General Discussion

Judging from last year's thread, this topic probably won't start bumping for a good nine months or so, but why not start early? The 2009 Booker race has actually whetted my appetite for next year's contest. I think the Mantel is one of the finest winners of the decade, alongside "The Line of Beauty".

Hopefully, our more informed members will be able to throw out a few suggestions for early prognosticating. Offhand, I'm only aware of a handful of the biggies (i.e. authors who have won or been prominently shortlisted in the past) that have new work scheduled for release next year. These include: "The 20th Century Shirt" by Yann Martel; "Deshima" by David Mitchell; "The Pregnant Widow" by Martin Amis; and "Solar" by Ian McEwan. Alan Hollinghurst apparently has a new novel scheduled for release that is currently untitled.

I guess I'll go out on a limb and speculate that Amis and Mitchell are the most "due", thereby making them early frontrunners almost by default. But is "The Pregnant Widow" actually coming out in 2010? It's been delayed forever and then, according to Amazon, there's something called "Untitled Stories" out in January!

Good suggestions, Archer. I was hoping also to see Adam Mars-Jones's Cedilla (the sequel to Pilcrow), which I'd heard was due in May, but it doesn't appear in the Faber catalogue for Jan-Jun 2010.

The Pregnant Widow is apparently definitely coming out in February 2010.

A few other possibilities, purely on the basis that I think they are eligible, with no comment on how likely they are to make it:

Jim Crace, All That Follows
Roddy Doyle, The Dead Republic
Esther Freud, Lucky Break
Joseph O'Connor, Ghost Light
Nicholas Shakespeare, Inheritance
Barbara Trapido, Sex and Stravinsky
Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand that First Held Mine
Rose Tremain, Trespass
Patricia Duncker, The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
Andrea Levy, The Long Song
Dan Rhodes, Little Hands Clapping
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
Steven Amsterdam, Things We Didn't See Coming
Aatish Taseer, The Temple Goers

...and dare we expect to see Beryl Bainbridge's The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress next year, which I think has been in utero even longer than The Pregnant Widow?

I keep wondering what DBC Pierre is up to these days.

John Self says:
"...and dare we expect to see Beryl Bainbridge's The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress next year, which I think has been in utero even longer than The Pregnant Widow?"

Way too clever, Mr Self! I hope we see both.

I was quite impressed by Colum Mccann's Let The Great World Spin which was published a while ago. I wonder if it will be eligible next year or if it was eligible this year. I don't think it would win, but it may be a contender for the longlist.

I'm very much looking forward to the Martin Amis, the Tremain and the O'Farrell.

The McCann was eligible this year, leyla, as it was published in September.

Thanks, John.

This year's Giller Prize winner, The Bishop's Man by Linden McIntyre, is scheduled for UK publication in March, which makes it eligible. I don't think it will travel that well, but I have been wrong on that count before.

If Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean finds a UK publisher, I think it would rate consideration -- she just got big bucks for American rights so it is worth watching out for.

I'm enjoying the Australian writer Joan London's new novel The Good Parents at the moment. She's previously been longlisted for The Orange and the Dublin Impac prize for Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was also shortlised for the Mile Franklin Award and won the Age fiction award.

How I wish Americans were eligible - Paul Auster's Invisible is wonderful.

Well, The Good Parents was excellent and I would be disappointed if it didn't make at least The Orange list next year and hopefully The Man Booker one too. Here's a link to my review:

http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/?author=20