>>Jones 'a little disappointed' not to win Booker Prize
>>Books editor Linda Herrick speaks from the Booker Awards about Lloyd Jones' reaction
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New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones has just missed out on the Booker Prize for his novel Mister Pip.
Anne Enright's fourth novel, The Gathering, has been named the surprise winner of the £50,000 (NZ$138,773) Man Booker Prize, beating the favourites, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Mister Pip.
The prestigous Booker Prize, founded in 1969, rewards the best novel of the year written by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.
After two-and-a-half hours of deliberation, involving three separate voting systems, the panel of Booker judges, led by Sir Howard Davies, the Director of the London School of Economics, chose Enright's book, which Ladbrokes had placed as the joint outsider to win at 12/1.
The Gathering follows Veronica Hegarty, a mother of two in her late thirties coping with the suicide of her alcoholic brother, Liam, who drowned himself off the beach at Brighton. One of the 12-strong Hegarty clan, Veronica finds herself responsible for bringing her favourite brother's body back from England to Dublin for the wake at her childhood home.
Liam's death brings back memories of a terrible event that happened at their grandmother's home when they were children. In an attempt to understand the roots of her family's problems, Veronica imagines her grandmother as a much younger woman. Her grief plunges her marriage into crisis, leaving her unwilling to share the marital bed, preferring to pace their spacious family home at night with a glass of white wine in her hand.
Enright herself has described the book as "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepy".
"When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book," she has admitted.
Mister Pip has already won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Prize for best fiction this year. It is one of the most successful novels to come out of New Zealand, far outpacing the "other" New Zealand novel, Keri Hulme's 1984 Booker winner The Bone People.
It took New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones three years and 10 drafts to pen the story, which is narrated by 13-year-old Matilda, who becomes transfixed by Pip, the character in Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations after it is read to her class by an eccentric teacher.
Sir Howard called Booker winner The Gathering a "powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book".
"It's an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language. We think she's an impressive novelist. We expect to hear a lot more from her.
"The book is very tightly structured. It's seen through the dyspeptic vision of the central character. She's a woman at a difficult moment in her life."
He added that when the judges drew up the longlist of 13 books, they "probably did not expect that to be the winner, but it came through very strongly on re-reading".
Enright, who celebrated her 45th birthday last week, was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. Her previous novels are The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, What Are You Like? - which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and won the Encore Award - and The Wig My Father Wore, published twelve years ago.
She has also published a collection of stories, The Portable Virgin, which won the Rooney Prize and a work of non-fiction, Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood. The last Irish writer to win the prize was John Banville in 2005 with The Sea.
This year's shortlist came in for heavy criticism from Robert Harris, the best-selling author of The Ghost and Fatherland. He said it consisted of titles that were "dull and dry... [and] deadening to read". But Sir Howard insisted The Gathering was "an accessible novel".
Kes Nielsen, Head of Books Buying at Amazon.co.uk, commented: "Out of the six shortlisted books, it is this one that seems not to have caught the imagination of the public in any real way."
But that may now change. Jonathan Ruppin, of Foyles bookshop, said: "Not everyone will be comfortable, but the writing is undeniably exquisite. The judges' decision is a welcome boost for serious literature."
The Booker, won in the past by a string of renowned authors from Salman Rushdie to J.M. Coetzee, has attracted an international field of would-be literary stars in 2007.
Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid made the shortlist for The Reluctant Fundamentalist which tackles the fears of a post-9/11 world through the eyes of a New York businessman.
British author Ian McEwan, was bidding for his second Booker with the novella On Chesil Beach about a catastrophically shy young couple's wedding night.
Indian novelist Indra Sinha made the shortlist for Animal's People about the Bhopal chemical leak.
Dubliner Anne Enright was selected for her family epic The Gathering and the list is completed by Londoner Nicola Barker for her contemporary ghost story Darkmans.
- NZHERALD STAFF, INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
