I don’t follow prizes very closely at all, so I have just now learned that Sabrina by Nick Drnaso is not only a graphic novel, but the first to be nominated for this prize. I did a little google search to see what reaction this is getting and did not find a lot. I found a lot of praise for the book with a mention of the nomination and a couple of people saying it was good that a graphic novel was included, but no criticism of this decision.
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There are some people who think that a graphic novel is just a pretentious term for a comic book and a comic book can’t possibly be up to the standards of “serious” writing. Those people are becoming less common and I certainly am not one of them. In fact, I have been reading and enjoying graphic novels since almost the beginning of the common use of the term more than 30 years ago. There are exceptionally talented people who have produced exceptionally strong work in the graphic novel form.
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The problem, as I see it, is that to group graphic novels and text-only novels together is a category mistake. No one would expect the Booker to nominate a single short story (they have, in fact, generally even rejected books that are collections of short stories) or a single poem (and no collection of poems has even been nominated) or the text of a play (and again, none has ever been nominated). That’s not because anyone thinks those forms are not good enough to be considered for this prize. It’s just that they are the wrong kind of thing to be considered for it.
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The graphic novel isn’t a novel. It isn’t a short story. It isn’t a poem and it isn’t a play. It’s something different. In fact, it is much more different from a novel than a short story or even a play text is. If a prize wants to be open to a variety of categories of storytelling (I can’t even use the word “writing” here, as that would actually exclude the graphic novel) that’s fine, but if they are under the impression that the graphic novel is just another kind of novel and thus makes more sense to include for consideration than a short story, a poem, or the text of a play, then they are mistaken.