Normally every year I wait until September to buy the 6 Booker short listed finalists but this year, see Arundhati Roy on the Long List and having loved her winner years ago, I'm reading (and loving) her new one. Why not?

www.kingofhits.co.uk/component/option,co...d,64/?g2_itemId=5328

I totally understand the rule break. I loved the "God of Small Things". Not only fantastic story-telling but at times - actually quite consistently - brilliantly original use of language.

I am really looking forward to reading this book, but have a feeling it won't win the booker because of "punishing" her for a perception of not having committed enough to fiction over the years.....?

Ah wyot (welcome) - you are absolutely spot on and why I broke another rule - posting about the new book (The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - wonderful title) before finishing reading it. Because, like some other writers (Graham Greene; Somerset Maugham; Dickens), Roy makes me actually pause and laugh out loud at almost every page with a beautifully turned phrase. And she rarely overdoes it. Where most writers would over egg the pudding, she moves gently on. I'm about 100 pages in and absolutely adoring it (as I did The God Of Small Things; I cannot describe how much that did for Indian literature). Who knows regarding the Booker - you're right; it's 20 years since she won and her first fiction work since then. But I urge those visitors who love great writing to grab this for their holidays - funnily enough I sat next to a lady on a plane this week who was reading it too!

I think you are spot on with the "control", not over-egging and moving on. Dickens does this beautifully as you say. He never allows the comedy and characterisation (brilliant) as they are to run amok.

They augment and run with the story; and the realisation of the characters - rather than cloud them... incredibly hard and rare balance to pull off.

Similarly Roy never lets her manifestly original facility with language detract from the character and plot development and insight into being human...

I wonder if there is an analogy with popular music?

Who are the best examples of controlled originality, while entertaining in equal measure?