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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