Granta's grotto
Every decade Granta's list of Britain's best young novelists causes a literary sensation. Here The Observer presents an exclusive preview of the winners for 2003

Geraldine Bedell
Sunday January 5, 2003
The Observer

Granta's list is a marketing exercise on behalf of contemporary literature, and was the brainchild of Desmond Clarke, who ran the Book Marketing Council in the early 1980s, before literary novelists acquired their present status as minor celebrities. The first list, published in 1983, included Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Graham Swift. It was, in other words, a particularly fortunate time to have embarked on such an exercise, and Bill Buford, then editor of Granta, who devoted an issue to the list, decided to repeat the process himself in 1993.

The second list was, by general agreement, rather less starry, but nevertheless included Iain Banks, Louis de Bernières, Ishiguro (again), Hanif Kureishi, Ben Okri, Will Self, Helen Simpson and Jeanette Winterson. Both lists promoted the odd author who scarcely wrote another word (Ursula Bentley, Adam Lively); but, on the whole, the selections provided a telling snapshot of talent as it surfaced. Granta's list, like all literary prizes, is an attempt to bypass market imperfections, and is loved and loathed by publishers, who are inclined to dismiss it as irrelevant when they aren't included, and to applaud its detachment and authority when they are.

This year's judges ('Why no Sophie Dahl?' complained Ian Jack, editor of Granta) were Jack himself, as chair; Robert McCrum, The Observer's literary editor; Hilary Mantel, novelist and critic; Nicholas Clee, editor of the Bookseller; and Alex Clark, fiction reviewer for the Guardian and London Review of Books. They have been reading since September, when Jack and two assistants at Granta had already whittled down the original 140 submissions to around 50.

Almost constant email traffic helped to streamline their six meetings, which, according to Jack, 'sometimes followed a pattern of quite refined discussion, using words like interiority and plot strategy. At other times it was just: "I couldn't stand it".' Mantel was impressed that none of the judges seemed to be pushing a line. 'When it was all over, I realised we all had unpredictable tastes. I couldn't now pick up a book and say: "Alex Clark will like this".'

Clark thinks 'it's significant that a feeling came over us that we weren't battling each other to get our choices on the list, but that we were battling through what was in front of us to try to get to the gems. It can't be denied that we read some stuff that was absolutely shocking or simply lacklustre.'

Clee felt he suffered 'too many self-conscious works of fiction, and writers who didn't feel like novelists to their fingertips. There was some pretty bad stuff - disguised autobiography that didn't really work as fiction, books that were poorly structured, quite a lot of posturing from people who seemed to regard fiction as a kind of exercise, a too common desire to shock, quite a lot of overwriting and a certain amount of underwriting. A few were hard to read: the writers weren't engaged with the reader.'

Clark mentions 'work obviously rushed or clichéd, novels that were clever ideas not properly seen through, awful self-consciousness, and particularly, novels that could happily have seen a few more drafts. I don't think we came away with a very positive view of editing.' Jack finds it hard to avoid the conclusion that much publishing works on the slot machine principle: 'If you put out enough, you'll eventually come up with three oranges.'

Whether mischievously or incompetently, publishers submitted a number of authors who weren't eligible, three of whom would have been strong contenders. Claire Messud holds three passports, none of them British. Nick Barlay (author of a trilogy of low-life stories told in London demotic) and Andrew Crumey (who holds a PhD in physics and has written four novels) were both disqualified for being too old.

So were there any shoo-ins? Several judges mentioned, unsurprisingly, Zadie Smith. AL Kennedy appears on the list for the second time, 'and if anyone was a certainty, she was,' says McCrum. Mantel read Fingersmith (quite a fat novel) in two sittings. 'We were all bowled over by that book,' says Clee. 'I don't think there was much argument either about David Mitchell [author of Ghostwritten and number9dream, which was shortlisted for the Booker] or about Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room [also shortlisted for the Booker] which was very impressive. Ben Rice has only written one small book [Pobby and Dingan, a novella about a child's imaginary friends set in the Australian outback] but it's marvellous, such a perfect little gem of a thing that I wanted him in.'

A similar consideration influenced Alex Garland's omission. His publisher didn't submit any work, and it is rumoured that the author of The Beach is blocked and doesn't expect ever to write another word. Nevertheless, McCrum thinks that he ought to be there: 'Even if he doesn't write again, we're missing a towering talent without him. But it would have meant 20 blank pages in the magazine.'

Garland's is not the only striking absence. Giles Foden was one of two authors (the other was Zadie Smith) tipped by Bill Buford, now literary editor of the New Yorker; his first novel, The Last King of Scotland, about Idi Amin, garnered great reviews, excellent sales and a Whitbread award. Both Jon McGregor (If No One Speaks of Remarkable Things) and Maggie O'Farrell were frequently mentioned as likely contenders. (There was a groundswell of support for O'Farrell, but her bid foundered during a discussion of the plotting of her recent novel, My Lover's Lover, in which the protagonist sees something on a station which is not revealed until the end, although there is no reason to withhold the information; it is, as Jack says, 'a stunt'.)

Others who might have been expected to make it on include Welsh writer Niall Griffiths, Tobias Hill and Patrick Neate. Jack regrets the exclusion of Zoe Heller, whose as yet unpublished second novel is about a North London school teacher, and Rebecca Smith, who has written a charming first novel about an organic café on the South coast.

On the plus side, there are some unexpected discoveries. Monica Ali's Brick Lane won't be published until the middle of the year, but this story of the Bangladeshi immigrant experience 'sailed through,' according to McCrum. Adam Thirlwell was born in 1978, and he too is yet to be published (his novel, Politics, has been bought by Jonathan Cape). 'He was a late entrant,' says Jack, 'his agent wrote to me saying he was a cross between Milan Kundera and Woody Allen, which made me really not want to read him.'

Other authors were judged on a very small output - Rachel Seiffert, Ben Rice, Dan Rhodes. While some entrants were known to the judges, there were others whom none of them had encountered, such as David Peace, who has written four books with unappealing titles - 1974, 1977, 1980, 1983 - about the Yorkshire Ripper.

Clark acknowledges that the hardest thing was probably 'trying to give parity to new writers who show real promise, and more experienced writers who have already fulfilled a certain amount of theirs'. This could cut both ways. Rachel Cusk got on as much for her track record as for her latest novel, which was not greatly admired. Giles Foden conversely suffered from having produced a couple of books, Ladysmith and Zanzibar, that didn't live up to his debut.

So does a certain kind of writer emerge from this process? Or, to put it another way, does it make sense to talk of a generation of writers? At one level, these books have little in common: they are variously set in nineteenth-century London, in Scotland, Australia, Japan and Afghanistan, and they range in tone through comedy, melodrama and introspection.

'I doubt it's ever made sense to talk of a generation of writers,' says Jack. 'Ishiguro is not like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie is not like anyone, except possibly Marquez. There is, though, quite a lot of sex, and transgression generally, in this lot, and much more historical writing. This introduced us to what came to be known as the Bakelite knob problem. In one novel we read, a woman didn't switch on the radio, she turned the Bakelite knob on the wireless. There was a lot of that sort of thing. Sarah Waters is brilliant at not doing that.'

Clark suggests that the notion of a generation of authors is antithetical to the individual quality of novel-writing. In the end, the judges weren't looking for anything much beyond pleasure. 'An affection for the reader,' says McCrum. 'After all the discussion about what it said about the condition of England,' says Jack, 'we would ask, "If you weren't a judge, would you want to carry on?" So, the giving of pleasure.'

Mantel was 'delighted' to discover Ben Rice, Dan Rhodes and Monica Ali, 'whose big book came in quite late. It's not entirely without problems, but she has a wonderful commitment to narrative and to bringing us news of a world, a mindset. I hadn't read Sarah Waters before, but Fingersmith stood out. I don't think I've enjoyed a book for years in the way I did that - the feeling that you're in safe hands and can give yourself up to it. I read it as if I were a child.'

Even so, Mantel was disappointed with the overall standard. 'It would be nice to think people were making exciting, new, 2003 mistakes, but many showed the usual defects of bad writing - an inability to keep the viewpoint steady, to decide who the book's about, or to impart information, so that it's done clumsily through dialogue. Too many people seem to go into print without editorial support and are left to sink or swim, when one well-targeted question could have brought down the whole edifice.

'My feeling is that the list is weaker than previous lists because of the apparent ease of getting published,' says Mantel. 'There are half a dozen brilliant people on here, and not just the ones I've mentioned, but the competition was not that strong. Many of the others would not have been on in other times.'


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003