anyone read this?

The veteran Irish stylist John Banville brought off one of the biggest literary coups last night when he took the £50,000 Booker Prize from under the noses of the bookies and the literary insiders.

A 7-1 outsider in the betting odds and untipped by virtually any critic, his novel The Sea was declared victorious in a contest which the judges' chairman, John Sutherland, said had been "painful" in its closeness.

Banville triumphed when Professor Sutherland cast his chairman's vote in his favour. Until then, the judges were tied, with two backing Banville and two, it is understood, supporting the runner-up, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

Banville's vindication at the age of 59 with his 14th novel is a victory of style over a melancholy content which makes his book one of the least commercial on the six-strong shortlist.

His protagonist, a querulous, hypersensitive, elderly art historian, loses his wife to cancer and feels compelled to revisit the seaside villa where he spent childhood holidays being alternately cosseted and bullied by a wealthier boy and girl.

His ambiguous relations with the children lead to sexual awakening but also to dire tragedy. The Guardian said of the author: "Banville writes novels of complex patterning, with grace, precision and timing, and there are wonderful digressive meditations."

Many critics hailed The Sea when it was published. Peter J Conradi, writing in the Independent, praised Banville as "a writer's writer, a new Henry Green, who can conjure with the poetry of people and places. He relishes language and wants it to work for him anew".