What's the best novel in the past 25 years?

[bekah]

I checked out the sight and the list as you scroll down has some very 
commendable (recommendable) books on it!  And there are several I've 
missed so I think I may try to get those because they're in such good 
company.

One notable difference between the lists is that 4 authors were 
mentioned multiple times on the NY Times list,  (Roth,  DeLillo, 
Updike,  McCarthy)  but there were far more and varied authors listed 
on the Guardian's list.   Only Ishiguro and McGahern out of the top 
10 were listed more than once.    Further down the list some had 
second and third books listed (Amis, Coetzee, Fitzgerald).   I'm 
surprised that Atwood was only mentioned once -  she's so popular 
here,  maybe not there?


And the number of women writers is good to see.  There were only 2 
women out of 14 authors on the NY Times list (14%).  There was one 
woman in the top 10 on the Guardian list but 18 out of 49 on the 
"Other Nominations" section.   That's almost 1/3.


Shirley Hazzard is wonderful - I was trying to remember her name for 
that last post of good women writers.   A.S. Byatt is there,  of 
course, as is Ali Smith and Angela Carter.   Fwiw,   Pat Barker and 
Buchi Emecheta are women.

Bekah







At 3:07 PM +0300 10/8/06, Ya Sam wrote:
>A recent poll in the New York Times named Toni Morrison's Beloved as 
>the greatest work of American fiction in the past 25 years. But what 
>about over here? On the eve of this year's Booker Prize, we asked 
>150 literary luminaries to vote for the best British, Irish or 
>Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005. How they defined 'best' was up 
>to them ...
>
>http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1890247,00.html
>
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