Ever read a novel that had no story? According to the Guardian, if you read according to the tastes of the Man Booker Prize, then you most certainly have. I don’t follow most awards or prizes, but I think I know exactly what kind of novel the piece is referring to:

For years, many Booker shortlists have been synonymous with “baffling”, or “unreadable”. There was something almost crusading about Booker prize juries’ preference for that bird without wings, the novel without a narrative. The more the market for “literary fiction” boomed, the more impenetrably Stygian the lists became. The truth that dared not speak its name was that many of the books in the Booker catalogue were below par. … Remote, Olympian, at times impossibly grand, Booker has held itself apart from the vulgar manifestations of commercial storytelling.

The books on this year’s shortlist are supposed to break that cycle. Hurray! I believe in stories. Somewhere along the way it became very “literary” to stray from the literary tradition of telling damn story. I appreciate experimentation, but since when did it become low-brow to expect something to *happen* in a novel?
It’s important for authors to write without worrying if it will be popular or if Joe Public or Jane Marketer will get it. But I think slapping each other on the back for being inscrutable is a bad direction for the literary community to go. I still believe a novelist is creating a world for me to explore. If your world is the written equivalent of a pretentious student film where everyone is dressed in rags and talks backwards, I’ll pass.

Return of the Cracking Good Read - Guardian UK