If ever there was an example of a literary prize jury investing in the future in picking a winner, it is the outcome of this year's International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Nicola Barker (34) is the youngest of the short-listed writers. She is also among the most assured, and is certainly the most surreal.
Wide Open does not linger in the mind as does - and will - Philip Roth's surprisingly touching lament I Married a Communist. Nor does it exude the subtle grace and beauty of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, but it is an original. Wide Open is sharp, intelligent, slightly sinister, wacky and quite definitely hilarious.
First published in 1998, it is her third novel and brilliantly succeeds in creating a believably offbeat world populated by misfits. Characterisation throughout is convincingly handled. Set largely in the Isle of Sheppey, some 50 miles south-east of London, the action begins when one of the characters finds himself beginning to look for the strange man he has noticed waving at cars on the road. "Every day, no matter what the time - he was working shifts, and by no means regular ones - the man stood on the bridge, waving."
Lured by curiosity, Ronny gets out of the car and meets the man who is grieving over a dying wasp.
The conversation quickly enters a philosophical dimension which Ronny does not much care for. The men do, however, establish a rapport of sorts. Even in the opening stages the narrative establishes a peculiarly black style of humour which is sustained throughout.
Barker has a natural feel for the bizarre; the dialogue proceeds along the lines of "So, you're left-handed, like me."
"No. I am right-handed. It's just that I do everything with my left hand . . . It's one of my projects."
All the way fate and strange coincidences are moving two long-estranged brothers ever closer.
Meanwhile out on the Isle of Sheppey, an angry young girl is venting her rage at more or less anything that moves. Lily's latest target is a middleaged newcomer who has arrived alone to recover from life at the local nudist colony. Luke turns out to be a photographer with an interest in pornography. He also has an unfortunate personal odour which reminds people of fish. Lily will not allow him or anyone else to forget this. The appalling teenager develops into one of the most memorable characters in the book. At 17 and oddly put together physically, she cycles about and lives in a curiously lucid fantasy world.
Her mother, Sara, is a slightly world-weary boar farmer who appears to have lost her husband and has long since realised she does not like her only child, who should have died long ago from a variety of health problems. The exchanges between the two are vivid and funny as well as heartbreaking.
All the while Barker builds layer upon layer of strange episodes and conversations, all of which take place in relatively normal circumstances, most of which appear quite banal and none of which quite makes sense. No, this is not the obvious winner.
But it is enjoyable and elusive, with all its mad twists and narrative turns. Barker's prose is simple and unpretentious, never strives for effect and yet is somehow rich and complex. For the second year the prize has gone to a good English novel, rather than the more obvious choice.
This, the fifth IMPAC award, seemed poised to be decided between Cunningham and a very strong performance from Roth, the elder statesman of the shortlist. Still, as I warned in Saturday's book pages, "Don't overlook Nicola Barker's excursion into the diverse weirdness of the ordinary."
Well, the judges certainly didn't.