EYES ON THE PRIZE: There were no intrigues, no midnight calls, no accusations of using performance-enhancing substances - but judging a literary prize was still an interesting experience, decides Eileen Battersby
Reviewing is a first impression, and whatever about a theatre critic being able to close a theatre - or at least end a run, perhaps even make the cast weep - with a negative verdict, a review will neither make nor break a book. Few egoists are more pathetic than the book reviewer who thinks he or she has power. Many novels on the receiving end of poor reviews go on to become bestsellers, or feature on university literature course lists, while works praised on publication may often slide gracefully into obscurity or, most poignantly, into the remaindered section of the local bookstore. Such is life; such are books.
Yet literary prizes, those contentious lotteries of hype and compromise, often guilty of raising the collective blood pressure, can at times identify good books that might otherwise be overlooked. With all this in mind, I have often considered the prospect of being a judge for either a fiction or a non-fiction prize - after all, don't I read everything and haven't I the bags under my failing eyes to prove it?
How come celebrities such as models, athletes and actresses get all the fun judging literary prizes while miserable professional readers (psst, like me) read through the night but are never asked who should win? This baggy-eyed reviewer has also spent years assessing, bemoaning, the odd time even praising, the selections of judging panels, be it the Booker, Whitbread, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award or the Nobel Prize. There is no better game than predicting a shortlist and then alerting anyone who will listen to the book that was overlooked - or to use the preferred word of outraged reviewers the morning after a shortlist is announced: "excluded". It is a good word, which carries weight and suggests moral indignation.
In truth, it could be argued there is no greater endorsement for a writer than to be ignored by short-sighted, gutless judges, while everyone knows that being shortlisted for the Booker Prize is far better than actually winning it - but we do love our righteous outrage. Sometimes it may be possible to pronounce sagely: "Well, at least the Whitbread got it right." Though the Whitbread does not always get it right either.
Book prizes are not like horse races. Literary panels can be - and have been - affected by political correctness, gender issues, the morality of the contents, the fact they didn't like/frankly despised the author whose book was clearly the best but couldn't possibly win in the circumstances, endless compromise and so forth. As an interesting aside, neither the judges nor the contending authors are subjected to drug tests or accused of using performance-enhancing substances.
The interested onlooker might be tempted to think literary judges are honourable folk enduring phone calls in the middle of the night from menacing deep-throat types advising "pick that book to win or else. . ." Do literary prize judges have nervous breakdowns, become reclusive, fight among themselves, develop nervous tics or eye-strain and generally end up hating the very thought of reading a book? These are questions I have pondered as I waited for some discerning person to ask: "Would you like to judge a book prize?"
Still I read on - fiction, biography, history, archaeology, geography, natural science - writing reviews and wondering what it would be like to be actually asked for my opinion rather than simply offering an unsolicited one in the form of the weekly book review.
The years passed. I have of course heard snippets and read confessional and/or self- justifying articles written by former literary prize judges who invariably hinted at, or openly referred to, their duties as a form of heroism - or heroic masochism. The more churlish ones give the impression that they have not only not read the books, but that they also hate the authors.
At last, after aeons of mountains of books and offering review opinions no one cared about, I got my chance. The organisers of Listowel 2002 Writers' Week - which has had a long association with playwright John B. Keane, who died this week - invited me to judge the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Award. I did what wimps like me usually do after endlessly hoping I would get my chance to do something - I panicked. The responsibility, the pressure, the guilt, the losers, those phone calls in the small hours. "Say no," urged a little voice in my head. I could not think about who would win, I was more concerned with those who wouldn't and would hate me forever.
However, as my fellow judge would be Eugene McCabe, a fine writer and author of an Irish classic, Death and Nightingales (1992), as well as Victims (1976) and a powerful play, The King of the Castle, that opened eyes and minds in 1964, I accepted.
Then the "fun" began. Parcels of books arrived; six books, nine books, seven books, 10 books and so on. I had been prepared for the fact that entries could exceed 80. The early weeks were difficult as the novels, submitted initially by Irish publishers, were dominated by beach-read bestsellers and the recently emerging category of comic novels by comedians. The parcels continued arriving and there were notable absences among yet more of the airport/holiday novels and thrillers.
Long before I had the first signs of a substantial pile consisting of some 35 books, one of which was not even a novel, I had made some "panic alert" calls to the organisers. British publishers of fine Irish literary fiction required a nudge.
Perhaps they needed the prize, sponsored by Kerry Ingredients, to be called something more readily identifiable with the Listowel Writers' Week, established in 1971 and well known on the literary calendar? Such as say, The Listowel Writers' Week Irish Fiction Award? Kerry Ingredients sounds more like a specialist cookery writing competition.
Well, by the end we had almost 60 novels, many of which should never have been considered as prize contenders. For this, you blame the publishers, not the authors or organisers. A few of the novels were appalling. Yet, overall, the entry illustrated the range of contemporary Irish fiction. It was also impossible to ignore that sex rather than memory was the dominant theme.
Weeks and then months passed and with them came calls from the organisers about when we would have the shortlist ready. Far lengthier conversations continued between us, the judges. Most of the calls from Listowel were about logistics, not the books. Eugene McCabe is a kind, though shrewd and exacting, reader. Our shortlist literally presented itself. This quintet of contrasting novels is exciting. I am proud of this shortlist; it represents strong contemporary Irish fiction. Picking it was satisfying and quick once we had read all the books. Deciding on the winner was more difficult. Debate and argument, counter-argument and suggestions along the lines of "what makes a winner?". Okay, I like a bit of drama, but I have to admit, there were no Florentine intrigues, no threats, no midnight calls.
John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun was an obvious contender. As subtle as it is wryly observed, it explores the rituals of existence as pursued in a small community over the course of one year. It is about life, death, talk and that most Irish of arts, evasion. It is a wonderful novel; it is also the story of rural Ireland faced with change.
Eoin McNamee's The Blue Tango, based on a murder in Northern Ireland in 1952 and a subsequent miscarriage of justice, is haunting, mesmeric and almost oppressively choreographed in its strange, surreal beauty. Dark and important, it is about tormented sexuality, fear, guilt, lies and doubt.
Sean O'Reilly's début collection, Curfew, was published in 2000. It prepares the reader for the achievement that is his first novel, Love and Sleep. This is the story of Niall, a writer returnedhome to Derry from his travels. His odyssey of self-hatred and apathy is extraordinarily chronicled by O'Reilly in an urgent, intimate, angry and shocking novel that is both public and personal; claustrophobically internal and determinedly European.
A further two first novels, both published in Ireland, made our shortlist. Fergus O'Connell's Call the Swallow is a novel of surprises. Firstly, it is not about Ireland. O'Connell has written a remarkable narrative about a man's search for his long-missing sister. Based on the horrific realities of the Holocaust, this is an important, dignified and immensely moving novel. This is where a literary prize shortlist proves its worth.
The same applies to Monica Tracey's candid and engaging Unweaving the Tread, about a Catholic girlhood in Co Antrim. Fiction can be brilliantly observed; it can also be brilliantly felt, and this is true of Tracey's novel. I knew nothing about it when it arrived in with another consignment of entries, but its cover with a rugged landscape scene caught my eye. It's a terrific sleeper novel, unsentimental and thoughtful. Thanks to being a judge, I have read a book I had otherwise missed out on.
Readers are greedy people; we want the best. Each of the five on the shortlist had persuasive, valid and convincing claims. Five books, one prize - "and the winner is John McGahern for That They May Face The Rising Sun."
•Listowel Writers' Week continues today and tomorrow. Details from tel: 068-21074 and website: www.writersweek.ie