As of last week's reading of Prophet Song, I'm finally ready to give a final ranking of the 2023 Booker Prize nominees as I experienced them for myself over the past few months. Obviously, my final ranking reflects only my personal experience with the nominated books. I took one final look at the list of nominees, and ended up doing a bit of last-minute juggling that I hadn't expected to be doing at all.
I read and reviewed eleven of the thirteen nominated novels, and decided to DNF two others at about the 100-page mark of each. The DNF books are to be found, as you would expect, at the bottom of the list:
- Prophet Song - Paul Lynch (Reviewed on 4-14-24)
- The Bee Sting - Paul Murray (Reviewed on 11-18-23)
- The House of Doors - Tan Twan Eng (Reviewed 12-26-23)
- If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery (Reviewed 11-24-23
- How to Build a Boat - Elaine Feeney (Reviewed 3-18-24)
- Western Lane - Chetna Maroo (Reviewed 11-10-23)
- All the Little Bird-Hearts - Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow ( 1-17-24)
- Pearl - Sîan Hughes (Reviewed on 12-1-23)
- Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry (Reviewed on 10-27-23)
- This Other Eden - Paul Harding (Reviewed on 12-8-23)
- Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein (Reviewed on 2-24-24)
- A Spell of Good Things
- The Ascension
Links refer to my thoughts on each of the completed novels immediately after finishing them. I did not review or comment on the two nominees that I did not finish reading. This is one reader's response to Booker Prize 2023; make of it what you will.