They shunned the big names and opted for lesser known writers, but why is the shortlist for the Frank O'Connor short story prize so ordinary, asks Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby
What do we look for from the short story? Why is it so pure a form of narrative? Why is it so much more difficult to master than the novel? Why does it have such a distinguished tradition, from Chekhov to Pritchett, to Trevor to Ford? Why are the Americans so good at writing them? Equally, why are so many claims made for the Irish dominance of the short story? And why, why most of all, is there no Irish writer on the six-book shortlist for this year's Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award? Both Claire Keegan and poet John F. Deane, an underrated writer of fiction, were longlisted. Neither made the shortlist. But then, William Trevor, who had a collection published this year, failed to make the longlist.
It may be a pattern, this discreet avoidance of a home win, although it is to be hoped it is not. But then last year saw the publication of Bernard MacLaverty's Matters of Life & Death. It is his fifth collection, and his finest to date. It also includes the towering achievement of his career, the brutally magnificent story, Up The Coast. Although Matters Of Life & Death was longlisted for this award, it failed to make the final six, but then a fellow faller was American master Thomas McGuane, with Gallatin Canyon. British writer Rose Tremain appeared set to take the prize, but was surprisingly routed by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, with a collection dominated by extracts from his novels. Irritating enough, but this was compounded by the fact that Murakami had lamented in his preface to the winning book, that he didn't have the time to write short stories. Still he gave the prize its big-name winner.
Of the many ironies surrounding this year's prize, which will be announced tomorrow night, is that one of the judges, Nigeria's Segun Afolabi, should have been battling it out last year with A Life Elsewhere, but he did not survive the longlist. Line for line, most of the stories in A Life Elsewhere, one of those sleeper collections that will yet gain its deserved readership, are superior to anything on this year's disappointing shortlist.
This is the third year of the prize, and it has found new sponsors, Cork City Council and the Munster Literature Centre, in association with The Irish Times. The inaugural shortlist featured two fine US writers, David Means, a subversive original with his second collection, The Secret Goldfish, and Texan Bret Anthony Johnston with Corpus Christi. Neither won as the prize went to a gentle if unremarkable collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by US-based Chinese writer Yiyun Li. Observers may not have been thrilled, but still, this was an honourable selection, assuredly international in nature, and no one could make any accusation of provincialism. And yes it may have scuppered the prize had William Trevor won it the first year - and he was not shortlisted.
Last year, young Irish writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh presented a strong challenge with Notes From A Turkish Whorehouse. It was all a bit too cool, too knowing for me, but it is a confident, European collection. Here is an Irish writer looking well beyond familiar territory. But as history records, there was no Irish winner.
There could have been this year with Keegan's Walk The Blue Fields; Deane's The Heather Fields also should have made the shortlist. Both of these collections reflect the best of the Irish tradition and have echoes of O'Connor's influence - and both are major books.
It will also remain a mystery why any panel could have placed Israeli Etgar Keret's whimsical Bart Simpson-like Missing Kissinger above these collections. And I am writing as a life-long admirer of Jewish writing and Jewish humour - don't worry, I got the jokes, all of them: "Uzi came to see me after school that day with a book about dinosaurs. He said that dinosaurs had died out but that you could find some of their eggs in different parts of the world, and that if we could find them, we'd have our own private dinosaurs and we'd be able to ride them to school and give them names." (From Dinosaurs Eggs.)
LITERARY PRIZES ARE odd things, rife with politics and outrage - no matter who gets shortlisted, we all love to point out the worthy omissions. When the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was first announced, we all thought there would be a team of Irish writers queuing up for the honours. Nine years passed until the stage appeared set for John McGahern to take the laurels with That They May Face the Rising Sun, only to see Turkey's Orhan Pamuk dazzle with My Name Is Red. It took another two years for IMPAC to have its first Irish win, Colm Tóibín's The Master.
No, no one could accuse IMPAC of being provincial - it has been extraordinarily international. It has also along the way showcased an exciting array of international fiction, much of it in translation and so has introduced writers from all over the world.
The Frank O'Connor may well do the same, although so far several of the shortlisted writers have simply not been as good as those they have pushed off the shortlist. This year's final six is ordinary by any standard - none of the contenders measures up to Claire Keegan - and even more emphatically, none comes within the proverbial mile of the gifted Australian David Malouf. The exclusion of his collection, Every Move You Make, which was published in January, immediately placed question marks over the shortlist. Malouf won the inaugural IMPAC, and as both novelist and short story writer, has a poet's feel for language as well as an instinct for story.
Malouf was not the only major international writer to fall; so too did Alice Munro. Widely regarded as one of the supreme short story writers, the only possible explanation for her not being considered must be that The View From Castle Rock could be considered more an informal memoir than collection.
There is much to praise in Simon Robson's shortlisted The Separate Heart and Other Stories, not least that they are traditional narratives and succeed in looking back to a gentler, less cryptic era. However, his style, although pleasing, is so heavily dependent on similes that it quickly becomes a distraction; "like" and "as if" dominate his sentences. Still, I enjoyed the book with its many quirks. In Mountains, Eleanor, now 80, receives the sort of letter everyone must fear yet almost look forward to: "My dearest Eleanor, I do hope you are well and are not too amazed at me writing to you. How long is it? Sixty yrs? It honestly seems only yesterday that I saw you last . . ." Eleanor, it must be said, is particularly irritated by the letter writer's inability to spell "years".
Olaf Olafsson's Valentines, a 12-part story sequence spread over a calendar year, reflects his Icelandic origins as well as his years in the US. He favours stories with a sting in the tail and this device leads the reader to a near physical jolt in the closing line. A couple are working at saving their marriage after the husband's affair. But the wife needs to see where the other woman lives. Her insistence and the man's stress convince. Olafsson sets up the tension well. Otherwise Valentines is mellow, intelligent and low key. Much the same applies to Manuel Muñoz's The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue. This is a convincing second collection from a young Latino writer, who has evoked a vivid sense of a California I know well. That said, none of the stories ever reaches the ellusive heights of the great short story.
The inclusion of Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You in the absence of so many superior US writers, such as Clare Wigfall - not even on the longlist - puts her at an additional disadvantage, not to mention that Britain's Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke and Other Stories also failed to progress beyond the longlist and she handles those dry perceptions about relationships far better than most, including July.
It is interesting to note that two of the shortlisted contenders, July and Keret, write screenplays. Yet this technique does not necessarily confer mastery of the short story. Major writers have been overlooked - that in itself is no crime - but if a panel decides to concentrate on emerging talent, and also to highlight less well known if already established writers, the traditional and the offbeat, then these writers should be outstanding. IMPAC has served the reader well by alerting us to diverse, exciting voices from all over the world.
In all honesty, aside from Olafsson and New Zealand's Charlotte Grimshaw, this six-strong shortlist is not a particularly inspiring selection. Yet again, it seems readers would be better served by looking to the omitted riches, beginning with David Malouf.
The essays of Frank O'Connor: W12
Charlotte GrimshawOpportunity (Vintage)
Miranda JulyNo One Belongs Here More Than You (Canongate)
Etgar Keret Missing Kissenger(Chatto & Windus)
Manuel MuñozThe Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Algonquin Books)
Olaf OlafssonValentines (Pantheon)
Simon RobsonThe Separate Heart (Jonathan Cape)
The winner will be announced tomorrow night at the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival, in Cork