Not surprisingly, my favorite among the thirteen books long listed for the Man Booker Prize did not make the cut.  The six shortlisted this year:

• The Sellout – a satire of race relations, reintroducing slavery in Los Angeles
• Hot Milk – a daughter copes with a hypochondriac mother
• His Bloody Project –  the story of a seventeen year old boy who committed a brutal triple murder in the Scottish Highlands 
• Eileen – A lonely young woman working in a boys’ prison outside Boston 
• All That Man Is – collection of nine stories about men in different stages of life
• Do Not Say We Have Nothing – a young woman who has fled China and the Tiananmen Square protests

My record is low.  I read and reviewed only one on the list – Eileen;  I left The Sellout unfinished, and am slowly making my way through Hot Milk.    

According to the Man Booker Prize announcement, two of the finalists hail from previous  publishing house winners.  OneWorld who published The Sellout, also published last year’s winner A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Granta, the publisher of Do Not Say We have Nothing also published the 2014 winner, The Luminaries.  Only one author has been nominated before – Deborah Levy in 2012.

The winner will be announced in October.  

My favorite?  Read my review of The Many.