David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 1 August 2011

Former Booker judge Louise Doughty says hooray! for the bravest Booker longlist ever compiled.

* Julian Barnes
The Sense of an Ending 

* Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side 

* Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie

* Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers 

* Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues 

* Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats 

* Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child 

* Stephen Kelman Pigeon English

* Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days 

* A D Miller Snowdrops 

* Alison Pick Far to Go

* Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb 

* D J Taylor Derby Day


John Banville gets to grips with Ann Wroe’s inventive biography of Orpheus.

In Orpheus Ann Wroe has written the biography of a mythic figure – the book is dedicated “to everyone who protested, ‘But Orpheus isn’t real'” – and a meditation on the melody art plays at the deepest levels of life.

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