Boyd Tonkin: These awards are in desperate need of reform

Julian Barnes, a favourite this year for the prize he once scorned as "posh bingo", once judged a literary award in France known as the Prix Novembre (now, with a new sponsor, it's the Prix Décembre). Designed as a corrective to awards earlier in the season, it aimed in Barnes's words to fix their mistakes and "issue a final, authoritative verdict on the year". Perhaps we need a British equivalent of the Prix Décembre. A prize purely dedicated to excellence in the art of fiction, judged by a celeb- and politician-free panel of experts, it would be quite oblivious to the hunt for novelties, the desire to cut a dash and make a splash, and all the other extraneous factors that now seem to sway the Man Booker itself.

Substantial books do survive this eccentric annual ritual. On this year's list, Carol Birch deserves more acclaim than she often receives.

Yet the process seems to have lost much of its focus. It now delivers a curiously mixed bag of worthwhile novels. So what? No longer does the Man Booker seem to want to test the year's output against the highest standards of literary ambition and artistry. Not only the rebuffed Alan Hollinghurst, but many accomplished authors who failed to make the long-list will be wondering what the Booker is precisely for these days.

Change could save its reputation, with more explicit judging criteria; permanent jury members; selection by judges rather than submission by publishers. The Man Booker urgently needs its own spring (or autumn?) of reform. Otherwise, revolutionary Decembrists – or Novembrists – might soon plot to usurp its role.