The judges have selected well for the Man Booker shortlist, with two Irish writers making the cut, writes Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent

That familiar morning-after Booker shortlist sensation - you know, the one that usually begins with outrage and ends in the threat of pistols at dawn, or at least public humiliation for the vagaries of the judges - should be noticeably absent today.

Announced in London yesterday, this year's shortlist of six, including John Banville and Sebastian Barry, is a good one for several reasons. Not least because this is an admittedly home countries selection that - with the exception of Ali Smith's offbeat, if barbed and aptly named yarn, The Accidental - honours the traditional narrative and the art of storytelling.

It is also a list that negates the need for any long-distance flights; four of the contenders are based in or near London, while the two Irish writers are unlikely to object to a brief journey across the Irish Sea. The only surprise omission in terms of quality is that of South African JM Coetzee's Slow Man. Yet as Coetzee has already won twice, is a Noble literature laureate, and is one of the finest writers in the world, it seems only fair to open the competition rather than allow him to become the first writer to win three times.

It is interesting to note that Coetzee's absence has been balanced by the inclusion of John Banville, whose novel The Sea is possibly the only work published this year to match Coetzee's artistry. It is also a deeply personal and appealing narrative, memory revisiting the regrets and lost moments that shape a life. It is an eloquent and moving ode to childhood, Banville's most intimate, least self-conscious work.

Only once previously shortlisted, and then in 1989 for The Book of Evidence, Banville seems poised for honour. In the absence of Coetzee, Banville's moment may well have come. Justice not sentiment could see Ireland's most European writer win.

However, to do this, he has to withstand the challenge of the bookies' favourite, Julian Barnes, whose Arthur & George was published in early July with obvious Booker claims. No novel's inclusion on last month's longlist was as expected as his, and no one was more hotly tipped for the shortlist.

His is a traditional English novel and an engaging period piece executed in a robust prose that is perfectly pitched to the story. Barnes, for so long the victim of his cleverness, looked to a real-life miscarriage of justice and one that attracted the interest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The famous doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes took up the case of a quiet Birmingham solicitor whose family had been subjected to a racially-based vendetta in Edwardian England. It is also Conan Doyle's story, as well as that of the society in which he lived.

Never before has Barnes demonstrated such a feel for characterisation as well as atmosphere. Long regarded as one of the privileged sons of British literary life, Barnes, at 59, has moved away from his familiar territory and written his most honest novel, an Everyman's book free of pretence and affectation that will please everyone - not least the British literary establishment.

Sebastian Barry, the second Irish writer (out of three on the longlist) to make it to this year's final six, is internationally established as a dramatist. His play, The Steward of Christendom (1995), is a major work that also provides much of the heart of his shortlisted novel A Long Long Way. Tracing his family through its generations as well as Ireland's history continues to preoccupy him.

It has often been said of Barry that he is a poet who writes plays but perhaps ultimately he is a natural storyteller in thrall to language.

It is an impulse which often leaves his readers feeling that his fiction has tended up until now to be more overwhelmed by beauty than substance.

This novel, however, feels its way through one of the strongest narratives history has to offer, that of the first World War. Barry's central character, Willie Dunne, is an 18-year-old innocent who joins the Royal Irish Fusiliers and sets off to fight the king's war.

There is also an element of romance and echoes of Francis Ledwidge's dilemma. But a harder edge emerges through Barry's handling of the 1916 Rising and of the contradictions by which young Irish men fought in France for the English king, while at home their countrymen were battling against English rule.

Added to Willie's tragedy is his father's dogged loyalty to the crown. This, of course, looks to The Steward of Christendom.

The first World War continues to inspire major fiction. Pat Barker's The Ghost Road won the 1995 Booker prize; Jennifer Johnston's finest novels drew on this material, as has the work of Australian David Malouf. Barry's shortlisting is important for Irish fiction. This novel was well reviewed and it also, as with Barnes's book, underlines the continuing appeal of the traditional, period narrative.

While the judges are to be praised for not selecting Salman Rushdie's unconvincing ramble, Shalimar the Clown, it is interesting that in selecting Zadie Smith it might look as if the apprentice slipped in ahead of the master. But this is not true. Although Smith's previous two novels, White Teeth and The Autograph Man, particularly White Teeth, were influenced by Rushdie's exuberant style of magic realism and racial commentary, her new novel, On Beauty is another bow to the conventional narrative.

Acknowledged as a gesture of homage to EM Forster's Howard's End, Smith follows the trials and tribulations of an academic family based in the US. There is a legacy with an objection to its intended recipient. Smith is a committed stylist, her images don't always flow as artfully as she desires but again, in terms of story, this complex family saga exacts its hold. It also shows that Smith has, with fame, acquired discipline and a much more cohesive approach to narrative, characterisation and story.

Another of the younger generation of British writers is the clever, original and razor-sharp Scot, Ali Smith, who writes with a comic vision which owes its debt to the great Alasdair Grey. The Accidental would not have been among my top six, but there is no doubting its style, energy, flair, confidence and zany humour. It is random, as accidental as its title. Initially it appears as if the narrator is going to tell the story of her accidental arrival to life, courtesy of an encounter on a cinema floor.

Instead, Smith decides to focus on a wayward 12-year-old girl who has taken to filming all about her.

Much of what is going on around her is her disgruntled family, currently holed-up in a God-awful holiday home in Norwich. Her brother is recovering from the death of a schoolmate, her academic father is festering under the shadow of a student's forthcoming sexual harassment charge, and her mother, who spends her life penning the histories of individuals who have been denied a life, is trying to recover what's left of her own.

Into this wanders Amber, a young woman who lives in her car and is either really odd, or seriously evil, or possibly both. The Accidental is very funny. Should any reader be on the lookout for an eccentric yarn laced with several sideswipes at popular culture - here it is.

It is also good to see the judges include it rather than a highly overrated, worthy and unconvincing book such as James Meek's The People's Act of Love, which, had it been on the shortlist, would have been merely an example of how a novel based on important issues can acquire a status far beyond its artistic achievement. The Accidental should not win, but it will amuse.

Finally, yet another good example of how this year's Man Booker judges thought long and hard, and deliberated well, is the selection of former Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro's subtle and bizarrely beautiful and prophetic Never Let Me Go.

Published last February, this impressive work from one of the quiet men of British fiction (an honour he shares with Graham Swift), tackles the subject of cloning. It is a shocking work, yet its shock and menace are handled with grace and almost a sense of wonder. Never Let Me Go is a powerful, important book that succeeds through its awesome understatement. It was Ishiguro who won with The Remains of the Day, when Banville joined the ranks of Booker runners-up.

This time The Sea, on literary merit alone, should win, and with a responsible judging panel having assembled one of the finest shortlists, which included Ishiguro and neither Rushdie nor McEwan, Banville will be challenged by an obvious winner in Barnes, with Barry gathering support. Regardless of the outcome, an important statement has been made about the sophistication and artistry of contemporary Irish fiction.