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Other Stories (Free subscription) | 08/13/2008
I don't normally go down the negative review line. Life is too short to bitch. If it were any other book than this I would quietly say my little bit in the sidebar and get on with the next book. But this is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, the controversial addition to the Booker Longlist, a book I was sent a review copy of some months ago but hadn't quite got around to reading, and the book which...
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Brit Lit Blogs (Free subscription) | 08/08/2008
If there’s no such thing as bad publicity, then Tom Rob Smith’s debut novel is the early winner of the Booker Prize longlist. More column inches, most of them negative, seem to have been written about Child 44 than about any other longlisted title. “A fairly well-written and well-paced thriller that is no more than that,” said Jamie Byng of Canongate, damning with faint praise, adding, for...
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The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 08/09/2008
Toby Clements on a 'superior commercial thriller'The enigmatic title makes it sound like a cut-price misery memoir, but Tom Rob Smith's first novel is an efficient thriller set in and around Moscow in 1953, the year of Stalin's death. The hero is Leo, a senior apparatchik in the secret police charged with rooting out anything or anyone who might threaten the precarious health of the Soviet Union.One...
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The Valve (Free subscription) | 08/01/2008
... spice in topic and treatment. Yesterday’s Guardian had a little snuffle of half-harrumphing that Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 is on the list, on account of it being a Fast Paced But Basially Rubbish Thriller instead of a proper novel. But middle class people like reading thrillers, and this one is about the murder of children under Stalin’s regime and one courageous man standing up against the...
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ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 07/30/2008
"Author Sir Salman Rushdie has emerged as the frontrunner to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, adding to his three existing Booker awards... He faces competition from 13 other writers including Aravind Adiga, Joseph O'Neill, Linda Grant and Tom Rob Smith."...
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The Culture Czar (Free subscription) | 07/29/2008
The longlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced this morning . Salman Rushdie is the favorite but he'll be up against 13 other writers including Aravind Adiga, Joseph O'Neill, Linda Grant and Tom Rob Smith. Here's the full list: read more »
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Vulture (Free subscription) | 07/29/2008
Courtesy of Knopf The thirteen books nominated for the Man Booker Prize, known as the Man Booker Dozen , have been announced, and it's the usual mix of superstar Brit-lit studs (Salman Rushdie), acclaimed debut novelists (Aravind Adiga), and a welcome dark horse (thriller writer Tom Rob Smith ). Most intriguing, though, is the inclusion of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland , the New York–set novel...
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The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 07/31/2008
Not everyone is pleased to see Tom Rob Smith’s first novel, Child 44, a serial-killer thriller set in Stalinist Russia, find a place on this year’s longlist of nominees for the Man Booker Prize. In a piece for the Los Angeles Times, critic-blogger Sarah Weinman quotes Canongate Books publisher Jamie Byng as saying, “I cannot respect a judging committee that decides to pick a book like ‘Child...
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The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 07/30/2008
• Child 44, the entrancing Stalin-era debut thriller by Tom Rob Smith, has been longlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Crime novels aren’t commonly nominated for this coveted literary award, so the young Smith must be astonished to find himself in the company of fellow contenders Salman Rushdie, Joseph O’Neill, Michelle de Kretser, and others. More on these nominations here. • So sorry...
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The Guardian (Free subscription) | 07/29/2008
Longlist passes over big names in favour of eclectic selection encompassing small presses, humour and thrillers
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The Guardian Books Blog (Free subscription) | 07/31/2008
Is Child 44 really no more than a "fairly well-written and well-paced thriller"? And is the real issue the fact that there is a thriller on the list at all? Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 is a serial-killer story set in Soviet Russia, in the year of Stalin's death. It received impressive reviews -- this newspaper labelled it "compelling" and "a real achievement" (though cautioned that "the desire...
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Sarsaparilla (Free subscription) | 07/30/2008
... The Northern Clemency Joseph O’Neill, Netherland Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole I’ll be trying to read the whole 13 before the winner is announced in October, if anyone wants to join me. It can’t be too hard: a friend of mine with a three month old baby has already read at least two of them. Overall, the list looks...
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The Independent (Free subscription) | 07/30/2008
Let's get the annual squall of outrage over first. Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman deserved at least a shortlist place in this year's Man Booker contest. Indeed, the beautifully observed, deeply affecting first-person portrait of a Glasgow childhood outshines Roddy Doyle's Dublin equivalent, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – which won the prize in 1993.
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The First Post (Free subscription) | 07/30/2008
Rushdie, who Ladbrokes have at 4/1, is up against 12 other writers who cover most of the bases in terms of experience and novelty as well as age and geography. There are first-time novelists, including Aravind Adiga and Tom Rob Smith, who is a stripling at 29 year. The oldest writer on the list is 81-year-old John Berger, who won the Booker 36 years ago. Aside from British novelists, there are...
