The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Hello all,

Mookse Madness 2019 is only six months away, which doesn't seem long since I wanted to focus on novels again this year.

In Mookse Madness 2017, the first year, we threw 64 novels, from various parts of the world and from various times in history, in a series of death matches. Only prevailed: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

In Mookse Madness 2018 we did the same thing, but with short stories. The winner that year: William Trevor's "The Piano Tuner's Wives."

For 2019, I'm trying something a bit different. This is the year of Booker Prize Darlings. I have gone through the history of the Man Booker Prize and picked out the sixteen authors (eight men, eight women) who have been most favored by the prize, getting at least three of their books on the shortlists. Each of these special authors will have four books in Mookse Madness, and their books will fight it out against each other first before moving on to match up with another author's "best" book.

The books chosen for each author's entry will not necessarily be the ones that were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, though some certainly will be. In fact, I'd love your insights. Which books should represent each author?

Here they are (the number in parentheses is the number of times he or she had a book on the shortlist):

-Iris Murdoch (6)
-Beryl Bainbridge (5)
-Margaret Atwood (5)
-Penelope Fitzgerald (4)
-Ali Smith (4)
-Muriel Spark (3)
-Penelope Lively (3)
-Doris Lessing (3)
-Anita Desai (3)

-Ian McEwan (5)
-William Trevor (4)
-Salman Rushdie (4)
-Kazuo Ishiguro (4)
-Peter Carey (4)
-Thomas Keneally (4)
-Julian Barnes (4)
-Brian Moore (3)
-J.M. Coetzee (3)

There are other male and female authors who have been on the shortlist three times, but they didn't make my arbitrary cut (I wanted Sarah Waters on the list, for example, but when I rolled the dice she didn't make it). If you have an alternate to suggest, please take some time to write up your formal recommendation, including who among the lower tier (3)'s should be left off instead. And if I missed an author who has four or more books shortlisted, please let me know as they will automatically qualify.

Anyway, please look over the list and let me know what books you think should represent each author. I would like them to be among their strongest and most well known, though if you can argue for the inclusion of an underappreciated gem I'm sure we'd all appreciate the discovery.

Since the Booker Prize is limited to novels, please do not recommend short story collections where they might otherwise be very appropriate (see William Trevor, for example).

Iris Murdoch published 26 novels between 1954 and 1995. Six of them were shortlisted for the Booker Prize (which is a record!). Her sole Booker Prize winner was The Sea, the Sea. All of these books are eligible for Mookse Madness 2019, but only four can be in the match. Please help!

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Under the Net (1954)
2. The Flight from the Enchanter (1956)
3. The Sandcastle (1957)
4. The Bell (1958)
5. A Severed Head (1961)
6. An Unofficial Rose (1962)
7. The Unicorn (1963)
8. The Italian Girl (1964)
9. The Red and the Green (1965)
10. The Time of the Angels (1966)
11. The Nice and the Good (1968)
12. Bruno's Dream (1969)
13. A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970)
14. An Accidental Man (1971)
15. The Black Prince (1973)
16. The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974)
17. A Word Child (1975)
18. Henry and Cato (1976)

20. Nuns and Soldiers (1980)
21. The Philosopher's Pupil (1983)
22. The Good Apprentice (1985)
23. The Book and the Brotherhood (1987)
24. The Message to the Planet (1989)
25. The Green Knight (1993)
26. Jackson's Dilemma (1995)

Beryl Bainbridge wrote 20 books from 1967 to 2011. While five of them were shortlisted (the second most of any author) none won! Which four of these should be in Mookse Madness 2019?

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. A Weekend with Claude (1967)
2. Another Part of the Wood (1968)
3. Harriet Said... (1972)
4. The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) (1973)
5. The Bottle Factory Outing (1974)
6. Sweet William (1975)
7. A Quiet Life (1976)
8. Injury Time (1977)
9. Young Adolf (1978)
10. Another Part of the Wood (1979)
11. Winter Garden (1980)
12. A Weekend with Claude (1981)
13. Watson's Apology (1984)
14. Filthy Lucre (written as a teenager in 1946 but published 1986)
15. An Awfully Big Adventure (1989)
16. The Birthday Boys (1991)
17. Every Man for Himself (1996)
18. Master Georgie (1998)
19. According to Queeney (2001)
20. The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress (2011)

Do you have time to list the others, with 3 books, who were statistically eligible but didn't get in?

Sarah Waters is more widely read now than Brian Moore so I would vote for including her instead.

I might also vote for replacing Ian McEwan, although as he is so well known I can see that he ought to be on there as one of the authors commonly associated with the Booker and late "0th century UK literature.

I haven't had a chance to look at stats but if another older male replacement author is required anywhere I would support Martin Amis. (Whom I would guess must have been on the shortlist 3 times by now.) He may provoke strong reactions, but he is not boring. Which I think later McEwan can be.

I loved Penelope Lively's children's books but don't think I've read any of her adult works. I support keeping her on the list.

Thanks Trevor. I can probably help a little with Murdoch - I have read 16 of them. I would definitely include The Black Prince and The Unicorn, but would have to give some thought to which of 8 to 10 of them most deserve to join them. Still only read one Bainbridge. Looking forward to this!

With Trevor, I think two titles stand out: Felicia’s Journey, which has lingered in my mind above all his other novels, and The Children of Dynmouth, which two completely unconnected people have told me they think is by far his finest.

Bainbridge: According to Queenie.

I reckon Ali Smith will win this.

If the lists above are based on frequency of getting on the shortlist, then a natural tiebreaker would be which of the authors with 3 shortlist appearances made the longlist most often.

David wrote: "If the lists above are based on frequency of getting on the shortlist, then a natural tiebreaker would be which of the authors with 3 shortlist appearances made the longlist most often."

That biases it in favour of more recent authors, as the longlist has only been publicly announced since 2001.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

Anto, I’m keeping eight men and eight women, so Waters would have to replace a woman instead of Moore. I would love Waters since her books tend to be very different from what you think of when you think Booker (which is why I’m a strong supporter for including Moore on the list!).

I will put together the potential alternates and post them. I will also continue doing the bibliographies.

Antonomasia wrote: "That biases it in favour of more recent authors, as the longlist has only been publicly announced since 2001."

Ah. I didn't know that. Ok, scrap that idea!

For Ishiguro:
The Remains of the Day (obviously)
The Unconsoled (as it is so different)
The Buried Giant (ditto)
Never Let Me Go (which featured in the Vulture 2000s Canon)

For Rushdie - trickier.... but having read them all

Midnight's Children
Shame (or Moor's Last Sigh)
Shalimar The Clown (quite brilliant and very underrated)
The Enchantress of Florence (long but not shortlisted and had past Chair of judges John Sutherland proclaiming 'If The Enchantress of Florence doesn’t win this year’s Man Booker I’ll curry my proof copy and eat it.')

And for Fitzgerald - anything except the one that actually won the Booker.

I would go with:
Blue Flower (instead of Offshore) and the three shortlistees:
Gate of Angels
The Bookshop
The Beginning of Spring

100% behind The Unconsoled. What a magnificent book, easily Ishiguro’s best for me.

Brian Moore's finest line was surely his 'It's Up for Grabs Now' in the greatest sporting moment ever (19 seconds in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFo1e...

But I was genuinely unaware there was an author (I assume not the same person) with the same name.

Lee wrote: "100% behind The Unconsoled. What a magnificent book, easily Ishiguro’s best for me."

I had the pleasure once of telling him that to his face - I think he rather likes it as well.

To date, Margaret Atwood has published 17 novels. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize four times, winning once for The Blind Assassin.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Edible Woman (1969)
2. Surfacing (1972)
3. Lady Oracle (1976)
4. Life Before Man (1979)
5. Bodily Harm (1981)
6. The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
7. Cat's Eye (1988)
8. The Robber Bride (1993)
9. Alias Grace (1996)
10. The Blind Assassin (2000)
11. Oryx and Crake (2003)
12. The Penelopiad (2005)
13. The Year of the Flood (2009)
14. MaddAddam (2013)
15. Scribbler Moon (2014)
16. The Heart Goes Last (2015)
17. Hag-Seed (2016)

Penelope Fitzgerald published nine novels (all after she had turned 60!), with four of them shortlisted for the Booker. Her third novel, Offshore, is the one that won her the prize.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Golden Child (1977)
2. The Bookshop (1978)
3. Offshore (1979)
4. Human Voices (1980)
5. At Freddie's (1982)
6. Innocence (1986)
7. The Beginning of Spring (1988)
8. The Gate of Angels (1990)
9. The Blue Flower (1995)

To date, Ali Smith has published nine novels (with more on the way), and four of them have found the Booker shortlist. I think this is incredible since her books are not at all what I think of when I think Booker. They're not even what I think of when I think of a novel. She has not won the prize.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Like (1997)
2. Hotel World (2001)
3. The Accidental (2005)
4. Girl Meets Boy (2007)
5. There But For The (2011)
6. Artful (2012)
7. How to Be Both (2014)
8. Autumn (2016)
9. Winter (2017)

Muriel Spark published 22 novels between 1957 and 2004, with some of her most famous coming before the Booker Prize was established. Still, three of her later ones were shortlisted!

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Comforters (1957)
2. Robinson (1958)
3. Memento Mori (1959)
4. The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960)
5. The Bachelors (1960)
6. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
7. The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
8. The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)
9. The Public Image (1968)
10. The Driver's Seat (1970)
11. Not to Disturb (1971)
12. The Hothouse by the East River (1973)
13. The Abbess of Crewe (1974)
14. The Takeover (1976)
15. Territorial Rights (1979)
16. Loitering With Intent (1981)
17. The Only Problem (1984)
18. A Far Cry from Kensington (1988)
19. Symposium: A Novel (1990)
20. Reality And Dreams (1996)
21. Aiding and Abetting (2000)
22. The Finishing School (2004)

Penelope Lively is the author on these lists I least know. I have never read any of her work, and I am not 100% sure that the 17 books listed below are all novels (she has published a fair few collections of stories). She's been shortlisted for the Booker three times, and she won with Moon Tiger.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Road to Lichfield (1977)
2. Treasures of Time (1979)
3. Judgment Day (1980)
4. Next to Nature, Art (1982)
5. Perfect Happiness (1983)
6. According to Mark (1984)
7. Moon Tiger (1987)
8. Passing On (1989)
9. City of the Mind (1991)
10. Cleopatra's Sister (1993)
11. Heat Wave (1996)
12. Spiderweb (1998)
13. The Photograph (2003)
14. Making it up (2005)
15. Consequences (2007)
16. Family Album (2009)
17. How It All Began (2011)

Of the women who have been shortlisted multiple times for the Booker, Doris Lessing is the only one to have won the Nobel Prize. She's also the one I'm most inclined to leave off this list in order to get, say, Sarah Waters on. Let me know what you think! In her long career, she published 26 novels and was shortlisted for the Prize three times, though she never won.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Grass Is Singing (1950)
2. Martha Quest (1952)
3. A Proper Marriage (1954)
4. Retreat to Innocence (1956)
5. A Ripple from the Storm (1958)
6. The Golden Notebook (1962)
7. Landlocked (1965)
8. The Four-Gated City (1969)
9. Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971)
10. The Summer Before the Dark (1973)
11. Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
12. Shikasta (1979)
13. The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)
14. The Syrian Experiments (1980)
15. The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982)
16. The Sentimental Agents in the Volyne Empire (1983)
17. The Diary of a Good Neighbour (as Jane Somers, 1983)
18. If the Old Could... (as Jane Somers, 1984)
19. The Good Terrorist (1985)
20. The Fifth Child (1988)
21. Love, Again (1996)
22. Mara and Dann (1999)
23. Ben, in the World (2000)
24. The Sweetest Dream (2001)
25. The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (2005)
26. The Cleft (2007)

I know little about Anita Desai. This list of works comes from Wikipedia, where it says "selected works," so I think some of these could be collections or children's fiction, and some of her novels might not even be on this list! But I think most of these are eligible, so we have to choose four from this list of 14.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Cry the Peacock (1963)
2. Voices in the City (1965)
3. Bye-bye Blackbird (1971)
4. Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)
5. Cat on a Housboat (1976)
6. Fire on the Mountain (1977)
7. Games at Twilight (1978)
8. Clear Light of Day (1980)
9. In Custody (1984)
10. Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
11. Journey to Ithaca (1995)
12. Fasting, Feasting (1999)
13. The Zigzag Way (2004)
14. The Artist of Disappearance (2011)

If you literally rolled a dice to decide which of the 3-fers made it then I think you should exercise host rights to pick the ones you want.

Although Doris Lessing's reaction to her Nobel win was priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBOD...

Though many of us know William Trevor as a superb short story writer (his "The Piano Tuner's Wives" won Mookse Madness 2018), he wrote plenty of novels. Eighteen to be exact! Though four were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Trevor never won. By the way, normally I'd leave off the novellas in Two Lives, but since one of them was Booker shortlisted, I guess we'll just make them each eligible!

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. A Standard of Behaviour (1958)
2. The Old Boys (1964)
3. The Boarding-House (1965)
4. The Love Department (1966)
5. Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel (1969)
6. Miss Gomez and the Brethren (1971)
7. Elizabeth Alone (1973)
8. The Children of Dynmouth (1976)
9. The Distant Past and Other Stories (1979)
10. Other People's Worlds (1980)
11. Fools of Fortune (1983)
12. Nights at the Alexandra (1987)
13. The Silence in the Garden (1988)
14. Two Lives (1991; two novellas)
15. Felicia's Journey (1994)
16. Death in Summer (1998)
17. The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)
18. Love and Summer (2009)

Salman Rushdie is perhaps the quintessential Booker Prize author. Midnight's Children has gone on to win at least two of the Booker of Booker Prizes over the years, and Rushdie's ascent seems to coincide with the Prize's. Four of his eleven novels have been shortlisted.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Grimus (1975)
2. Midnight's Children (1981)
3. Shame (1983)
4. The Satanic Verses (1988)
5. The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
6. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
7. Fury (2001)
8. Shalimar the Clown (2005)
9. The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
10. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015)
11. The Golden House (2017)

In terms of ratio of shortlisted books to books published, I think Ishiguro wins when it comes to novelists who have published more than three or four books. An astounding four of his seven have been shortlisted for the prize!

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. A Pale View of Hills (1982)
2. An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
3. The Remains of the Day (1989)
4. The Unconsoled (1995)
5. When We Were Orphans (2000)
6. Never Let Me Go (2005)
7. The Buried Giant (2015)

Paul wrote: "Although Doris Lessing's reaction to her Nobel win was priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBOD... "

Love it. At her age she's seen practically everything already, and talking about winning the Nobel Prize can wait a while until she's got other things sorted out.

Choosing 4 to represent a career as long and varied as Lessing's could be a challenge, but The Golden Notebook has to be there.

Peter Carey is one of only three novelists who has won the Booker Prize twice. He and J.M. Coetzee are both on this list up for Mookse Madness 2019. The other double winner is Hilary Mantel who, though she'd be a great novelist for this contest, is ineligible because she has only been shortlisted for the two books that won! Four of Carey's fourteen have been shortlisted.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Bliss (1981)
2. Illywhacker (1985)
3. Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
4. The Tax Inspector (1991)
5. The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994)
6. Jack Maggs (1997)
7. True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)
8. My Life as a Fake (2003)
9. Theft: A Love Story (2006)
10. His Illegal Self (2008)
11. Parrot and Olivier in America (2010)
12. The Chemistry of Tears (2012)
13. Amnesia (2014)
14. A Long Way From Home (2017)

For Lively, I'd like to see Moon Tiger and According to Mark. All of the ones I have read had their moments.

Paul wrote: "But I was genuinely unaware there was an author (I assume not the same person) with the same name. "

As a boy in school here in Canada, I became familiar with Brian Moore's name as one of the few world-class Canadian writers at the time. That his name was pronounced "Bree-an" and that he was born in Northern Ireland, sounded Irish, and wrote about Northern Ireland, made it seem odd that he seemed to inspire such national pride in Canada, but, ok. Let's go with that. He did become a citizen and wrote here.

I know his book Judith Hearne both because I actually knew a person named Judy Hearne, so the name stuck in my head, but also from the marvelous film adaptation called The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987, starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins). I never read The Luck Of Ginger Coffey, but that title is the one my teachers in school most often mentioned when talking about Moore, so it must be good, right? The 1991 film Black Robe (which was a very big deal when it came out here in Canada) was written by Moore based on a novel of his of the same name, so he did write about Canada and Canadian history as well.

One name I don't often think about when I'm thinking of the Booker Prize is Thomas Keneally. But he's a winner and has also had four of his books shortlisted! So I don't know what my problem is. Oh, it could be that all four of his shortlisted works came in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But boy has Keneally been prolific, and looking at what some of these novels are about he's all over the board in terms of content.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Place at Whitton (1964)
2. The Fear (1965), rewritten in (1989) as By the Line
3. Bring Larks and Heroes (1967)
4. Three Cheers for the Paraclete (1968)
5. The Survivor (1969)
6. A Dutiful Daughter (1971)
7. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972)
8. Blood Red, Sister Rose (1974)
9. Moses the Lawgiver (1975)
10. Gossip from the Forest (1975)
11. Season in Purgatory (1976)
12. A Victim of the Aurora (1978)
13. Passenger (1979)
14. Confederates (1979)
15. The Cut-Rate Kingdom (1980)
16. Schindler's Ark (1982)
17. A Family Madness (1985)
18. The Playmaker (1987)
19. Act of Grace (1985), (under the pseudonym William Coyle)
20. Towards Asmara (1989)
21. Flying Hero Class (1991)
22. Chief of Staff (1991), (under the pseudonym William Coyle)
23. Woman of the Inner Sea (1993)
24. Jacko: The Great Intruder (1993)
25. A River Town (1995)
26. Bettany's Book (2000)
27. An Angel in Australia (2000)
28. The Tyrant's Novel (2003)
29. The Widow and Her Hero (2007
30. The People's Train (2009)
31. The Daughters of Mars (2012)
32. Shame and the Captives (2014)
33. Napoleon's Last Island (2015)
34. Crimes of the Father (2016)

If Julian Barnes thinks the Booker Prize is "posh bingo," I wonder what he thinks Mookse Madness is. Four shortlisted novels among his thirteen, with one winner: The Sense of an Ending.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Metroland (1980)
2. Before She Met Me (1982)
3. Flaubert's Parrot (1984)
4. Staring at the Sun (1986)
5. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)
6. Talking It Over (1991)
7. The Porcupine (1992)
8. England, England (1998)
9. Love, etc (2000)
10. Arthur & George (2005)
11. The Sense of an Ending (2011)
12. The Noise of Time (2016)
13. The Only Story (2018)

Brian Moore is a favorite author for many of my friends. Whenever someone says the Booker Prize doesn't value thrillers, you can point to his Lies of Silence as a token, and what a fine book it is.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Wreath for a Redhead (1951)
2. The Executioners (1951)
3. French for Murder (1954) (as Bernard Mara)
4. A Bullet for My Lady (1955) (as Bernard Mara)
5. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955)
6. This Gun for Gloria (1956) (as Bernard Mara)
7. Intent to Kill (1956) (as Michael Bryan)
8. The Feast of Lupercal (1957)
9. Murder in Majorca (1957) (as Michael Bryan)
10. The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960)
11. An Answer from Limbo (1962)
12. The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1965)
13. I Am Mary Dunne (1968)
14. Fergus (1970)
15. The Revolution Script (1971)
16. Catholics (1972)
17. The Great Victorian Collection (1975)
18. The Doctor's Wife (1976)
19. The Mangan Inheritance (1979)
20. The Temptation of Eileen Hughes (1981)
21. Cold Heaven (1983)
22. Black Robe (1985)
23. The Colour of Blood (1987)
24. Lies of Silence (1990)
25. No Other Life (1993)
26. The Statement (1995)
27. The Magician's Wife (1997)

Ian McEwan, another name that for me is synonymous with the Booker Prize. Perhaps this is because five of his fourteen books have been shortlisted? He's won once (Amsterdam).

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. The Cement Garden (1978)
2. The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
3. The Child in Time (1987)
4. The Innocent (1990)
5. Black Dogs (1992)
6. Enduring Love (1997)
7. Amsterdam (1998)
8. Atonement (2001)
9. Saturday (2005)
10. On Chesil Beach (2007)
11. Solar (2010)
12. Sweet Tooth (2012)
13. The Children Act (2014)
14. Nutshell (2016)

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters has got high ratings among friends, and it's substantial enough to have made its way onto a few school and university reading lists. (Can see from the genre tags page that I wasn't the only one who encountered it in that context.)

Flaubert's Parrot used to be talked about so much. In the 90s it seemed like it was one of those novels everyone who wrote about books in the papers had read. I read it and wasn't entirely sure what all the fuss was about. Then on GR I found there were a lot of people who'd also been disappointed by it.

Two books that quite a lot of people have read and about which there's probably a fair bit to say.

J.M. Coetzee is another two-time winner, and another Nobel author coming to play Mookse Madness 2019. He's won twice (Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace), but he's only been shortlisted three times (throw Summertime in there, a book that almost won in 2009 when Mantel's Wolf Hall took the prize). He's published sixteen books that should be eligible for the prize.

Titles in bold are under consideration but are not the final picks (until the final picks are announced); if you want another one, suggest it and tell us why!

1. Dusklands (1974)
2. In the Heart of the Country (1977)
3. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
4. Life and Times of Michael K (1983)
5, Foe (1986)
6. Age of Iron (1990)
7. The Master of Petersburg (1994)
8. Boyhood (1997)
9. Disgrace (1999)
10. Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002)
11. Elizabeth Costello (2003)
12. Slow Man (2005)
13. Diary of a Bad Year (2007)
14. Summertime (2009)
15. The Childhood of Jesus (2013)
16. The Schooldays of Jesus (2016)

I assume we can't include Barnes' mysteries under the name Dan Kavanagh? I've kind of wanted to read one of those for a long time, just not quite enough to buy one and bring it to the top of the list.

Barnes can be very entertaining. I liked Talking it Over a lot and also really enjoyed Arthur & George.

Brian Moore - KEEP! Paul, you need to read him. I would choose The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, I am Mary Dunne, The Doctor's Wife, and The Emperor of Ice-Cream. I've read so many and all were good except The Magician's Wife - I didn't get far before abandoning that one.

Doris Lessing - another KEEPER! The Golden Notebook has to be in there, although it is quite long.

JM Coetzee - woohoo! I suggest the trilogy: Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime. I loved all of the many of his that I have read except Foe.

Iris Murdoch - I will be reading The Bell for the Cheltenham Booker, so please choose it so I have another book I've read for this mad endeavour.

Beryl Bainbridge's Harriet Said is a masterpiece.

For Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie just has to be there.

I'd suggest early McEwan - The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, The Innocent.

I'm going to start putting the suggested, likely titles in bold above. That way, folks can talk about alternatives!

I'm not sure what my problem was, but I initially had McEwan as being shortlisted only three times -- he's been shortlisted five times! I'm going through my spreadsheet to find errors and alternates, and this was a big oversight!

Here is a list of authors who have made the shortlist more than once. Authors in bold are authors eligible for Mookse Madness 2019 but who were not chosen by fate. If you feel one of them should replace an author of the same sex, please make the case.

(2)
-A.S. Byatt
-Alan Hollinghurst
-Andre Brink
-Bernice Rubens
-Carole Shields
-Damon Galgut
-David Lodge
-David Mitchell
-David Storey
-Deborah Levy
-Esi Edugyan
-Graham Swift
-Hilary Mantel
-Howard Jacobson
-J.G. Farrell
-J.L. Carr
-James Kelman
-Jim Crace
-John Banville
-Julian Rathbone
-Mohsin Hamid
-Mordecai Richler
-Nina Bawden
-Patrick McCabe
-Paul Bailey
-Richard Powers
-Roddy Doyle
-Sebastian Barry
-Tim Winton
-Tom McCarthy
-V.S. Naipaul

(3)
-Anita Desai
-Barry Unsworth
-Brian Moore
-Colm Toibin
-Doris Lessing
-J.M. Coetzee
-Kingsley Amis
-Muriel Spark
-Penelope Lively
-Rohinton Mistry
-Sarah Waters
-Timothy Mo
-William Trevor

(4)
-Ali Smith
-Julian Barnes
-Kazuo Ishiguro
-Penelope Fitzgerald
-Peter Carey
-Salman Rushdie
-Thomas Keneally

(5)
-Beryl Bainbridge
-Ian McEwan
-Margaret Atwood

(6)
-Iris Murdoch

I'd like to get these finalized sooner rather than later so that anyone wanting to start filling in the blanks knows what books are in.

I don't have an official procedure for how to select which books finally make the cut, but I'll come up with something fair (random but with a preference to books that have a decent reputation, which may mean looking at GR ratings) that takes account of suggestions. Bolded titles above are under more serious consideration than unbolded titles, so if you want to make a title bold just let me know. I'd love reasons too, since that kind of chatter is what makes this fun.

For Iris Murdoch I also nominate The Sandcastle because I keep hearings it's a masterpiece.

For Margaret Atwood I cannot imagine a world where we don't include The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye. We are not mad. I am also inclined to some of her earlier work rather than her later work, so I'll probably lay a preference there if no one pipes in about anything post The Robber Bride.

For Muriel Spark I nominate Memento Mori and A Far Cry from Kensington, with fond feelings for The Girls of Slender Means and Loitering with Intent.

For Doris Lessing, I haven't read it, but I nominate The Fifth Child. Other than The Golden Notebook, it's the Lessing book I hear most about.

For Brian Moore I nominate Lies of Silence.

For Ian McEwan we of course need Atonement, but beyond that I prefer his earlier books to anything later (though I think Nutshell is pretty excellent!).

For Coetzee, I could go with any of them! I'll bold a few. I am inclined to do a variety rather than all of the three books in his loose trilogy.

I have read 3 Coetzee books, 2 would comfortably rank, in my view, as one of the worst 5 (out of 100) books I read in that year. The third might make the bottom 10. So I would vote to drop him.

Paul wrote: "Brian Moore's finest line was surely his 'It's Up for Grabs Now' in the greatest sporting moment ever (19 seconds in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFo1e...

But I was genuinely unaware the..."

Hard to believe the author could come up with anything as epochal as that moment.

Does the author's head also look like the London Planetarium?

I would think Colm Toibin is more of a Booker darling than William Trevor - just given that so much of his recent stuff was listed whereas Trevor's nominations were much further spread out across a long career.