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I was too sick to post this on the weekend, so here it is now: Phillip Marchand on why Giller winners are probably the books hated the least by the jury, not their first picks. Unless it’s your book, of course. Then everybody loved it. Or took bribes from the publishers.

In any case, the pool of good jury members is extremely limited in this country, and that has to affect the judgment of the Gillers over time. Keep in mind that, given the requirement for consensus, it takes only one bad juror to drive the whole process off the rails.

This reality also aggravates the Stéphane Dion factor, which states that the winning book will always be a compromise choice – the book that was not hated by anybody. Think of Dion, winning the leadership because Rae and Michael Ignatieff couldn’t stand each other.

A Giller prize juror once told me that not one of the five books on the shortlist they came up with was anyone’s favourite. That’s not surprising. Liberals who found themselves with Stéphane Dion on their hands would understand.