The 30th annual Booker McConnell Prize for Fiction, worth £21,000 sterling, was last night presented to Ian McEwan, one of Britain's most established novelists. Most critics approved the decision. The winning book, Amsterdam, may not be a great novel but it certainly is a very fine one - a crafted, intelligent and curiously profound novel about friendship, regret and the bizarre twists which take place in ordinary lives.
There was, however, much sympathy extended towards another well established British writer, Beryl Bainbridge, short-listed for the fifth time. Her novel Master Georgie reflects many of the qualities of British fiction at its best. By the often bizarre standards of Booker panellists this year's jury produced a shortlist of six novels of which only one could safely avoid charges of being middlebrow. Ireland's Patrick McCabe, short-listed for the second time, had the pleasure of hearing the Booker chairman of the judges, Mr Douglas Hurd, himself an author of thrillers, describe McCabe's novel Breakfast on Pluto as surreal and "the most fantastical" of the short-listed titles. McCabe's novel features the colourful Patrick "Pussy" Braden - an Irish transvestite resident in Kilburn who is writing the story of his life.
As diners speculated about who would win, no one seemed prepared to support either Martin Booth's worthy if drab The Industry of Souls, an account of an Englishman who having spent 20 years in a Soviet labour camp is freed only to find he wishes to remain in Russia. This sanctuary is challenged when the British authorities realise he is still alive. Some diners decided it was only on the list because "it was the sort of dull thriller Hurd would write himself". Nor was Magnus Mills garnering support for his debut, The Restraint of Beasts. A pair of Scots labourers decide to settle their disputes with employers their way.
The novel has its moments and Mills, a London bus driver who also has a degree in economics and is the son of a university lecturer - never looked a winner despite the publicity he had received.
Julian Barnes (England, England), short-listed for his satirical look at the values of Old England juxtaposed with the crassness of greed and commercial exploitation, looked decidedly edgy. Salman Rushdie (who won the prize in 1981) was present, as was Penelope Fitzgerald, winner in 1978, who attended last night in her capacity as a judge. In the splendid setting of the Guild Hall the gathering was polite, and almost as serene as Douglas Hurd claimed his judges to be.
Mr Hurd probably delivered one of the most practical and honest speeches ever offered by a Booker chairman. He made few sweeping claims for the quality of the books on this quiet list and in doing that placed the entire evening in extremely useful perspective. For all the shortcomings of a list which overlooked writers such as William Trevor and Nadine Gordimer, it did prove that if the organisers are keen to show that British fiction is (as Mr Hurd claimed) "alive and kicking and doing well" the most efficient way of doing this is to select a shortlist in which five of the six happen to be written by English writers.
