‘We shouldn’t rest on our laurels’: what the Booker shortlist means for female authors

“The fault lines of our times are here,” said Booker judging chair Edmund de Waal as he unveiled the 2024 shortlist. “Borders and time zones and generations are crossed and explored, conflicts of identity, race and sexuality are brought into renewed focus through memorable voices.”

Yet perhaps the most distinctive thing about this year’s shortlist is its gender split: a record number of women appear. For this week’s newsletter, I asked critics, authors and booksellers for their reactions. And Anne Michaels, shortlisted for her novel Held, shares her reading recommendations with us.

Last year’s Booker shortlist had an unprecedented number of guys called Paul (Paul Murray, Paul Harding and eventual winner Paul Lynch); this year’s has an unprecedented number of women.

“It’s time for the Paulettes and Paulinas”, said judge and novelist Sara Collins on Monday, soon after the shortlist of six – featuring five books by women for the first time in the prize’s 55-year-history – was unveiled.

Among the shortlisted women are “real heavyweight writers” who are “perhaps undersung” in terms of the “massive commercial success that they should have had”, added Collins, pointing to British writer Samantha Harvey and her fifth novel Orbital; Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels, shortlisted for Held; and Australian novelist Charlotte Wood, chosen for Stone Yard Devotional.

Shortlisted alongside them are American writer Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake and Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted and lone debut novelist to feature with The Safekeep. Completing this year’s shortlist is Percival Everett with James, his retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.

“It’s very good to see five women writers on the shortlist this year, following - with no criticism intended - ‘the year of the Pauls’”, says Catherine Taylor, critic and author of The Stirrings, which won this year’s TLS Ackerley prize for memoir and life-writing. “Despite the inevitable headlines about ‘women dominating’ nominations, it should be remembered that male writers have won this prize every year from 2020 onwards.” Alongside Lynch, the most recent winners include Shehan Karunatilaka, Damon Galgut and Douglas Stuart.

The shortlist “represents a really varied and interesting offering, with plenty for a reader to enjoy discovering – be that the writers themselves, or the places, times and people in their novels”, says Fleur Sinclair, owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop and president of the Booksellers Association, who has so far read The Safekeep, Orbital and James. She hopes that the conversation around there being five women shortlisted isn’t “too distracting”.

“When I look at the tables of books on offer in my bookshop, new novels written by women always outnumber those written by men,” she adds. “So I hope that whoever wins is able to celebrate a victory based on merit alone, not because a female-heavy shortlist produces a female winner. Or conversely, if we have a male winner, then for those optics not to reflect badly on what I think is an absolutely astoundingly brilliant and important book (James).”

Observer critic Anthony Cummins says that James “seems hard to look past as a potential winner because it just has everything, doesn’t it? Strong concept, page-turning excitement, genuine comedy, serious heft”. However, he wonders whether judges will “hesitate to add to the Booker’s reputation as a guys’ prize”, highlighting that since 2008, the prize has been awarded to women just five times.

Having read Orbital, Creation Lake and James so far, Cummins says that the shortlist looks strong. “I’m looking forward to the books I haven’t got to yet. I’m also looking forward to rereading Orbital, which I loved. It’s small but surprising – the writing is gorgeous and I loved the way it’s both deeply concerned with the literal nuts and bolts of space travel as well as bigger-picture questions of time and the nature of existence.”

For some, five women being shortlisted for the Booker may raise the question: are awards such as the Women’s prize still necessary? Taylor says this question is “unhelpful”, though “of course it will be asked”.

“Why should women, who, on a global and national level remain second-graded at every turn in terms of inequity, not have a prize solely for women writers?” she says. “There’s so much catching up still to do.”

Kate Mosse said that the Women’s prize, which she founded in 1996, is “thrilled” to see so many women on this year’s Booker shortlist. A “motivating factor” for launching the Women’s prize in the first place was the 1991 Booker shortlist. “The stark difference between now and 1991, when there were no women on the Booker shortlist and nobody noticed, is that the idea of an all-female list then was unthinkable,” says Mosse.

“All the same, we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. While female novelists are being nominated for more prizes, there is still an alarming discrepancy in the advances that male and female authors receive, and this pay gap grew over a five-year period. There is still lots of work to be done to provide genuine equality for male and female writers, in both fiction and non-fiction.”

I read mostly nonfiction, for research (for example, for my latest novel Held: history and philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, consciousness, history). Not surprisingly, I am also drawn to fiction that intimately and uncompromisingly understands science. Benjamin Labatut’s new novel The Maniac is riveting in its articulation of the meaning and consequences of machine learning; the novel is incisive and profound – exactly what you would want in any discussion that is divisive and complex – philosophically, politically, emotionally and, in essence, spiritually. Labatut’s form and insight are agile. Like Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand he World, the novel shows how close fiction can bring us to the precipice, where the view is, to say the least, bracing.

I’m also drawn to novels that whisper in our ear; a recent example of this is Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow. The surface of the novel is still, clear water and Au’s quiet tenderness lets us see into the depths with barely a breath’s disturbance.