He might have missed out on the Booker prize, but Joseph O'Neill's novel about cricket and post-9/11 New York was the literary critics' read of choice last year.
According to a list compiled by books charity Booktrust from more than 2,000 end-of-year recommendations published in the British press ahead of Christmas, O'Neill's Netherland - which made it onto the Booker longlist but failed to make the shortlist - was nominated as a "book of the year" 17 times, variously described as "a great American novel" and "suspenseful, artful, psychologically pitch-perfect, and a wonderful read".
Aravind Adiga's Booker-winning The White Tiger, meanwhile, picked up just seven "book of the year" nominations. This put it behind fellow Booker-shortlisted novel The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry - which yesterday won the Costa award for best novel - and Tom Rob Smith's thriller Child 44, the subject of controversy when it was longlisted for the Booker ahead of more "literary" picks, both of which landed eight.
Netherland came in ahead of the critics' top non-fiction choice, Richard Holmes's study of late-18th-century scientists, The Age of Wonder, which was picked 15 times, and Zoe Heller's The Believers, picked 14 times. The most nominated author, behind O'Neill, was the late playwright Simon Gray, who garnered 16 nominations for two titles. US president-elect Barack Obama inched in just behind Heller and Holmes with 13 nominations for two titles, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father.
The publisher with the most nominations, for the third year running, was the independent Faber & Faber, ahead of Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury, and HarperCollins's subsidiary Fourth Estate.
"Compiling this list is an eye-popping exercise, but it provides a fascinating – and often surprising – insight into the books that have caught the critics' attention," said Booktrust's website editor James Smith, who put the list together from 15 leading newspaper and magazine lists. "From the obscure (Geoffrey Hill: The Collected Critical Writings) to the popular (Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher), the list proves that publishers continue to provide us with many, many wonderful books."
