2006ManBookerLongList

Theft: A Love Story Carey, Peter 'I don't know if my story is grand enough to be a tragedy, although a lot of shitty stuff did happen. It is certainly a love story but that did not begin until midway through the shitty stuff, by which time I had not only lost my 8-year-old son, but also my house and studio in Sydney where I had once been as famous as a painter could expect in his own backyard.' So begins Peter Carey's highly charged, recklessly funny new novel. Narrated by artist Butcher Bones and his 'damaged 220 lb brother' Hugh, it recounts their adventures and troubles after Butcher's plummeting prices and spiralling drink problem force them to retreat from Sydney to northern New South Wales.	The Inheritance of Loss Desai, Kiran At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook's son trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai's blossoming romance with her handsome tutor they are forced to consider their colliding interests. The judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires - every moment holding out the possibility for hope or betrayal.
Gathering The Water Edric, Robert It is 1847, northern England, and Charles Weightman has been given the unenviable task of overseeing the flooding of Forge Valley and the eviction of its lingering residents. Resented by the locals and increasingly unconvinced of the wisdom of his appointment as well as the integrity of those who ordered him there, Weightman finds solace only in his neighbour, Mary. Caring for her mad sister has made Mary an outsider and both she and Weightman find comfort from their mutual isolation.	Get a Life Gordimer, Nadine Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in Africa, believes he controls the trajectory of his life, with the markers of vocation and marriage. But when he's diagnosed with thyroid cancer and prescribed treatment that makes him radioactive and for a period a danger to others, he questions, as Auden wrote, 'What authority gives/ Existence its surprise.'
The Secret River Grenville, Kate William Thornhill is sentenced in 1806 to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh.	Carry me down Hyland, M.J John Egan lives with his mother, father, and grandfather in rural Ireland. He wants to visit Niagra Falls with his mother, but more than anything John is determined to become a world famous lie detector.
Kalooki Nights Jacobson, Howard Life should have been sunny for Max Glickman, growing up in Crumpsall Park in peacetime, with his mother's glamorous card evenings to look forward to, and photographs of his father's favourite boxers on the walls. But other voices whisper seductively to him of Buchenwald, extermination, and the impossibility of forgetting.	Seven Lives Lasdun, James Part political thriller, part meditation on the nature of desire and betrayal, SEVEN LIES tells the story of Stefan Vogel, a young man growing up in the former East Germany, whose yearnings for love, glory and freedom express themselves in a lifelong fantasy of going to America. The hopeless son of an ambitious mother and a kind but unlucky diplomat, Stefan lurches between his budding, covert interests - girls and Romantic poetry - to find himself embroiled in dissident politics, which oddly seems to offer both.
The Other Side of the Bridge Lawson, Mary Two brothers, Arthur and Jake, are the sons of a local farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful, set to inherit the farm and his father's character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know - though all he really wants is his father's approval. A young woman, Laura, comes into the community and tips the fragile balance of sibling rivalry over the edge.	So Many Ways to Begin McGregor, Jon Coventry Museum curator, David Carter - a man driven constantly to seek the thrill of old stories made new - cannot help but wish that his daughter's arrival will bring her parents closer together. This novel explores what happens when our lives fail to take the turns we expect, and the ways we learn to let go of the people we might have been.
In the Country of Men Matar, Hisham On a white-hot day in Tripoli in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business - but Suleiman is sure he has just seen him, standing across the street. Why doesn't he come over when he knows Suleiman's mother is falling apart? Whispers intensify around Suleiman as his friend's father disappears and his mother frantically burns his father's books. As Suleiman begins to wonder whether his father has gone for good, it feels as if the walls of his home will break with the secrets held within.	The Emperor's Children Messud, Claire The Emperor's Children follows these three friends – and their overlapping social and family circles – through their day-to-day lives, their perceived struggles and successes and their constant search for meaning and authenticity. Sweeping in scope, minutely perceptive about the nuances of Manhattan life, with richly drawn characters and vivid prose, The Emperor's Children is a finely textured portrait of a particular place at a particular moment – and a haunting illustration how the events of a single day can change everything, for ever. It reveals Claire Messud as a novelist in bloom, writing at the height of her powers.
Black Swan Green Mitchell, David Jason Taylor is thirteen and stuck in the deadest village in the dullest county of darkest Cold War England. But with a stammer, bullies and simmering family discord to contend with, plus the Falklands War, village hysteria against a gypsy encampment and these mysterious objects known as girls, 1982 will prove to be anything but boring. A subtle, painful, elegiac, wry novel about the ‘gap year’ between childhood and adolescence, about a faded era, and about knowing what you don’t know you know.	The Perfect Man Murr, Naeem Rajiv Travers, the child of an Indian mother and English father, is abandoned first to relatives in London and later to the care of his uncle's mistress, Ruth Winters, who lives in a small American town. Beginning with Ruth, a remote figure who writes romance novels filled with perfect men, this town turns out to be as exotic and strange to Rajiv as he is to its inhabitants. But Rajiv, though always an outsider, finds love when he is befriended by four of the town's children. As the children grow older, their friendship becomes increasingly intense, and is complicated not only by desire and shifting loyalties, but also by the personal failings - and secrets - of the adults around them.
Be Near Me Andrew O'Hagan When an English priest takes over a small Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. He makes friends with two local youths, Mark and Lisa, and clashes with a world he can barely understand. The town seems to grow darker each night. Fate comes calling and before the summer is out his quiet life is the focus of public hysteria.Father David looks back to find a Lancashire childhood.	Testament of Gideon Mack Robertson, James Gideon Mack doesn't believe in God, the Devil or an afterlife. After he discovers a mysterious standing stone, his life unravels dramatically until the moment when he is swept into a mountain stream, which pours down a chasm before disappearing underground. Miraculously Mack emerges three days later, battered but alive. He seems to have lost his mind however, since he claims that while underground he met the Devil.
Mother's Milk St Aubyn, Edward The novel's perspective ricochets among all members of the Melrose family – the family featured in St Aubyn's praised trilogy, Some Hope – starting with Robert, who provides an exceptionally droll and compelling account of being born; to Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband who has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favour of his sons; to Mary, who's consumed by her children and an overwhelming desire not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother.	The Ruby in her Navel Unsworth, Barry Thurstan, a young Norman and would-be Knight at the Court of King Roger in Palermo, has been in love since boyhood with Lady Alicia, now returned a widow from the Holy Land. At the same time, he is enthralled by the earthy sensuality of the dancer, Nesrin, whose troupe he brings to Court to dance for the King. In a compelling tale of love, passion, intrigue and treachery, Thurstan finds himself caught in a tangle of plots, counter-plots and deceptions that threaten to destroy him.
The Night Watch Waters, Sarah This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching ...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret ...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover ...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways.