Spring is here, and with it comes the Orange longlist. And my heavens, what a long list it is. Weighing in at a hefty 20 titles, it displays a range of experience and background that celebrates, according to Muriel Gray, the judging panel's chair, "the diversity ... of the work" being produced by women fiction writers today.
Does it? Or is it merely the case that any list of 20 books by 20 different authors will be diverse by definition? And at what point does "diversity" blur into amorphousness? Looking at the selections this morning, my first reaction was not pleasure at the diversity it exhibited, but exhaustion at the thought of having to wring some sense from it: a list of 20 books, it seems to me, is too long to convey any of the "judgment" we expect from prize committees. It's simply a list.
None of which is intended as a disservice to the judges themselves, who've no doubt sifted through hundreds of titles to get to this stage (and there are unquestionably some fine novels on this list: if I were a betting woman, I'd put a tenner on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's superb Half of a Yellow Sun). Longlists are undoubtedly a very necessary part of the judging process; I just wonder whether we need to know what's on them.
They're so ubiquitous now that it's worth recalling things haven't always been this way; the publication of longlists is a surprisingly recent phenomenon in the world of literary prizes. The Booker only began announcing its longlist in 2001; in the news story from that year, the word appears, rather sweetly, in inverted commas, suggesting both its novelty and a faint distaste on the journalist's part.
Since then, its title count, like Orange's, has wavered around the 20-book mark, climbing to a shelf-bowing high of 22 in 2004. All the other major UK literary prizes -the Samuel Johnson, the Aventis, the Guardian's own first book award - now announce their longlists, too. The one remaining exception is the Costas (formerly Whitbreads), though with five separate categories and a shortlist of four titles in each, they routinely present us with a list of 20 titles anyway. (One cannot but fear, however, that the day when they announce their category longlists - aka "a list of all the books published this year" - will not be long in coming).
Even such a bold move on the Costas' part would not be enough to unseat Impac, the undisputed kings of the longlist: the books on their prize's gargantuan 2006 list numbered a frankly gobsmacking 132 - more than most people read in a year.
Two points, in short, occur. One: it's hard not to see longlists as a sop to authors and publishers and a publicity-garnering exercise for the sponsors: a sort of industry back-scratching dressed up as an act of accountability. Two - and I accept that this may just be me - I find that the publication of the longlist diminishes the impact of the shortlist, when it finally emerges: it would be a better and stronger proposition, to my mind, if we hadn't seen the workings behind it.
Forget about accountability; judges - and, more importantly sponsors - should have the courage of their convictions and give us just the shortlists, in all their uncompromising glory. When it comes to literary prizes, less is more.
