The Booker in the Nineties
1990-99: All Eyes on the Prize
The Eighties had seen the Booker become more than the niche concern it had been in its infancy. With undisputed classics like Midnight’s Children and The Remains of the Day bookending the decade, titans like Golding and Amis (Senior) rewarded, and controversies from the petty to genuinely globally significant (Rushdie’s fatwa) dominating the press, attention on the Booker Prize had never been higher than it was as we rolled into the final decade of the millennium.
In this mass media glare, there’s evidence here and there of yet more self-consciousness on the part of the rotating panel of judges. There’s the occasional tendency to try to replicate old success stories, which more often than not falls flat. Experimentation happens here and there, welcome when it does, however successful. We start to get a firmer sense of “Booker type” novels, leading to a sense of exhaustion with some of the winners. More importantly, the sense that many of those “Booker type” novels come from the pens of a certain “Booker type” author (white, middle class, overwhelmingly male) can no longer be ignored. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is mooted at the start of the decade as a reaction, and by 1996 it’s launched as the Orange Prize, showcasing a range of voices often ignored by Booker.
Despite these not insignificant issues, the Booker continues to produce winners of an extremely high quality. Again, hits outnumber misses by a large margin, and while there’s more sense than ever of the narrowness of scope in terms of authors, the range of subject matter covered is possibly more diverse than ever.
Again, I’ve decided to revisit the themes we looked at in previous decades and have a think about how they hold up as time progresses.
Confronting Horrors: On the up
This is one that I added in the Eighties round up: “There’s a definite sense of some stark, brutal reckonings with the worst of humanity in some of these 80s winners. It’s scattered across many of them, but we have novels covering the Holocaust, extremes of poverty in a racially divided society, extreme violence against a child, and the brutality of colonialism.”
This certainly hasn’t gone away. This time around we get the slave trade, rape, the Trenches of WW1, more child abuse, police brutality, and more.
Case in point: Sacred Hunger, Disgrace, The God of Small Things, The Ghost Road, How Late it Was, etc.
AND YET: There is certainly gentler fare here, but it feels like the tendency is in the direction of confronting big, weighty (dare I say, shock inducing) issues.
Men: Obviously
In the Seventies round up I said “you'll find precious few stories told from the perspective of female characters, and even relatively few secondary female characters that are developed beyond their role as objects of male attention […] It does mean that the story of the Booker so far is largely the story of men.”
I noted that the proportion of female winners dropped from 38% in the early years to 30% in the Eighties, and the Nineties saw it dip further to 27%. Even more notably, the shortlists felt even more noticeably male, with 1992 seeing no female authors shortlisted, and many other years only one from a list of five or six. No wonder the Orange/Women’s Prize was brought in to account for this ridiculous imbalance.
In the Eighties I noted an improved roster of female characters in the winners. In the Nineties, I feel like this has also gone backwards somewhat.
Still a thing: Last Orders and Amsterdam are a couple more Mostly Men novels, with the latter particularly dismissive of the female characters it introduces.
AND YET: Elsewhere there are better examples in The God of Small Things, Possession and The English Patient (to an extent.) Disgrace is one of the more interesting cases here, I think, as in spite of being told through the eyes of a man blinded to his impact on the women around him, and incapable of changing, Coetzee is damning of his central protagonist and reveals a lot about the more complex women around him.
History: Ever present
You can never truly escape History with a Booker winner, but the Nineties continued the trajectory towards more contemporary tales among those looking backwards. Even the historical fiction here feels ever-more concerned with present-day resonance, and occasionally more playful and adventurous in the ways it tackles the past.
Still a thing: The Ghost Road is the most formally straightforward historical novel in here, and the less interesting for it in my opinion. Elsewhere you get self-referential, semi-invented literary history in Possession, very personal history in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and a pair of shared winners in ‘92 that exemplify fantastic historical storytelling, in The English Patient and (especially) Sacred Hunger.
AND YET: In some senses, How Late it Was, How Late, feels like the most “present day” novel to win so far - and the scorn it attracted from certain quarters is testament to how much of a challenge to Booker orthodoxy it was as a result. Elsewhere, novels set mostly in the present day occur more frequently, sometimes to great success (Disgrace), and occasionally less so (Amsterdam…)
Seriousness: shifting towards more balance
As in the 80s, it feels like there’s been a continued shift away from the purely serious and into novels which better balance serious themes with a lightness of touch.
Still a thing: Relatively few novels are entirely without humour in the 90s - a pleasing shift!
AND YET: Even the darkest winners here find a grim sense of humour in the midst of the seriousness - however inappropriate it may seem I think there was humour in both Sacred Hunger and Disgrace, even.
Class: Subtler, but not going away
Very prevalent in the Seventies winners, this seemed to dip a little as a focus in the Eighties, but is maybe back for the Nineties?
Still a thing: Central to How Late it Was, How Late. Class/rank issues are one of the more interesting things The English Patient. Highly relevant in Sacred Hunger. Certainly part of Disgrace and in different ways, both The God of Small Things and The Famished Road. Some cases are more nuanced than others, but the intersections of class and other issues such as race are more heavily featured in the nineties.
AND YET: There are still a couple of novels that couldn’t be more middle class if they tried, for better (Posssession) or worse (Amsterdam.)
Race & Empire: Less prominent
Diversity among the winners is little better, to no great surprise. Thematically, again this seems to be slipping further away, despite a few spectacular exceptions. There’s a bit of a sense perhaps of that nineties tendency towards the supposedly “universal” and a sense that problems have gone away…
Still a thing: Sacred Hunger most obviously, as a novel of slavery. A fantastic novel and achievement - but even here there are question marks over the silent black voices in the storytelling. Disgrace. Elsewhere we have stories that focus more on the internal challenges of other societies after Empire, such as Famished Road and The God of Small Things.
AND YET: Lots of narratives focused on aging white men, again.
Convention: Hardly demolished, but certainly prodded at here and there
Much as in the Eighties, I think we’re still looking at a broadly conventional set of winners, albeit ones that seem to becoming progressively more playful (if not radically so) with form and structure.
Still a thing: Again, plenty of relatively conventional structures among the Nineties wineers.
AND YET: How Late It Was, How Late is probably the most strikingly different, and it’s one of a few winners that push slightly at boundaries by foregrounding the inner monologues of unexpected characters (here, a relatively “ordinary” working class man, newly blind after a police beating; elsewhere we have the voices of children with only a narrow view of the adult world around them, and in The Famished Road, a spirit child who exists on the border between reality and “fantasy”/spiritual allegory.) Elsewhere there are novels that jump back and forth in time with their narratives (The English Patient, The God of Small Things, Possession) and play around with history in moderately interesting ways (Possession again, The Ghost Road.)
Water: Getting dryer
Big in the Seventies, apparently, but less so since.
Still a thing: Only one seabound epic this time around, in Sacred Hunger. The sea is the destination for Last Orders, and a river the scene of tragedy in The God of Small Things. They went to the North Yorkshire Coast in Possession (and I followed them soon after reading the novel!)
AND YET: That’s about it though, as far as I can see.
Booze: Getting dryer, also
Somewhat shockingly, the Nineties seems to have also dialed down the number of alcoholics. Not entirely, though.
Still a thing: Last Orders features a more endearing bunch of aging alcoholic Brits than The Old Devils. The boozing in Amsterdam, like much of the rest of the novel, is faintly ludicrous. Alcohol plays a big role in The Famished Road and there are other boozers here and there throughout.
AND YET: Some books featured relatively little booze. I’m shocked. Perhaps unsurprisingly in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (though no doubt it’s there behind the scenes), but even the hero of How Late it Was, How Late is keen not to overdo it….
Understatement: Dead and gone?
In the Seventies there was an early tendency towards the understated, in at least some winners. In the Eighties, I summed up the shift fairly bluntly: “Definitely on the decline. More statement, less under.”
This has pretty much continued into the Nineties.
Still a thing: I’m not fully sure it is, to be honest. The “quietly powerful” winner seems to have gone out of the fashion by the Nineties, more’s the pity. Sometimes it’s there in the writing, or in a less showy than usual theme, but rarely do we get the sort of novels that focus on the quiet dramas of domestic/everyday life as we have done in occasional (especially early) winners. Stylistically, I almost think Disgrace comes closest in places, but its grand themes and occasion irruptions of violence kind of preclude it. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha? Perhaps.
AND YET: Most novels either have a scope, a subject, or a general tone that avoids being characterised as “understated.”
* * *
The Eighties trend, in the glare of the public eye, towards grander statements, has continued, largely for the good, but perhaps to the exclusion of some more quirky and unusual winners. Formally, there’s a little more experimentation while broadly staying within the realms of the crowd-pleasing read. In terms of diversity, the Prize at this point is rightly coming under attack for failures but not seeming to do much to remedy them. Let’s see how that all progresses into the Noughties…
* * *
The 90s, Ranked:
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992, shared) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992, shared) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
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Next up, we’re off into the FUTURE. The Year 2000 (TM) arrives with Margaret Atwood’s long overdue first winner, The Blind Assassin. Obligatory legendary author celebration, or genuinely great novel? Let’s find out!
Are there any other novels by my top rated winners that I should pick up? I’ve read nothing else by A.S Byatt, James Kelman or Barry Unsworth, for starters - anything I should check out when this is all over?
