ONCE THE dust settled after the shortlist became known, and quiet dust it was, this year's Man Booker prize never seemed likely to produce one of those much loved shootouts between splenetic literary giants.
The announcement last night of Aravind Adiga's surprise victory with his streetwise debut, The White Tiger, may have left the literary establishment gasping, perhaps even bewildered, but at least the bookies were happy. No, this surprise win will not feature among the most stirring in Booker history, but then that has been obvious since the publication of the moderate longlist in late July.
Irish writer Sebastian Barry, a quiet man of the longlist selection, suddenly emerged as the favourite when his characteristically beautiful, dreamy novel The Secret Scripture appeared among the shortlist contenders, ahead of his countryman Joseph O'Neill's much fancied Netherland.
O'Neill's loudly lamented failure to make the shortlist last month effectively became this year's Booker story, the eventual winner from a shortlist of good, though not great, books, would always be relegated to a supporting role as critics in the post-trauma mood that then developed, began to look closer at Netherland, debating its merits.
However, as the weeks passed, more attention was directed at Barry who also had a new play recently premiered in Britain.
While the Bookies supported Barry, many of the literary critics decided British writer Philip Hensher would take the prize with his worthy saga The Northern Clemency. Spanning some 20 years of British life, it is a traditional novel that looks towards the narrative techniques of the 19th-century novel. Also, and this is significant, Alan Hollinghurst had won with The Line of Beauty in 2004 using a similar formula. Even when pushing for Hensher, commentators tended to think Barry would win.
Of the two Indian contenders, Amitav Ghosh and Adiga, Ghosh is internationally established and has been famous since the publication of his debut, The Circle of Reason, in 1986. Shortlisted for The Sea of Poppies, the stylishly swashbuckling, enjoyable if somewhat tentative first volume in a trilogy set during the Opium Wars, Ghosh was never going to win this. But then, who had predicted Adiga's dirty realist yarn about the corruption lurking at the heart of modern India would? Narrator Balram decides to address his yarn to the Chinese prime minister. Although the novel starts well and with a brash gusto, the story, which plots Balram's difficult early life and eventual success through foul play, he never really engages even as a likeable anti-hero.
Adiga's victory over Hensher and Barry is certainly a triumph for youth. The White Tiger, which incidentally is the strongest image in a narrative reads like a polemical cartoon for grown-ups, is not even the most daring book on the pretty conservative list. That honour goes to the other first time novelist, Australian Steve Toltz. His A Fraction of the Whole, presents the most original voice of youth to shake up the Booker since DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little won in 2003. Toltz's tour de force is told by a grieving if exasperated son who recalls the hell of living with dear old Dad.
Shortlist inclusion brings us to the major problems facing this year's Man Booker winner; superior novels did not even make the longlist. Novels such as Pakistani-born, British-based Nadeem Aslam's highly literary and ethereal performance, The Wasted Vigil, an important novel with its echoes of Michael Ondaatje's Booker co-winner, The English Patient. Compared with Aslam's book, The White Tiger appears crude and opportunistic.
Another novel to be ignored was South African Damon Galgut's The Impostor, which looks at post-apartheid South Africa. Many commentators expected Irish writer David Park's The Truth Commissioner to make the shortlist - it was not even to earn a long listing - while the same applies to one of Britain's most consistently interesting novelists, Patrick McGrath, whose novel Trauma is yet another of his poised psychologically-based explorations of the human mind in meltdown. It is impossible to understand how any panel of judges could have ignored Australian Helen Garner's sophisticated narrative The Spare Room in favour of a book as ordinary as Linda Grant's The Clothes on Their Backs .
No it was never going to be a great Booker; this list could never add up to that. If The Secret Scripture lost out to a lesser novel, there is some consolation from the fact that several superior novels had already been sidelined on the July afternoon when the self-applauding, "geographically" based longlist was published to more moans than cheers.
