Alan Hollinghurst

So sorry about yesterday's mysterious disappearing post. Once again Typepad gobbled a long piece I'd been working on for more than an hour. It upset me that I'd expended all that time and energy only to lose it all. At least it wasn't a novel, eh? I know, I know, perspective… yadda yadda. But when you're already having a bad life day stuff like this doesn't do a person any favors.

Regardless, it's embarrassing Tweeting I'd posted a new blog post, only to send visitors to a blank page. And Twitter's customer service? Underwhelming, to say the least. I'm still irate at how little they cared, giving the most cursory response, solving nothing. I've been with them six years, giving them a big chunk of money for the privilege. I could go elsewhere for free, yet I've stayed here. You'd think that would mean something but I suppose apathy rules, as it does pretty much everywhere.

As I'd been saying before my post went amiss, my personal nomination for the fiction prize didn't make the cut. My choice was Goldie Goldbloom's The Paperbark Shoe, the book that was for 2011 what Jon Clinch's Finn was for my 2007 – an unexpected smack to my gob. It's these first-time novelists I love discovering; it's such a rush being among the first to see their skill and future potential. And it was satisfying Finn went on to make a big splash, being added to several university reading lists as a companion to Huckleberry Finn. I can't claim responsibility for all that but I spread the word every chance I got. I can only hope I brought The Paperbark Shoe to a wider reading audience. Who knows? Maybe.

This year's out of nowhere nomination is Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia. Just so happens I've read it, when The Rumpus chose it as a bookclub selection a few months ago. Because I was late to the discussion and wanted to participate I read it quickly, not giving it much time to impress me. Then again, when a book knocks me sideways I know it right away. The first sentence is key and the first paragraph almost always seals the deal. And that didn't happen with SA. I'll give it one more go but honestly I don't see it as the winner. But just to be nominated is an incredible honor for one of the more obscure titles.

Then there's Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, another underwhelming read, one I dumped halfway through when a major character fell off the scene, angering me and making me lose interest. Hollinghurst's prose just wasn't there for me, either. I know the critics fell all over themselves praising it. I just don't quite understand why. Maybe it took a turn for the better after I left off but a prize-winning novel shouldn't lose the reader, ever. As with SA, I'll try it one last time, reserving final judgement 'til I do.

Teju Cole's novel Open City was an exception to my first paragraph rule. For the first half to three quarters I would have given it a full five stars, no reservations. Then came a long, dull political screed interrupting the narrative. Political themes are all well and good but don't slip them in halfway through a novel. Give the reader a little inkling what's coming earlier on, include a transition.With no major segue the politics turned a fantastic book into a slog. I didn't even finish the book. And, okay. I'll try it again.

I'm seeing a theme here. You?

That leaves Eugenides and Pearlman, the only two whose nominations I haven't tried. They're both queued up on my Kindle, so I officially own all the fiction finalists. This one category is all I can handle this year but I'll have my pick ready before the board declares the winners in early March. Disclaimer: And, so you know, though I have nomination privileges I have no part or influence over the winners.

Alas, the rest of my original post is lost to the ages. I recreated a lot of the original but it pains me knowing a lot of it was lost. Maybe it would have pained you had my little disaster not happened. Sometimes things work out for the better.

If you have any thoughts on the 2011 nominations/awards I'd love to hear them. Just drop me a comment in the usual place, and, again, sorry about Typepad's gaffe. I'll post thoughts on the fiction finalists as I read. I, for one, will be interested to see if re-reading any books I disliked the first time changes my opinion. Truthfully, I doubt it. Without that prior knowledge my early prediction (and don't hold me to this…) is either Eugenides or Pearlman, though Hollinghurst has gotten an awful lot of critical acclaim. And sometimes awards go to critically beloved books which have been passed over for other awards, intentionally or not I honestly don't know.

One book I'm surprised didn't make the list is Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones. What a masterwork! Yes, she won the National Book Award but frankly I don't think there's an award out there this book doesn't deserve. It's just that magnificent. If she wasn't a consideration I'd be shocked. Guess you can't let every deserving book make it into the finals. I recommend putting this novel on your reading list, if you haven't already. Then try and tell me it didn't deserve a spot here.

Congratulations to all the nominees. I wish you the bet of luck.

But here they are, the finalists for books written in 2011:

NBCC Finalists 2011

Fiction

Teju Cole, Open City (Random House)

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Knopf)

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (Lookout Books)

Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (Scribner)

Nonfiction

Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random)

James Gleick, The Information (Pantheon)

Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (Knopf)

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead: Essays (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Autobiography

Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing (W.W. Norton)

Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (Free Press)

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown)

Luis J. Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)

Deb Olin Unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (Henry Holt)

Biography

Mary Gabriel, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution (Little, Brown)

John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin Press)

Paul Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf)

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)

Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Belknap Press: Harvard University Press)

Criticism

David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber)

Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf)

Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday)

Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture (Open Letter)

Ellen Willis, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)

Poetry

Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)

Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)

Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago Press)

You'll have heard by now a sharp rap, followed by a series of dull thuds. The first was my chin hitting the table. The second, my head banging the wall.

Mere minutes ago I turned the last page of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending,' a book so gorgeous I am sitting here literally biting my tongue to keep from weeping at the sheer perfection of it. Yes, weeping.

I am not a crier. I do not cry. If I do cry something disastrous has happened, something inconceivable. Or, I've just heard about or seen animal abuse – in a movie, in real life or any way, shape or form. But the minute I read the last page of both Sebastian Barry's On Canaan's Side and Julian Barnes' lovely novel I found myself in the same fix. I could weep like Alice in the tunnel, until I nearly drown myself.

Such a visceral reaction to two novels read back to back. Either my hormones have been sucked up and spit out by a cyclone or I have discovered – upon reading my second novel of Barry's and first of Barnes' – two authors who speak to me as few other writers have, putting them in the same category as William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. None too shabby a company.

The thing is, they're so different! Barry is poetic, Barnes sparing. Both know exactly when to twist the knife to elicit a reaction in the reader. Their timing is impeccable. And, as for their endings, It was fairly obvious where Barry was going, though no less wonderful to read because of it. As for Barnes, the reader knows something is up, but not exactly what. I guessed, but had it wrong. And I'm very glad to say that, because there's nothing more irritating than guessing an author's intention and being right, then feeling no reward from having gotten there.

Blimey. If you've been hanging about here over the past few days (and if not, WHY NOT?!) you'll know I'm dead set on reading all the Booker Longlist contenders I can. Barry was first, and knocked me off my feet. I thought to myself, "Self! Here is your winner." And he still may be. He may! But Julian Barnes… The two of them have each smacked my gob, and I am deathly afraid what I'll think of the other books.

Both deserve the award. Both have had nominations previously (Barnes 3, Barry 2). Both have resumes as long as both my arms put together. Scholars have seen fit to write works of criticism about them. Barnes' earlier works have already been archived, that's how brilliant he is. Barry has written more plays than novels. Far more. Finally, Barry is Irish and Barnes English.

And I am torn in two.

It's not that I didn't realize these two, plus Alan Hollinghurst (who won the Booker for The Line of Beauty in 2004) were the three huge names in the Booker pool. I expected all three would blow me away. I just didn't realize in advance how strong my reactions to both Barry and Barnes would be. And Hollinghurst's book is next…