Fellow writers delight in Banville's Booker win

Loose Leaves: If there was ever any doubt that British and Irish eyes see things differently it evaporated this week; while some British literary cognoscenti (Boyd Tonkin, Tibor Fischer) responded with hostility to John Banville's Man Booker win, back on his native turf in Ireland the delight was obvious, not least among fellow writers.

To Anne Enright, Banville's life's work makes the Man Booker seem a little beside the point, "so there was a sense of giddy felicity when he actually won it; the literary circus and the literary life, for a moment, coincide. It freshens the air, somehow, and makes everyone glad".

Colm Tóibín's reaction was that Banville "should have also won it for Birchwood, for The Newton Letter, for The Book of Evidence, for The Untouchable, and for Shroud. These books and The Sea will now reach a much wider audience. It is a delight to think of the pleasure they will give to readers who will now come to them for the first time".

In an age when publishing was sometimes overly influenced by hype, Joseph O'Connor found this a well-deserved win by an artist who had always quietly insisted on his work having its own terms. "John Banville has written a novel that will always be read, not only for its beauty, the gravity and grace of its sentences, but also because it refuses to live by any standards but its own. He does what writers are supposed to do: imagine a world where language still means something. He has done this for many years, and prizes have come and gone, sometimes being won by lesser writers, so to see him win now for this remarkable book is a wonderful thing for anyone who cares about fiction."

To Mary Morrissy there was no writer more richly deserving of the Booker. "I'm just wondering why it took so long for John Banville's artistic integrity to be recognised, not just for The Sea, but for a canon of absolutely luminous work."

While across the water there was much talk of Banville taking the prize from under the noses of literary insiders with a novel "untipped by virtually any critic", according to John Ezard in the Guardian, it was a different story here as the steady flow of phone calls and e-mails to his old beat on the books desk testified. Banville was literary editor of The Irish Times for a decade, until 1999.

The British bookies were also confounded, having ranked Banville as a 7/1 outsider. Just how pivotal they have become to this prize was another eye-opener, so much so that Jan Dalley, arts editor of the Financial Times, described Graham Sharpe, who works for bookmakers William Hill, as one of the most influential literary critics in Britain. This she called "The Sharpe Effect", something judging juries couldn't help but react to, even if only subconsciously.

On presentation night, in advance of the announcement, BBC2's Kirsty Wark took soundings from Dalley and from Robert McCrum, Observer literary editor and Suzi Feay, literary editor of the Independent on Sunday. Banville, Ali Smith and the other Irish contender, Sebastian Barry, were dealt with as also-rans before the panel got down to tackling the favourites - Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith - making the winning announcement all the more riveting when it finally came.

One of the judges, writer and antiquarian book dealer Rick Gekoski, confessed midweek that over the years he had been put off the Booker, partly because of the coverage which got bitchier and bitchier. But being a judge this year, arguing forcefully for Banville's The Sea and seeing it win has restored his faith in the prize. By the time of the judges' final meeting he had read it five times, enjoyed it more and understood it better each time. In spite of being berated after the award announcement by a bookseller who said the decision was disgraceful and that The Sea would be impossible to sell, Gekoski, writing in the Times, said it remains the best book of the year. "It is a work of art, in the tradition of high modernism, and I'll bet it will still be read and admired in 75 years."

It's been an amazing autumn for the Irish on the London arts scene, starting with English National Opera's premiere of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant by Irish composer Gerald Barry, on to the Booker win and continuing tonight when Irish architects O'Donnell and Tuomey's Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork is among six buildings up for the Stirling Prize, the annual Oscars of the British architectural world. Is it all just too much of an Irishfest for some across the water, one wonders?

Meanwhile The Sea is flying out of the shops. Publishers estimate a 500 per cent increase in sales for a Booker winning book, but even better is the fact that Banville has started his next novel, even if it's only the first sentence. He is the great prose stylist of our era; the Booker win just affirms that.

[ books@irish-times.ie ]