A Booker winner: Did someone slip something into the judges' tea?The judges of our most prestigious literary prize have picked some real clunkers
Scott Pack writing in The Times over the weekend:
Midnight's Children. Midnight's bloody Children. I can safely say that it is the most overrated book that it has been my misfortune to read. I still have nightmares about it, most them involving chutney, and now it has won the Best of the Booker Prize.
In its 40-year history the Booker has recognised some of the finest novels written. I just don't think that Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of them. And I am not alone. I appreciate that many consider it a work of genius, but I just feel duty bound to point out that a greater number of us simply don't get it.
But Midnight's Children is by no means the worst book to win the prize - far from it. The judges have selected some real clunkers over the years, many of which could stake a claim to be the Worst of the Booker.
The critic Boyd Tonkin let rip when The Sea by John Banville pipped Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go in 2005. He called it “possibly the worst... and perhaps the most indefensible choice” since the award began. But thousands of readers have also been baffled by Keri Hulme's The Bone People since it won in 1985, beating Peter Carey and Doris Lessing. And few people today would think Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac better than J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun, which it beat the year before.
But Midnight's Children is by no means the worst book to win the prize - far from it. The judges have selected some real clunkers over the years, many of which could stake a claim to be the Worst of the Booker.
The critic Boyd Tonkin let rip when The Sea by John Banville pipped Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go in 2005. He called it “possibly the worst... and perhaps the most indefensible choice” since the award began. But thousands of readers have also been baffled by Keri Hulme's The Bone People since it won in 1985, beating Peter Carey and Doris Lessing. And few people today would think Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac better than J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun, which it beat the year before.These are not the only example of a superior work losing out to a novel that readers have failed to take to their hearts. In 2001 Ian McEwan's Atonement missed out to Carey's comma-less True History of the Kelly Gang. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell, 2004), A Month in the Country (J.L. Carr, 1980) and Waterland (Graham Swift, 1983) were all beaten by books that have proved less enduring.
And then we have the curious blip that was DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, considered in 2003 a finer work than Monica Ali's Brick Lane or Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal. I am not sure many people would share that view in 2008.
But the worst winner so far? Step forward Mc
Ewan's and his 1998 novel Amsterdam. Even his biggest fans consider it his weakest book, yet it beat The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills and Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie. Someone must have slipped something into the judges' tea. Nigella Lawson was one of their number that year. I say nothing more.
Ewan's and his 1998 novel Amsterdam. Even his biggest fans consider it his weakest book, yet it beat The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills and Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie. Someone must have slipped something into the judges' tea. Nigella Lawson was one of their number that year. I say nothing more. All of which may lead you to believe that I dislike the Booker Prize. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I love the damned thing. I probably enjoy it more when a bad book wins than when they give it to one I adore. Getting annoyed is all part of the fun. And boy, am I annoyed about Midnight's Children.
Scott Pack is the former buying manager at Waterstone's and is now a publisher at The Friday Project. He also writes the Me and My Big Mouth blog
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