Colm Tóibín deserved the Booker Prize

HARRY McGEE's interview with Colm Tóibín (Irish Examiner, October 19) was interesting, but it was a disappointment that he didn't win the Booker Prize for literature.

It is rather odd that such a well-written book dealing with the life of Henry James did not receive the award.

One commentator considered it a work of art superior to The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghust. This writer is most famous for his masterpiece, The Turn Of The Screw, a novel about the corruption of two children by servants which was made into a film starring Deborah Kerr. The theme of this book is relevant to our times with an increase in child abuse and it is classified as a ghost story.