The Booker in the Noughties
2000-09: Anything Goes
The Booker in the Nineties was all big ideas, grand narratives and excess, a decade distilled in book form under the glare of the tabloid press. In some sense this held true as the new millennium rolled over… and it some senses, well, it didn’t at all. As in the rest of life, and culture, the Booker in the Noughties felt more fragmented. More individual stories shining a light on hitherto ignored groups, but with the dominant Bookerati never too far around the corner.
In these disparate winners, we have more books that focus on the present day than ever before, but we also get a couple of the deepest dives in history to date. In a few winners, we see a return to that very Booker-ish trait of understatement, but they’re rubbing up next to some of the wildest flights of fantasy we’ve yet encountered.
The Booker in the Noughties feels like it’s striving to shake off aspects of its past selves, but often finds itself haunted by them. It’s a weird old decade, one that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be and at the same time is summed up perfectly by its winners. Which, by the way, are probably the most consistently very good of any Booker decade to date. So you can’t complain really, can you?
Confronting Horrors: Abso-bloody-lutely
From its first appearance in my 80s round-up: “There’s a definite sense of some stark, brutal reckonings with the worst of humanity in some of these 80s winners. It’s scattered across many of them, but we have novels covering the Holocaust, extremes of poverty in a racially divided society, extreme violence against a child, and the brutality of colonialism.”
Yes, yes and more yes. If this was big in the previous decades, it’s positively everywhere in the Noughties. The biggest difference? The horrors confronted are often, if not always, on a more personal scale. If there is one uniting trope across a lot of these winners, it’s the “a bad thing happened, and we’re going to tell you what it was….. eventually” trope (which I’m sure has a better name, right?)
Case in point: The Sea, The Gathering, The Blind Assassin, The Inheritance of Loss (see my point?) - plus assorted historical horrors in Wolf Hall, …Kelly Gang… and more. Oh, plus high school shootings and the AIDs crisis. Pretty much all bases covered right?
AND YET: Nope, I think this is pretty much 10 for 10 this time around.
Men: Marginally less masculine? Perhaps
Way back in my first 70s round-up I said “you'll find precious few stories told from the perspective of female characters, and even relatively few secondary female characters that are developed beyond their role as objects of male attention […] It does mean that the story of the Booker so far is largely the story of men.”
Causes for celebration: the highest proportion of female winners to date, at a nice round 40%. Plus fewer years with almost entirely male shortlists. A sense that the Women’s Prize did its job as a spur for improvement, rather than leading the Booker to rest further on its manly laurels. Improving, could still probably try harder.
Does coverage of female characters increase commensurately though? I’m not so sure. There are still a whole lot of stories of men in here, whoever’s doing the telling. There are a few honourable exceptions though!
Still a thing: As per above, a predominance of men again.
AND YET: The two books that are actually predominantly from a woman’s POV are The Blind Assassin and The Gathering. Though The Inheritance of Loss is well-balanced and even the historical novels make a good stab at a rounded female cast list.
Convention: More prodding, little outright experimentation
I think I probably need to resign myself to the fact that there aren’t really going to be any wildly unconventional Booker winners (just waiting to be surprised in the 10s…) - here, again, we do have some structurally interesting books, but nothing massively out of the ordinary.
Still a thing: Broadly, these are novels without much formal experimentation. The Booker is largely about rewarding stuff that people want to read. With the odd exception, that’s been the case through it’s history and little is changing in the new millennium.
AND YET: The Blind Assassin feels the most structurally interesting, although far from new. True History of the Kelly Gang takes a mildly irritating stylistic choice and runs with it. I’m not enough of a connoisseur of historical fiction to tell you whether Wolf Hall takes it in wild new directions or simply does what historical fiction does very, very well - I suspect the latter though.
Booze: Back on it.
I was highly surprised to find that booze seemed to have dropped out of favour in the 90s winners, but there’s plenty of sozzled stories in here.
Still a thing: Pretty much all over the shop again in the 00s. Rarely overtly so, but we get a couple of boozy Booker classic moments in The Gathering and The Sea.
AND YET: Not so much booze when you’re marooned at sea with a bengal tiger, so sorry Life of Pi
Understatement: Bouncing back.
My eighties assessment continued into the nineties: “Definitely on the decline. More statement, less under.” But it’s creeping back here and there, no?
Still a thing: I’d place The Sea firmly in this category, but it shows how much opinion of what a Booker winner is expected to be that this one was viewed as a real surprise winner. The Gathering also kind of fits this mould.
AND YET: Elsewhere it’s not quite the 80s/90s “grand narrative” weightiness, but it’s hard to describe Wolf Hall for example as understated. Similarly, the newer types of winners like Vernon God Little, The White Tiger and Life of Pi may be shortish, easy reads, but they’re pretty wild rides in general, and anything but understated.
Water: Ooh, there’s a few more here!
Last time I noted that the tide was ebbing on my watery theme: “Big in the Seventies, apparently, but less so since.” But we’ve got a few in this batch!
Still a thing: The Sea! (Only one The Sea, though, whereas the one in the Seventies was so good they named it twice.) Life of Pi! Two books with drownings as central themes! Thamesside shenanigans in Wolf Hall!
AND YET: Yeah, I know I’m stretching this a bit, but hey, let me have my fun.
Class: Ish
We still aren’t back to the peaks of the Seventies, with a couple of profoundly middle class winners (albeit quite good ones) in there. But in the decade of the great financial crisis (or at least the last one…) it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s popping up all over the shop.
Still a thing: It bursts out massively in the year of the crash, with The White Tiger. But it’s also a big theme in The Line of Beauty, there in The Sea and also in both historical novels.
AND YET: Mostly we’re talking observations on class, here, rather than the authentic voice of the underprivileged. But what else did you really expect from the Booker?
Seriousness: Ebbing
I think perhaps this tips over in the Noughties. It’s not exactly a joke-fest, but in most of these books a wry smile usually isn’t too far away. This one has come a long way over the years.
Still a thing: There are no outright “comedy” novels here (though there’s one just around the corner…)
AND YET: We’re not talking laugh-a-minute here, but there’s outright satire in The White Tiger and Vernon God Little, and specks of humour scattered throughout (to my memory) every other winner, to some extent.
History: Finally “Ending”?
As I said last time out, “you can never truly escape History with a Booker winner, but the Nineties continued the trajectory towards more contemporary tales among those looking backwards.”
It’s odd to say in a decade that includes a couple of the purest examples of historical fiction we’ve seen to date, but there’s definitely a few more “contemporary” tales in here, for sure.
Still a thing: Wolf Hall, True History of the Kelly Gang. And some more recent history elsewhere, notably The Blind Assassin and the 80s-set The Line of Beauty.
AND YET: Vernon God Little and The White Tiger are the most strikingly “contemporary” novels in subject matter to date, the latter in particular to brilliant effect.
Race & Empire: Still less prominent
From themes dominating virtually every winner in the early years, these have slipped away to almost nothing. Diversity among authors remains poor, with Indian authors again the only real diversion from the white British/Irish dominance. Thematically I feel again this has dropped off somewhat. Even the Indian winners are concerned more with internal divisions and caste/class than outright issues of race. Surprising?
Still a thing: I’m struggling to even say it is much of a focus here, unless I’ve forgotten something?
AND YET: Hmm,…
* * *
Overall this was a really decent decade for Booker winners, as evinced by the consistency of my scoring. No duds (although I am wondering if I was a bit too generous to Kelly Gang, now I look back…)
I quite like the sense that you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get next, at this point. It’s definitely keeping this phase of my project interesting!
* * *
The 00s, Ranked:
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst (2004) - 9
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (2008) - 9
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai (2006) - 9
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2002) - 8.5
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (2009) - 8
The Sea - John Banville (2005) - 8
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (2003) - 7.5
The Gathering - Anne Enright (2007) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
* * *
Into the 2010s with our first “official” comedy winner in many years with Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. Since the last time we had an “official” comedy winner, it was Kingsley Amis’ extremely unfunny The Old Devils, I’m hoping this one fares a little better…
