Final Thoughts on the 2023 Booker Prize

 

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:

1. Prophet Song - Paul Lynch (Reviewed on 4-14-24)
2. The Bee Sting - Paul Murray (Reviewed on 11-18-23)
3. The House of Doors - Tan Twan Eng (Reviewed 12-26-23)
4. If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery (Reviewed 11-24-23
5. How to Build a Boat - Elaine Feeney (Reviewed 3-18-24)
6. Western Lane - Chetna Maroo (Reviewed 11-10-23)
7. All the Little Bird-Hearts - Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow ( 1-17-24)
8. Pearl - Sîan Hughes (Reviewed on 12-1-23)
9. Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry (Reviewed on 10-27-23)
10. This Other Eden - Paul Harding (Reviewed on 12-8-23)
11. Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein (Reviewed on 2-24-24)
12. A Spell of Good Things
13. 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.