The Booker award is announced tomorrow, and all I can say is that it better not be On Chesil Beach. The book does not show Ian McEwan at his best, and the only thing that could catapult him into the winner’s spot is an over-reliance upon his authorial publishing record and reputation, rather than an honest evaluation of the text. It’s a slim story with occasionally moving moments, but nothing that deserves a prize. It’s not even a novel, for heaven’s sake – it’s barely a novella. The problem with On Chesil Beach is not that it fails in what it attempts to do – which is to show the psychological issues of a couple that lead to sexual problems, used as a prism to illuminate that milieu – but rather that what it attempts to do is just so tame, so manageable, so unambitious.
Okay, that’s my allotted rant for the day. But, you ask, who should win?
I’ll take either Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones or Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (which, by the way, is the favorite selection on the debate page of the Man Booker website). Also, check out Indra’s Sinha’s website to see his original cover art for the book (which is much better than the cover he was saddled with).
