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A Booker in the shadow of Henry James This year's short-list has a strong flavour of alcohol . . . and features some extremely good novels, finds David Robson

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20040926
Author:DAVID ROBSON

HENRY JAMES must be laughing. The novelist, who died in 1916, has done more than anyone to shape the 2004 Booker short-list. Two of the writers in the running for the prize - Colm Toibin and Alan Hollinghurst - have drawn heavily on his life and works. If David Lodge had also been short-listed, as he could well have been, that would have completed a notable hat-trick.

Of the Toibin and the Hollinghurst, the first is good, the second better. I admired The Master for its plush prose and its insights into the character of Henry James. Toibin is particularly good at teasing out his repressed ...

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