The 2011 Man Booker shortlist is due to be announced at around 11am this morning. Naturally - naturally! - we'll bring you the news as soon as we have it, but meanwhile, to pass the weary hours until then, how about a quick round of speculative shortlisting?
In truth, I wasn't wholly sold on the longlist this year - I was particularly bemused by the omission of Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz and John Burnside's superb A Summer of Drowning. But! The time for such carping is long past. Looking at the longlist
(here it is as a gallery, with links to reviews), and with all the usual caveats about the accuracy of my predictions in the past, here's my final six:
• Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
• Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side
• Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie
• Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child
• Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
• AD Miller Snowdrops
Of these, I didn't love the Hollinghurst, to be truthful: the interesting part of it - the questions of truth and memory that underpin the narrative - seems to me to have been tackled more movingly by AS Byatt, among others. But I'd still be surprised to see it omitted. I really enjoyed On Canaan's Side, and might go so far as to put a tenner on it to win, were I a betting woman. The Sense of an Ending is excellent but slim - but if On Chesil Beach made the Booker shortlist, why not this? Of the others, we're obviously fans of Pigeon English over here at the Guardian, I have it on good authority (Claire's Armitstead's) that Jamrach's Menagerie is deserving of a shortlist spot, and I really like the sound of Snowdrops.
So there it is - my stab at a shortlist. What's yours? A book from our cupboards to whoever gets closest!
