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Six Sixth Formers were in the library to give personal reviews of the contenders for this year's Booker Prize for Fiction this week. But did they pick the winner?
More than fifty years after it was founded, the Booker prize for fiction remains Britain's best known and most prestigious literary prize. The Booker has long been established as a prize with a reputation for rewarding novels that are both long and written in adventurous and unconventional ways. So the task of reviewing the shortlist can sometimes be challenging. As always however, Harrodian's six student reviewers (one for each book on the list) rose to the challenge. Alfie, Ioanna, Daisy, Eloise, Maria and Leela all impressed as one by one they reviewed their book on a shortlist that ranged from The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits: a road trip novel about an academic undergoing a middle-aged identity crisis to Flashlight by Susan Choi which explores memory and family secrets sparked by a mysterious disappearance.
Master of Ceremonies and English Teacher Mark McDowall was impressed both by the depth and the confidence of all the reviewers but did they manage to pick a winner? An unscientific straw poll of the contenders predicted that either David Szalay's Flesh or Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny were the top contenders with the latter perhaps just edging the decision thanks to its epic scale.