn't want to teach anyone about history. En route from
:15:18. > :15:24.Oregon to San Francisco the brothers meet a number of Gothic
:15:24. > :15:28.characters who spark doubt in Eli's mine over his murderous past.
:15:28. > :15:33.has a temper whorbgs went activated it transports him and he becomes a
:15:33. > :15:38.second person, his brother, who is very manipulative has been
:15:38. > :15:40.utilising that temper and through this Eli has become very capable of
:15:40. > :15:45.violence. But it's not something that he's
:15:45. > :15:52.drawn to, it's not something that he relishes. He, at a certain point
:15:52. > :15:56.just has his fill of it and feels he can't do it any more.
:15:56. > :16:02."Well, you kill a man, then his friend or brother or father comes
:16:02. > :16:07.around and it starts all over again. So, it was that Charlie sometimes
:16:07. > :16:11.found himself outnumbered, which was where I came in."
:16:11. > :16:16.Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues is a story of friendship and betrayal
:16:16. > :16:23.amongst a group of jatz musicians, stranded at the start of World War
:16:23. > :16:27.II -- jazz. Spanning five decades, Edugyan moves us between jazz-
:16:27. > :16:31.soaked Berlin, Paris and Baltimore as the guilty secrets of the past
:16:31. > :16:36.overwhelm her characters. "Of course the recording's cult status
:16:36. > :16:40.had to do the illusion of it all, not just the kid but all of us.
:16:40. > :16:45.Think about it, a bunch of German and American kids meeting up in
:16:45. > :16:49.Berlin, in Paris, between the wars to make all this wild, joyful music
:16:49. > :16:54.before the Nazis kick it to pieces. And the legend survives when a lone
:16:54. > :16:59.tin box is dug out of a dam wall in a flat which once belonged to a
:16:59. > :17:04.Nazi. Man, if that ain't a story, I never heard one." Half Blood Blues
:17:04. > :17:10.explores the experiences of three young Blackmen in Nazi Germany and
:17:10. > :17:15.occupied Paris. "Me, I was American and so light skinned folks often
:17:15. > :17:19.took me for light. Son of two Baltimore s I came out straight
:17:20. > :17:24.haired, green eyed, a right little Spaniard. In Baltimore this gave me
:17:24. > :17:28.a softer ride than some. I'd be lying if I said it ain't back in
:17:28. > :17:33.Berlin, too. When we gone out together in that city, any cout
:17:33. > :17:37.approaching us always comes straight to me. When Hiero cut in
:17:37. > :17:42.which is native German, when the gent would damn near die of
:17:43. > :17:51.surprise. Most ain't liked it, though. A savage talking like he's
:17:51. > :17:55.civilised! You'd see that old glint in his eye, like knife turning."
:17:55. > :18:01.Sam, here we have two, in a way familiar world's in fiction, that
:18:01. > :18:08.of jazz, that of World War II. Do you think Esi Edugyan has taken a
:18:08. > :18:12.fresh approach? I thought it was sort of, it was a competent, well-
:18:12. > :18:17.told, involving but not astonishing historical novel. I think she'll go
:18:17. > :18:21.on to right a great novel O go on to write a better novel, I don't
:18:21. > :18:25.think it's...it carried me along, it didn't make me think this is
:18:25. > :18:29.something really knew or fresh. The vocabulary, the kind of voice,
:18:29. > :18:32.again, there was a slippage sometimes, it wasn't always
:18:32. > :18:36.sustained. I think she didn't quite know how to end it, to be honest.
:18:36. > :18:40.She gets to the end and then doesn't know what to do with the
:18:40. > :18:44.characters and it was a perfunctory ending. I thought it was a
:18:44. > :18:49.beautiful ending, it's one of the best books about music I've read.
:18:49. > :18:53.The narrative works. The structure of it is almost like jazz, you
:18:53. > :19:01.return to these themes and then break off into sort of wild
:19:01. > :19:05.possibilities. The narrator, it drags the reader, implicates the
:19:05. > :19:10.reader in this paranoid spiral of poisonous venom against this Hiero
:19:10. > :19:14.character. I thought it was, I spent a long
:19:14. > :19:23.time thinking about why I liked it so much. I think it's to do with,
:19:23. > :19:28.it's a very clever structure and it works towards this strange kind of
:19:28. > :19:33.ERMic independent, a blind, jazz musician who has ended up on the
:19:33. > :19:35.edge of world. I thought it was Amadeus all over
:19:36. > :19:42.again. You have the envious minor musician
:19:42. > :19:47.who is the only person with enough insight to know how good this guy
:19:47. > :19:52.actually is who then destroys him and has to, and betrays him and has
:19:52. > :19:57.to live with the awareness that this thing that might have been he
:19:57. > :20:01.had destroyed. But the things that make me twitchy about it was that
:20:01. > :20:06.again it evokes a specific situation which is what was going
:20:06. > :20:11.on with music in Europe with jazz in Europe on the eve of the Second
:20:11. > :20:18.World War. The big name there is not Louis Armstrong. I don't know
:20:18. > :20:21.why she decided to make it Louis Armstrong. It was duke Ellington.
:20:21. > :20:25.She talks about Ellington as well. Louis Armstrong is an interesting
:20:25. > :20:28.one because he was at the end of his days. She talks about a lot of
:20:28. > :20:33.others as well but it's this strange sort of, because they're
:20:33. > :20:36.American, I think. Talking all the time about how joyous jazz is, you
:20:36. > :20:40.would have thought there was no such thing as the blues, she has an
:20:40. > :20:44.odd way of writing about it. interesting thing about the fact
:20:44. > :20:49.that they were jazz musicians is that these were men in the
:20:49. > :20:53.nightclub of Berlin under a vaoeud mar were feted and then the whole
:20:53. > :20:56.world is completely turned upside down by the Third Reich. Grain the
:20:56. > :21:01.interesting thing for me wasn't specifically the historical context,
:21:01. > :21:05.although it was interesting, to me it was the close relationship
:21:05. > :21:11.between these men in this smoky- half-lit world and their
:21:11. > :21:14.relationship with music which in some ways almost pwhrots out to the
:21:14. > :21:18.historical impact around them. They're completely blind to the
:21:19. > :21:23.danger and all that matters to them is the music and getting right. To
:21:23. > :21:28.me I went, for this un, yeah, this has blood, it has haert. Some of
:21:28. > :21:33.the others left me luke-warm, well written but without anything to
:21:33. > :21:38.make me want to drive me to know what happened next. It's slightly
:21:38. > :21:42.fuzzy at the end. But this idea of a road trip with these two sad, old
:21:42. > :21:45.embittered men going in search of the third one and finding him in
:21:45. > :21:51.the middle of these sculptures made of scrap metal and the wreckage of
:21:51. > :21:55.his life is such a touching image. Our next book is about a road trip,
:21:55. > :21:59.the wild West one, two men heading from Oregon towards van Fran. Sam,
:21:59. > :22:04.did you see this as a classic Western, is it very much inside the
:22:04. > :22:09.genre or does it do something else? I think this is one, probably the
:22:09. > :22:15.most outright original book on the list. It's a Western in that it's
:22:15. > :22:19.golt a sort of classic Western setting -- got a sort of classic
:22:19. > :22:24.Western setting. The assassin, The Sisters Brothers, whore houses,
:22:24. > :22:30.violent men and gold-diggers, but it's much more surreal than that.
:22:30. > :22:36.It has a bit of Cormack McCar knee in it, DNA, you can't really write
:22:36. > :22:40.about that territory without having it. MP Cormack McCarthy. You move
:22:40. > :22:44.throughout the landscape where nothing really, nothing connects to
:22:44. > :22:49.anything else, characters will appear and disappear. It almost has
:22:49. > :22:52.the feel of an algory, a Pilgrim's Progress landscape. It was
:22:52. > :22:55.cinematic,ity thought. Yeah, it's written in sequences. This is one
:22:55. > :23:02.of the interesting things about it, because they're very elegantly
:23:02. > :23:07.constructed. It's a very sophisticated book that is casting
:23:07. > :23:13.a strange light on the popular tradition of the Western. It takes
:23:13. > :23:17.all the cliches and makes them into something else, something
:23:17. > :23:23.disturbing. The description of the death of the horse, for example,
:23:23. > :23:28.anybody who cares about horses, it's reading on...absolute chilled
:23:28. > :23:33.horror as the incompetence of these two men means that this faithful
:23:33. > :23:39.horse that had always done more than could have been expected.
:23:39. > :23:43.Suddenly, the whole genre is seen athwart in a mad kind of way. It's
:23:43. > :23:48.annoying in way, because you want to build up a narrative impetus
:23:48. > :23:52.that will keep you going from one sequence to the other, so then they
:23:52. > :23:57.say - interval - and then you have to go out and buy intellectual
:23:57. > :24:00.peanuts before going on. Did it seem as he sodic, I kept thinking
:24:00. > :24:04.Coen brothers? Absolutely, it was like a Coen brothers movie in a
:24:04. > :24:08.book. I just thought it was inherently funny, it was delightful
:24:08. > :24:13.to see such a Darkley comic book on the list. The theme of masculinity
:24:13. > :24:17.and crisis taking the Western but having your protagonist, not sure
:24:17. > :24:22.if he wants to be killing people any more, slightly falling in love
:24:22. > :24:28.and desperately in love with his pathetic old horse as well, it's a
:24:28. > :24:33.funny book. Joanne, did it make you laugh? Not at all. I kotz a kind of
:24:33. > :24:38.exI say tense actualist humour but from this flat Monday tone going
:24:38. > :24:43.for it, I found it tiresome after a while. I like Cormack McCarthy and
:24:43. > :24:46.I kept seeing blood Meridian behind this with seemed to me stronger
:24:46. > :24:51.with its bubblecal prose. What is it about the world of the
:24:51. > :24:54.wild West, is it the immorality, the lawlessness, we see these
:24:54. > :25:00.individuals pitted against each other without a cell or structure?
:25:00. > :25:07.As a landscape and I think in this it's because it is a frontier, I
:25:07. > :25:12.think that's what it makes, makes it attractive to this to people
:25:12. > :25:17.writing extis tension comedy in which a landscape has nothing fixed,
:25:17. > :25:22.in which they're making their own fate. I think that's probably why
:25:22. > :25:32.it's attracted writers from Cormack McCarthy, who isn't funny. It has
:25:32. > :25:35.Dylanesk, Nick Cave style poetry to it, a Lyricism to it. A boy being
:25:35. > :25:40.hit on the spade constantly, God that made me laugh. A weird sense
:25:40. > :25:45.of humour there! Our final two books come from authors at the
:25:45. > :25:50.opposite end of their literary careers, AD Miller, we did review
:25:50. > :25:53.the book back in January and the repeated bridesmaid, Booker
:25:53. > :25:58.bridesmaid, Julian Barnes. AD Miller's debut novel Snow Drops
:25:58. > :26:01.tells the story of Nick, a 30 something English lawyer working in
:26:01. > :26:06.Moscow during the early noughties oil boom. Set against the backdrop
:26:06. > :26:11.of a Russian winter, a chance encounter with a beautiful girl
:26:11. > :26:15.sparks an infatuation that will lead to Nick's slow decline into
:26:15. > :26:18.moral degradation. I described the Russian winter both as a physical
:26:18. > :26:22.phenomenon with all its obstacles and joys and the way in which it
:26:22. > :26:26.shapes your life when you're living through it, I also tried to use it
:26:26. > :26:30.as a kind of symbolic thing sorbgs the snow in my book functions as a
:26:30. > :26:36.kind of moral oblivion. "My nostrils froze together, the hairs
:26:36. > :26:39.inside them hugging each other for survival. The electronic
:26:39. > :26:43.thermometer outside McDonald's said minus 27, it was so-called there
:26:43. > :26:46.was almost nobody smoking in the streets. The traffic police had
:26:46. > :26:50.been issued with old-fashioned felt boots, an inshepbt Russian
:26:50. > :26:54.precaution that kept their feet from falling off, while they hung
:26:54. > :26:58.around extorting bribes from people." As his morals disappear
:26:58. > :27:04.Nick pursues the good life with scant regard for the consequences.
:27:04. > :27:09.Nick definitely makes choices. He is the author of his own misfortune,
:27:09. > :27:15.or more precisely, the mispor tune of others. He's not an innocent,
:27:15. > :27:20.naive, unwilling participant in the event the books describes. He knows
:27:20. > :27:25.what's happening. Miller's Russia is a bleak country, rife with vodka,
:27:25. > :27:27.vice and violence. It's true to say the depiction of Russia in my book
:27:27. > :27:32.is not completely flattering but the things it describes are true
:27:32. > :27:36.and real. The kinds of crime that happen in my book happen all too
:27:36. > :27:40.frequently in Russia and corruption is endemic in Russia as it is in my
:27:40. > :27:46.book. "I was already dizzy from the vodka and wanted to leave around
:27:46. > :27:56.5.00 but didn't want to be first to quit. Finally he said, now we wash,
:27:56. > :27:57.
:27:57. > :28:02.how do we wash, in snow, she said." "Isn't that dangerous U know,
:28:02. > :28:05.gestureing, that it's for the heart "Life is dangerous." No-one
:28:05. > :28:10.survived it yet." Julian Barnes makes his fourth
:28:10. > :28:14.appearance on the short list with his latest novel, The Sense of an
:28:14. > :28:18.Ending. Barnes splits the book in two, the first part sketching Tony
:28:18. > :28:23.Webster's memories of his sex- starved sixth form year as he and
:28:23. > :28:28.his three friends maf gate their way towards adult hood. -- navigate.
:28:28. > :28:33.The second act picks up the story 40 years on, when Tony, now retired
:28:33. > :28:36.is bequeathed the diary of one of his school mates. Suddenly he's
:28:36. > :28:39.forced to marry his youthful recollections with the written
:28:40. > :28:43.system of his friends. "As the witnesses to your life diminish
:28:43. > :28:48.there is less corroboration and therefore less certainty as to what
:28:48. > :28:51.you are or have been. What was the line Adrian used to
:28:51. > :28:56.quote "his to Terry is that certainty produced at the point
:28:56. > :29:01.where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of
:29:01. > :29:06.documentation"." Through the voice of Tony Webster Barnes' muses on
:29:06. > :29:10.ageing, memory and the malability of time? "We live in time, it holds
:29:10. > :29:15.us and moulds us, but I've never felt I understood it very well. I'm
:29:15. > :29:19.not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back or may
:29:19. > :29:25.exist elsewhere in parallel versions. You know, I mean,
:29:26. > :29:31.ordinary, every daytime which clocks and watches assure us passes
:29:31. > :29:37.regularly, tick tock, click clock. Is there anything more plausible
:29:37. > :29:44.than a second-hand?" Let agencies begin with Snow Drops,
:29:44. > :29:48.Joanne -- let's begin with Snow Drops. The title, you learn at the
:29:48. > :29:53.outside, it's Moscow Lang slang for a corpse that lies buried or hidden
:29:53. > :29:57.in the winter snows emerging only in the thaw, we're taken into a
:29:57. > :30:00.very immoral world from the start. We are, it's a dark atmospheric
:30:00. > :30:04.kind of thriller but ultimately I found very coal. I think in some
:30:04. > :30:10.ways it reads a bit like a protest owe screen play. It would be a kind
:30:10. > :30:14.of superior screen play thriller, but to me all the characters were
:30:14. > :30:17.sadly flat, the girls particularly, all the women in fact are terribly
:30:17. > :30:22.stereo typical, I found it difficult to see them or care about
:30:22. > :30:27.them in human terms. Is it because we're seeing them through the eyes
:30:27. > :30:31.of Nick the narrator who perhaps sees them in a sexual way? Whether
:30:31. > :30:37.we do or not it doesn't make me warm to them very much. It's not
:30:37. > :30:40.really a thriller, though, there's a strange element, almost a
:30:40. > :30:45.confessional, the character of the fee an you say back home, never
:30:45. > :30:48.named and he's confessing this story to her. Not a thriller in the
:30:48. > :30:52.conventional sense. It's intriguing, a strange -- there's a strange
:30:52. > :30:55.breed of first novelists at the moment, which are very often guys
:30:55. > :30:59.leaving the very unstable world of the City for the more secure world
:30:59. > :31:04.of the novelist and writing about their experiences in that world
:31:04. > :31:08.with the slightly ramped up exaggerated sexuality thrown in. I
:31:08. > :31:14.don't think this book will be on the Moscow Tourist Board
:31:14. > :31:20.recommended reading list. It's incredibly cynical, it's very, very
:31:20. > :31:25.dark. I'm not sure AD came from the city, he was a correspondent for
:31:25. > :31:28.the Economist in Moscow. Moscow is what the book is really
:31:28. > :31:32.about, otherwise the narrative is Lembit Opik with the cheeky girls,
:31:32. > :31:35.you just think, when are you going to figure this out you great lump,
:31:35. > :31:41.that these girls have picked you out of a crowd and they're using
:31:41. > :31:46.you will. I was never quite sure what they used him for. But the
:31:46. > :31:50.feeling Moscow, I thought, Moscow is a mad house and it will
:31:50. > :31:54.certainly was in the period that I think we're in, which is what, ten
:31:54. > :31:58.years ago? The only thing is, of course, this idiot and he is
:31:58. > :32:02.obviously an idiot is telling this story to his fiancee who's going to
:32:02. > :32:07.dump him for sure because he's still upset by the woman. I'm not
:32:07. > :32:11.so sure that he is an idiot, I think we know what's going on and I
:32:11. > :32:14.think he really knows what's going on but just as the bankers did in
:32:15. > :32:20.the financial crisis, he's shutting his mind off it because it's to his
:32:20. > :32:23.advantage. Jaoe talks about that. The framing story, -- I talks about
:32:23. > :32:26.that the framing story gives it an extra talk that you have, he's
:32:26. > :32:31.confessing but as it becomes clearer it's a story, it's a kind
:32:31. > :32:34.of, Graham Green territory. It's not a thriller, he's not being
:32:34. > :32:38.menaced by people with guns. Nothing happened in it, the dead
:32:38. > :32:46.body is almost off to one side of T actually. It's a story of how,
:32:46. > :32:53.essentially,, he got bitten by the vampire and in the end it becomes
:32:53. > :32:55.clear Moscow has not let him go. I thought it was well done. It's an
:32:55. > :33:01.accomplished novel, beautiful turns of phrase, he captures the city
:33:01. > :33:07.well, a city of knee on lust and prophetic sin. He's an accomplished
:33:07. > :33:12.writer, I don't think it's the best book on the list but... Let' move
:33:12. > :33:15.on from this first novel it a much more seasoned novelist. Julian
:33:16. > :33:18.Barnes, The Sense of an Ending. What did you make of it? I think
:33:18. > :33:22.he's a wonderful writer and in some ways it's a gripping story. But
:33:22. > :33:26.it's very short and I think in some respects because it doesn't have
:33:26. > :33:30.enough time perhaps to flesh out some of the characters, it does
:33:30. > :33:33.read in a slight, a slighter way than if it were a fully fledged
:33:33. > :33:36.novel. I think the second-half is much more gripping than the first.
:33:36. > :33:40.I think he writes much better as an old man than as a young man because
:33:40. > :33:43.some of these teenage boys have some quite strange turns of phrase,
:33:43. > :33:47.even for the very pretension teenage boys that they are, but I'm
:33:47. > :33:52.much more convinced by him later on and by his view of the past and his
:33:52. > :33:57.own regret. Dan, does saoeutz matter? I think
:33:57. > :34:00.it's probably Size matter. I think it's the book with probably the
:34:00. > :34:04.most philosophical depth of the entire list. The length is
:34:04. > :34:09.irrelevant. It felt like a much longer book, there's so much packed
:34:09. > :34:12.into it. It's so beautifully crafted. Every word is meticulously
:34:12. > :34:16.placed. With regards to the pretentious young boys, I knew of
:34:16. > :34:24.them in my youth and they're very, very well drawn. Germaine Greer did
:34:24. > :34:29.you see this as a novel of ideas? thought that what happened here is
:34:29. > :34:35.that Barnes gave himself an almost insoluble problem, which was to
:34:35. > :34:40.take a hero who, a narrator who would also be a protagonist, who
:34:40. > :34:44.was lacking in almost everything, perception, wisdom, in fact, my
:34:44. > :34:49.favourite bit is where he did his apprenticeship in arts
:34:49. > :34:55.administration, that a sentence so loaded with contempt. So you've got
:34:55. > :34:59.the manipulation of this character who does not understand why anybody
:34:59. > :35:05.does anything, who is constantly explaining other people away to
:35:05. > :35:11.himself and strangely excusing himself. It's about the
:35:11. > :35:16.falsification of recollection. The difficulty for me was, that when
:35:16. > :35:20.you write a novel like that with a completely unreliable narrator who
:35:20. > :35:26.doesn't understand anything, who is in an important encounter with the
:35:26. > :35:31.only woman he has ever really loved and is simply fussing about the way
:35:31. > :35:34.she drives, he never manages to establish that other dimension
:35:34. > :35:38.where you understand what's going on and he doesn't. Sam, can't that
:35:38. > :35:41.add to the dramatic tension the very fact that he is an unreliable
:35:41. > :35:46.narrator sorbgs the story is moved as he begins to piece things
:35:46. > :35:50.together, for example when the letter he has written as a young
:35:50. > :35:55.man re-emerges later on. That's very effective, that's a little
:35:55. > :36:00.acid bomb that debt naits in it, I think that's one of the most
:36:00. > :36:04.powerful novels of the book. Julian Barnes is a writer who has
:36:04. > :36:08.the difficulty where he has a character who understands nothing,
:36:08. > :36:12.perceives nothing and gets everything wrong and as he says,
:36:12. > :36:15.his great love says "just doesn't get it". At the same time he has to
:36:15. > :36:23.become the vehicle for Julian Barnes to deliver a series of
:36:23. > :36:27.extremely well thoughtout and well crafted success sayistic episodes
:36:27. > :36:33.of time and memory and sadness and lost. You don't thit the character
:36:33. > :36:38.himself is capable of. For a more universal, more universally themed
:36:38. > :36:41.book, the fact that you have this central protagonist with no self-
:36:41. > :36:47.knowledge. He goes on this journey, you have this haunting phrase "you
:36:47. > :36:54.just don't get it" and then it builds up to the big moment at the
:36:54. > :36:57.end where it does explode and the story just, it just absolutely
:36:57. > :37:01.expands inside your mind. I think one of the problems is that Adrian
:37:01. > :37:06.doesn't carry the weight he was given. It interested me that Julian
:37:06. > :37:12.read that sentence about you know the documentation meeting,
:37:12. > :37:16.recollection. It's not that clever. Prous isn't that clever and this
:37:16. > :37:18.certainly isn't that clever. bringing this to our spbs of an
:37:18. > :37:22.ending. Those are the books themselves because I want to move
:37:22. > :37:25.on to talk about the prize itself. Now discussing the merit of
:37:25. > :37:32.literary prizes can feel a bit like groundhog day but this year
:37:32. > :37:39.everyone does seem to be a bit hotter under the collar than usual.
:37:39. > :37:44.A year never passes without some kind of furore over the Booker man
:37:44. > :37:49.prize, but even by Booker standards that has been a tempestuous year.
:37:49. > :37:53.The first rumpus came with the judging panel, featuring an ex-MP,
:37:53. > :37:57.political journalist and former spymaster. The press and critical
:37:57. > :38:00.reaction was immediate and damming. Memorably stating in the New
:38:00. > :38:05.Statesman that Daily Mirror Stella Rimington was an able and
:38:05. > :38:09.intelligent woman but you wouldn't ask John Bailey to be a consultant
:38:09. > :38:16.on Spooks. Matters weren't helped when Chris mulligatawny ipbs
:38:16. > :38:20.admitted readability was one of his criteria. Several panelists made
:38:20. > :38:24.comparisons to some Man Booker judges in the past, for instance
:38:24. > :38:29.George Connolly. The debate has become so heated that a group of
:38:29. > :38:35.literary protesters has set up an all terpbtive prize, the literature
:38:35. > :38:40.award for writers who aspire to something finer, who won the
:38:40. > :38:44.support of former winners. With Dame Stella Rimington describing
:38:44. > :38:48.the criticism of her as pathetic and the chairman Booker welcoming
:38:48. > :38:52.the establishment of a literary prize, is this a real challenge to
:38:52. > :38:58.the nation's most famous literary prize or is it just the annual
:38:58. > :39:01.storm in the Booker tea cup. Subtle graphic there! So, Sam, what
:39:01. > :39:07.seems to have got people going is the idea that a couple of judges
:39:07. > :39:13.have talked about readability being a criteria for the prize. Heaven
:39:13. > :39:17.forbid. I for the judges. Ipblg readability is a good thing to look
:39:17. > :39:23.for in a prize. It's not the only thing to look for in a Booker
:39:23. > :39:27.winner by any means, but if you start defining literary as a praise
:39:27. > :39:32.term in Contra distinction to things like readability that make
:39:32. > :39:40.books popular you end up with a narrowing and regressive and
:39:40. > :39:44.Philistine description of literary. If you were giving hypothetical
:39:44. > :39:49.book prices how far would Ulysses get in readability? It depends what
:39:49. > :39:54.kind of reading you're doing. You have to read Ulysses outloud and
:39:54. > :40:01.it's an unstable text. In the end you Rayise you're boxing with
:40:01. > :40:05.shadows. -- realise you're boxing with shadows. I would argue the
:40:05. > :40:10.opposite, the Booker Prize has always been snobish. It has always
:40:10. > :40:13.taken art novels. It was never possible for someone who wrote a
:40:13. > :40:19.quintessential mystery that was beautifully written, wiblgy Collins
:40:19. > :40:23.would not qualify for consideration. Wilkie Collins.
:40:23. > :40:26.The other thing is that publishers put forward books for consideration
:40:26. > :40:29.for the Booker. They're not always the best judges. People have it
:40:29. > :40:35.written into their contracts that they have to be put faor for the
:40:35. > :40:40.prize, yeah. And it's a way of advertising a book that doesn't
:40:40. > :40:43.have any obvious immediate appeal to the people who buy their books
:40:43. > :40:47.in airports, for example. I don't think there's anything wrong with
:40:47. > :40:53.publishers putting forward books, I think it's great that there are
:40:53. > :40:58.smaller and less well-known publishers on the list. I think
:40:58. > :41:02.it's absurd this subject of readability. Of course the book has
:41:02. > :41:08.to be readability. But I think Chris Mullins said the book
:41:08. > :41:14.shouldn't be admired, of course it should. There are plenty of
:41:14. > :41:16.literary prizes and the Man Booker historically is works of great
:41:16. > :41:20.literary fiction. If it can't provide it somebody else has to do
:41:20. > :41:25.it. I applaud the others. Looking at this short list, do you
:41:25. > :41:28.think people have accused of it being dumbed down I think that's
:41:28. > :41:33.wrong, I think they've accused it of being dumbed down for the wrong
:41:33. > :41:36.reason. Because of readability thing, readability should come
:41:36. > :41:40.standard with books, you the might as well construct a car that
:41:40. > :41:47.doesn't drive. The argument of plot somehow sub trabgts from literary
:41:47. > :41:50.merit is a complete fallacy much -- subtract. Readability can't be
:41:50. > :41:54.one of the criteria because Jamrach's Menagerie is on the list.
:41:54. > :42:00.I know what will happen, it will win now. Any books left off that
:42:00. > :42:03.should have been on, do you think Sam. I have to say the obvious one,
:42:03. > :42:07.Alan holg Hurst book was extraordinary. The strangers child.
:42:07. > :42:14.If I read only seven of these including Alan holg Hurst, I would
:42:14. > :42:19.have picked a different list. There were huge oversight for some
:42:19. > :42:22.beautifully written books. Does it still matter tow an author.
:42:22. > :42:26.wouldn't know. I think it's always great to be nominated. I'm sure.
:42:26. > :42:35.Somebody great is going to win this, but I just hope that they win it
:42:35. > :42:38.for themselves and there won't be a lot of people it's not holling
:42:38. > :42:42.hurst. There is not a Starbucks, there's no loyalty card for
:42:42. > :42:46.entering several times. That's what our panel thinks of the Man Booker
:42:46. > :42:48.line-up for 2011. To fine out what the judges themselves win, you'll
:42:48. > :42:52.have to wait until the glittering award ceremony on Tuesday night.
:42:52. > :42:59.That's all from us, thanks to my guests for ploughing through
:42:59. > :43:05.thousands of pages you have I hope for your enlightenment. Germaine
:43:05. > :43:12.Greer, Sam Leith, Joanne Harris and Dan Stevens. You can find out more
:43:12. > :43:17.on our books on our website. In the background in the green room
:43:17. > :43:21.will be jaols hole land who's up next with performances from Peter
:43:21. > :43:25.gaib real and Knowa and the Whale. Next week Tim Marlow is in the
:43:25. > :43:29.chairs to discuss the highlights and low lights of the London film
:43:29. > :43:36.festival, including George Clooney's new film and the film
:43:36. > :43:46.adaptation of We Need To Talk about Kevin. Here's a taster of what
:43:46. > :43:48.
:43:48. > :43:52.you'll be seeing. I need a drink of water. Hey, kef.
:43:52. > :44:02.-- Kev. Listen buddy, it's easy to misunderstand something when you
:44:02. > :44:03.
:44:03. > :44:08.hear it out of context much What could I not know the context,
:44:08. > :44:11.I am the context. It says we're going to help people get an
:44:11. > :44:16.education, create national unity, teach young people a trade and get
:44:16. > :44:21.them out of debt with college loan. That's all right, governor, but
:44:21. > :44:25.it's just that if you're going to do it, do it, make it mandatory not
:44:25. > :44:30.voluntarily. That will poll well. Mandatory, everybody who turns 18