You can't judge a book by its cover

This article will not tell you who is going to win the Man Booker prize. That is in not so much in the lap of the gods as in the unique combination of enthusiasm, critical acumen and sheer argumentative persistence that will combine, in the recesses of the British Museum, to create its alchemy later today when the panel of five judges meet to reach their final decision. The 'gold' that will emerge from that alchemical process, for one of the short-listed writers, will, quite literally, be a material one: the prize money has been increased by the new Man sponsors to a respectable £50,000 - and, far more significant for any professional writer, for the winner there will be an immediate and substantial leap in sales. Not simply for this book - but for all subsequent books. The impact on a writer's reputation, and earnings, if she or he wins the Booker is enormous - so enormous that the task of choosing would be inhibiting if one lingered too long over the consequences of that choice.

What follows is purely my own impression of the process. I don't - and couldn't - speak for any of my fellow judges, but this is not because there was at any stage even the faintest strife between us. I don't know enough about the past panels to say this with certainty, but my feeling is it would be hard to find a group of people more ready and willing to work cheerfully and collegiately. That makes us sound rather an anodyne bunch - which would also be misleading. There were tough disagreements, but never even the smidgen of a row; there were fierce prejudices for and against books, but neither nepotism nor sycophancy nor mud slinging - I never heard anyone slag off an author, however little a book might have been to their taste; there were passionate pleas, as a consequence of which minds, formerly resolute, were significantly changed (it was refreshing to see how often that happened) - and at all times there was a robust and lively exchange of views, aided by e-mail.

In fact I would not want to judge the prize without e-mail. The official meetings are few - too few in my opinion and we were greatly helped by our chair, Lisa Jardine's generous hospitality which allowed us to meet for several informal get-togethers in addition to our official quota. But the chance to e-mail a colleague and say 'Why does she buy chicken on p.73 and then cook lamb on p.82?', or 'What does 'Greek' in this context mean?' (apparently it means anal sex - my education was greatly advanced by the submissions), or just 'What the hell is supposed to be happening on p.294 - I'm lost?' is a relief. It makes the reading process a shared one and not merely a lonely slog.

Though let's be frank and admit that there were times, for me at least, when slog is what it felt like. 132 books is a huge reading load and, rather like having children, one that I might never have undertaken if I had had any idea in advance what it was going to entail. Though, as with children, I would also not have forgone the experience - so my innocence was fortunate. Luckily for me, I am a quick reader and can absorb a book in a night. Some days, with time on my hands, I read two books. It was an added piece of luck that during the judging period I was already committed to two long author tours. The first was to Canada and the US. My abiding memory of this is sitting peaceably in airport lounges, where the new security measures require a check in of at least two hours in advance of a flight, with a large Starbuck coffee to hand, reading, reading, reading, and then, when I finished a book, and had made my notes in my 'Booker' notebook, graciously bestowing it - the book, not my notebook - on some startled fellow traveller. In order to ensure I kept up with my reading programme, I had sent on parcels of books ahead of me. The idea was to ensure I had completed the last batch before catching up with the next at my latest point of arrival. Once read, to religiously lug a book, however praiseworthy or enjoyable, across the US and Canada was clearly not sensible. I spent pleasurable times at airports or in planes assessing where I would donate my completed reads. Sometimes, in a benevolent mood, I would try to match the book to a potential reader - 'She looks an Anita Brookner type' or 'He might go for Michael Frayn'. Sometimes I was naughty and tried for a bit of consciousness raising, 'She could do with a bit of Howard Jacobson...' (I still wonder what the very respectable blue-rinsed lady from Vermont made of 'Who's Sorry Now'; she accepted it gratefully).

In Canada I actually 'found' for myself one of the books which is on our short list. Bookseller will often express thanks for an author event by offering a choice of book from their store as a gift. In remote Winnipeg, seduced by the promise of a Bengal tiger as a principal character, I picked out 'Life of Pi', by Yann Martel, and was almost disappointed to find when I returned home that it had since been officially submitted by Canongate, its publisher. I thought I had discovered it!

By the time of my Australian tour we had reduced the books to the long list. Our chair was kind but strict. 'I expect every one of you to re-read every book - and you will be tested!' No one defies Lisa. Off I dutifully set to the Antipodes with twenty volumes bulging in my suitcase. Where previously it was airports, in Australia it was room-service I came to associate with books. Late at night in my high-rise hotel, I read over prawn sandwiches and sauvignon blanc, and, in the mornings, I read in bed, with strong coffee and muesli (which the Australians for some reason do particularly well). I left a vivid literary trail behind me - Linda Grant in Melbourne, William Boyd in Sydney, John Banville in Brisbane. Author tours can be lonely, and depleting, and several books became companions. Carol Shields' 'Unless', a subtle exploration of contemporary goodness, and William Trevor's mythic 'Story of Lucy Gault', both quiet, beautifully written books, were welcome respites from roaring air conditioning and wall-to-wall carpet. Philip Hensher's intellectually impressive 'Mulberry Empire' sustained me on the five hour flight across the continent; 'To the Last City', Colin Thubron's dark, precise account of journeying in Peru, mesmerised me when I reached Perth. I kept the Tim Winton for the remote monastery in his native Western Australia, where I was invited at the end of my stay. The monks took me out into the bush to see orchids and kangaroos. And they showed me the Christmas tree, which blooms a glorious orange-gold in the season of Christmastide - a parasite, it initially requires another, rooted, tree for host; but in time grows its own roots and independence. As I sat in the sun-lit monastery court-yard, re-reading 'Dirt Music' to the caw of cockatoos, suddenly the book's final brave epiphany made perfect sense. Rohinton Mistry's 'Family matters' about a Parsi family (Parsis are Zoroastrian - a religion which I fell in love with during my researches for my own novel, 'Miss Garnet's Angel') distracted me comfortably on the spine-challenging long flight home.

The process of first assessing, and then ranking, such a wide range of subjects and styles is a mysterious as well as a daunting one. Much has been made of the alleged call from this year's judging panel to 'lower' the Booker tone. Let me put this in print: I never heard any judge suggest for a second that there should be any drop in standards, or that serious literary books should be relegated. The debate was - and should be - what is meant by 'serious'. It is possible - I would say desirable - to be both popular and profound. Homer was - Shakespeare was - Jane Austen, the Brontes, Thackery and Dickens were. None of these writers would have survived in their time, never mind posterity, had they not had and held the popular ear. Of course, just as there will always be books which are popular but will never be remarkable there will also always be remarkable books which will never be popular, and in those cases popularity should not be any criterion for choice; but too many of the books we read appeared to have been entered not on the basis of the quality of the work but on some preconception of how a 'Man Booker book' should read. Very often, I suspect, this was a decision made at the wrong level: not by the editorial floor - which, sadly, has lost power in recent years, for which publishing, and writing, is the poorer - but by some vague corporate concept of what might find favour. The result leads to lifelessness - a kind of tired political correctness where assumptions are made about what is or isn't 'literary', and where, for example, understatement and irony and subversiveness are passed over in favour of unfathomable prose and fashionable philosophy.

My own particular complaint is that there is a current notion of 'realism', which is not 'real' at all but something which used to be called, more accurately, naturalism. Contemporary 'realism' usually translates as dismal dissatisfaction, which is no more unsentimental a take on life than its opposite. Likewise, an unhappy ending is not more 'real' than a happy one - both are artistic constructs, and thus a comment on life and not, and never could be, the thing itself.

And sex, too, though you wouldn't think it from reading some of the submissions, is not the only reality. Tossing in 'language' and graphic sex scenes is not enough to ensure authenticity. As I found myself saying, rather wearily, at one meeting, 'Goodness is as "real" as a blow job ...' I would add that it is also rarer, and arguably therefore more interesting to read about. And humour... David Baddiel and I might disagree over what we find funny, but I am with him one hundred per cent on the need to take humour seriously. Laughter is as much the province of truth as tears or anger - and has, and should be seen to have, an honoured place in any worthwhile culture's literature.

So how do we, the judges - or how will we - make the hard decision between the six excellent contenders on the short list which we arrived at amid much heated talk, anguish and indeed laughter? What cannot be understood, until it is experienced, is that one begins to feel a certain proprietorial interest in all of the books, even those one didn't start out by supporting. Thanks to some skilful chairing, the short list was very much 'ours', not an uneasy medley of individual choices, and one - I believe I speak for all the judges - we all ended by feeling proud of. A list which includes the 36 years old Sarah Waters' sparkling writing and the elegiac 74 years old William Trevor's cannot be accused of either highbrow stuffiness or ephemeral modishness. And, in the final alchemy, the crucial ingredient will be one which ensures that no book could ever be a sure fire cert to win, nor any meeting of five independent-minded people have a predictable outcome. It will not be any of the judges - hotly and avidly as I know we will all debate tonight; it will be luck - that mercurial factor which plays a part in the drama of all writing careers - that makes the final choice for the Man Booker prize.

Salley Vickers © 2002
First appeared in The Independent Tuesday 22nd Oct