NOTHING IN life is certain, not even Alan Hollinghurst's apparently copperfastened claim to this year's Man Booker Prize. As the Anglo-Canadian shortlist was announced in London yesterday, the favourite Hollinghurst, who had been expected to become the third double-winner in the award's 43-year history, did not reach the final six with his widely tipped Edwardian social satire The Stranger's Child.
Nor did Ireland's Sebastian Barry for On Canaan's Side. Instead, the list of contenders is headed by the veteran English writer Julian Barnes, whose immaculately balanced The Sense of an Endingnot only amounts to a masterclass in fiction writing, it looks a likely winner and is now favourite.
Standing alongside Barnes are two debut novelists and two talented Canadians with strong second novels, including Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, a Western that stands menacingly and wittily pitched between the Coen Brothers and the Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The unsung hero on the list is Carol Birch for a colourful yarn, Jamrach's Menagerie, which features the real-life 19th-century figure Charles Jamrach who imported wild animals to meet the demands of zoos and private collections.
This year's prize will be remembered for displaying slightly more imagination and less predictability than usual. Aside from Barnes, there are no big names and the emphasis is on storytelling, while AD Miller's Snowdrops, an exposé of modern Russia, not only draws on fact but highlights the enduring popular appeal of the good thriller.
Opinion remains divided as to the merits of Stephen Kelman's Pigeon Englishwhich wears its social commitment rather heavily and is based on the real-life killing of a young boy.
There is no denying that Barnes looks well-placed with the shortest work on the list. In it, sensible, self-protecting Tony Webster recalls a friend he first met at school more than 40 years earlier and the girl with whom he shared a difficult relationship. Both begin to trouble his thoughts. Barnes is one of the most respected writers in Britain and, while his cool, intelligent vision often remains exactly that, The Sense of an Endingis well-written, impressively human and delivers quite a twist.
Canadian poet Esi Edugyan looks to the second World War and two black musicians adrift in Hitler's Germany. Set in Paris and Berlin, Half Blood Bluesexplores friendship and its methodology is very close to that of William Boyd.
Carol Birch's nine previous novels include Turn Again Home(2003) and The Naming of Eliza Quinn(2005). Jamrach's Menageriehas an attractive panache and a genuine swagger. But if anyone can wrest the prize from Barnes, it must be deWitt whose dark tour de force has plenty of gags and menace to keep readers reading and talking. This could well develop into one of the more interesting Booker campaigns despite the absence of an obvious contender such as Hisham Matar's Anatomy of a Disappearance.