“What good booksellers do best”
A bookseller’s view of the Man Booker Prize
By Jonathan Ruppin, Promotions Buyer, Foyles
"I love the Booker. I love the barbs when the judging panel is announced; I love the anticipation of the longlist and shortlist announcements; I love the accusations and recriminations when popular favourites miss out; I love the rambling speech of the Chair as we all wait, twitching with anxiety, for those final words, the only words that anyone really wants to hear: the name of the winner.
But what I love about it most is that it's an opportunity to do what good booksellers do best: handselling books to people who want to read something great. When we've got all the nominees racked up together, with customers picking up just one at first and then usually flicking through the lot, we wait for the magic question, ‘Which one would you recommend?' This is our cue for a passionate campaigning for our favourites and diplomatic enthusiasm for the others if the customer's tastes don't seem to match ours. We won't let you leave empty-handed and, occasionally, we have the satisfaction of sending someone on their way with the entire list packed into a bulging bag or two.
The Man Booker Prize is like some sort of global book group, a tasting menu for some of the best fiction around, always full of future classics and unexpected pleasures. Join the on-line discussions on this site and countless others and you can find yourself passionately debating the selection with people from all around the world.
It's also the only time of year when books are guaranteed some coverage in the news pages of the papers, although the standard of the commentary sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. Every year, a cynical hack or two will decide that the lack of established names on the shortlist is an indication of the dearth, or even death, of literary fiction.
But this is not only unfair but, frankly, ignorant. The shortlist won't be full of the likes of Rushdie, McEwan and Atwood every year, not because the panel is trying to favour break-through authors over the old guard, but because the number of writers of transcendent ability out there is staggering and a dishearteningly tiny fraction of them ever get the readership their talents deserve. Whether publishers put enough marketing behind them or chain bookshops offer them enough support is a matter for debate, but every single shelf in the fiction section of your local independent will have at least one novel you've never heard of but which you could find yourself recommending happily ever after.
Some say the relatively recent innovation of revealing the longlist as well as the shortlist is just milking the Prize's appeal: I'd agree wholeheartedly with that. But I say so not as a criticism, but in praise: it's an extra layer of anticipation, another chance for debate in the press and amongst book-lovers about the merits of books, frequently great books, and always books which are worth finding time for. The Man Booker Prize may not be the be-all and end-all of literary fiction but, if it were ever - heaven forfend - to be scrapped, then that would be the time we should start to worry about the future of literature.
Some of the greatest treasures to be uncovered by the Booker are titles which made the shortlist but -because it's unlikely a panel of five judges will unite behind their quirkier candidates perhaps? - fell at the final hurdle.
Would I have got round to reading Mick Jackson's The Underground Man, Sarah Hall's The Electric Michelangelo or The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo if they hadn't been flagged up by the judges? Maybe, but I'll always be grateful to the Prize for making sure those dazzling masterpieces didn't pass me by.
And of course, there's Graham Swift's Waterland, a book whose equal I am have been trying to find without success for many years, reviewed in 1983 as being "so good that whether or not it wins the Booker Prize it is almost of no consequence" and now established as one the great British post-war novels.
This is why this time round at Foyles, we've decided to forego our usual special offer on previous winners and pick some of our favourites that missed out on the big prize. Narrowing the candidates down a manageable size was quite a challenge and but every one we've picked comes with a promise that, even if you don't find it to your taste, it'll give you something to talk about.
Meanwhile, we have our ‘dummy orders' - the quantities we want if a book reaches the shortlist - set up with the publishers, so they can send them out as soon as the announcement is made. Display space is earmarked and promotional material is at the ready.
I'm not going to reveal who I'm backing though, as I wouldn't want to jinx it: I have a very poor track record. I have been right just once in thirteen years in the trade, remarkably in the first year I actually placed a bet on it. In 2005, I put a tenner on John Banville's The Sea at 16-1 and I thought I'd cracked it. His book was the most consistently well-reviewed of all the longlisted titles, so in 2006 I laid an insouciant fifty quid on Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights on the same grounds... and it didn't even make shortlist.
So, this year, as well as the winner, make sure you buy at least one of the shortlisted titles as well, because there's bound to be a future classic or two which doesn't take the Prize. If you're not sure which to choose, ask a bookseller. While we may not be lucky enough be on Michael Portillo's team of judges, we'll happily expound on the merits of all of them to you, with the added advantage that we don't have to narrow it down to just the one."
Jonathan Ruppin, Promotions Buyer, Foyles
