Stacey Bartlett's picks for the Man Booker longlist

 

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman

 

In our interview with Ned Beauman it was quite clear that this is an ambitious young writer who has written an ambitious novel. It spans 17,000 years but mainly rotates around Nazi Germany, and its gorgeous jacket makes this second novel from Beauman stand out from the crowd.

 

 

 

 

Ancient Light by John Banville

 

Banville won the Booker in 2005 and this modern love story could win him the title again. Alex Cleave falls in love with his best friend's mother, Mrs Gray, and the novel - taking place in atmospheric rural Ireland - has echoes of Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz.

 

 

 

 

The Red House by Mark Haddon

 

Haddon is the master of awkward family situations, and The Red House is a hot-house of brimming tension when an extended family decides to take a break to the Welsh countryside to attempt to repair their frayed relationships.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon

 

Narrated by teenage farm girl Mary, who has one leg and hair the colour of milk, this story is heart-breakingly disarming in its innocence, which masks the incredible bleakness of our protagonist's life. Written in colloquial uneducated 'country speak', Leyshon has created a real character in Mary.

 

 

 

 

Stonemouth by Iain Banks

 

Sci fi writer Iain M. Banks has written this impressively gripping novel set in the fictional town of Stonemouth in East Scotland. A group of young people drag their heels into adulthood to the backdrop of a gangster family's looming presence over the community. 

 

 

 

 

Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding

 

This beautiful story of a deaf-mute Romanian man who reveals his true memory and therefore identity to a nurse through his drawings just missed out on the Orange Prize this year. Read an extract here.

 

 

 

 

 

The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen

 

This first novel by Grace McCleen is Doctor Zeus-like in prose. McCleen read a trippy extract describing the universe at Hay Festival, and any author who says their writing style is to: "take a bath and feel really dizzy and sick and lie down and let things come to me" is one to watch, in my eyes.