2006 Booker Shortlist - The Inheritance of Loss

[Hugh, Active moderator]

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

[Paul]

Did this one win? Not a book I think I've read or really on my radar at all (but I wasn't at all in to the Booker at that time, so wouldn't have known who won it).

[Paul]

Won on a 4-1 split vote. The dissenting judge, Anthony Quinn, going for Mother's Milk

I enjoyed every moment of the 2006 Booker until the very last minutes of our final meeting in the Guildhall. That was when I realised that the novel which I had set my heart on would not be the winner. On anecdotal evidence from friends who had judged the prize in previous years, I gathered that there was usually someone on the jury who would be a complete pest and make the whole process as awkward as possible. Not this time: our chairman, Hermione Lee, set a tone of almost heartless conviviality that Candia McWilliam, Fiona Shaw and Simon Armitage consistently upheld. Indeed, we had been so likeminded in the final reckoning of our shortlist that I must have blanked the ominous build-up of support for Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and assumed that everyone would come round to what was clearly the best book, Edward St Aubyn’s Mother’s Milk. When I was outvoted 4-1 I was surprised, and appalled. Six months of reading and re-reading - only to be thwarted at the last! I asked for a recount, which at least got a laugh. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I felt sick to my stomach. I was pleased for Kiran Desai, who’d spent eight years writing it. But we chose the wrong book.

[Joy D]

That makes me even more keen to read it. I own a copy of this one but may not get to it until January.

[Hugh, Active moderator]

I am quite keen to reread this one, as I have not read it since 2007 and I don't remember the details.

Much of the media coverage at the time centred on Kiran Desai's mother Anita, who was shortlisted three times but never won the prize.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Sadly I had failed to make the connection!!!

[WndyJW]

I forgot that I had read this.

[Paul]

It seems a forgettable year.

Or we are all getting old.

Probably the latter :-)

[WndyJW]

I often forget books I’ve read and even that I read a book. I believe, or I want to believe, that it is due more to the number of books we read in a year, month, or week, than to age.

[Tracy]

I read this a few years ago. What I remember most is the author’s descriptions of the setting- when the monsoons came, I could smell the rain.