A book by Richard Flanagan, the prize-winning Australian novelist.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 31 May 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Tom Paulin, another book which plays with the form of a novel. In this case even the printing of the novel.

TOM PAULIN:
Yes, it's in the great tradition of the Australian novel, right from Henry Kingsley, Charles' younger brother in the 1860's civilisation and barbarism, convicts, mainstream of the Australian novel, grotesque. Unfortunately he uses that word.

What worried me was it is a great barbaric tale, but he brings in romantic poets especially William, or Billie Blake as he calls him. You keep thinking where is Patrick White in all of this, the vision beyond the grotesquery. He has no feeling for fish, no real observation for fish, I'm afraid.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
He hasn't got much feeling for people either. Women especially. This is a really conceited book.

It's written on different colours in the chapters, a horrible feeling when you see the penal Colonies, the pornography of torture, the word putrid and feted is used over and over. I didn't believe in anything.

Compared to the English Passengers, which took on the penal colonies, that told you something. I came to the end of the book and felt cheated by it.

He can write beautiful sentences, but his plot and the characterisation is thin and it has no heart.

IAN RANKIN:
I was thinking of English Passengers all the way though, but also of Peter Carey and the Kelly Gang. Here is another unreliable narrative.

It's attempting to demythologise and re-mythologise Australia and its white convict roots. I liked the playing with the post modernist view. It's a shaggy dog story. It doesn't work totally. There is fun in there, but don't look for depth.

TINA BROWN:
I'm sad my fellow colleagues didn't like the book as much as I did. I adored this Tasmanian fable. I found myself captured by the joyous exuberant language. It really did bring a heart to the book.

It was the sheer rollicking love of language that propelled me along and made me feel a sense of life-affirming experience. I loved the historical context of the penal colony. It's never been done in this crazy poetic wild dream way before.

I thought it was a brilliant book, by far the most interesting of the three.

MARK LAWSON:
And you feel the novel fighting back don't you against film. Trying to look at the form of it.

IAN RANKIN:
Yes, not the American book so much but the other two are un-filmic, but at the same time they do owe a lot to the cut and paste in movies. But the big money will go for the American novel, the Stephen Carter novel.

It's wonderful to see experimentation back in the novel. But it's a shame it's coming from Australians and Americans.

TOM PAULIN:
But it's recycled. Innumerable writers mentioned.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
Did you feel that he sat down and thought, "What can I do, shove in some fish?"

MARK LAWSON:
The books we have discussed are two Americans and an Australian. That's partly to do with the publishing calendar.

They are talking from Hay on Wye on whether the Booker Prize should let in American novels. Tom Paulin, should Americans be allowed to enter the Booker Prize?

TOM PAULIN:
No. Historically, it's Britain, the Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth. That's the way it should stay.

TINA BROWN:
I don't think they should come in, otherwise I fear a hideous hype will enter the fray. I like the fact at the moment it has none.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
I think they should let Americans in. Every year there is a whinge that, "Maybe the Americans would have won." I think we should let them in.

IAN RANKIN:
I am all in favour of protectionism on this issue. They should start taking our steel and our books for their book awards.