Google has spoken: trawling through what people have been saying about the Booker shortlist has revealed a trend. It seems that there are two things one needs to know about this year’s prize. Firstly, Dan Stevens (Downton heartthrob, Booker judge) kept a Kindle in a secret pocket of his tailcoat for sneaky reading during filming. And secondly, this list is not last year’s.

The inclusion of two tiny publishers, Myrmidon Press and Salt Publishing, is a refreshing change from the usual domination of publishing powerhouses. Critics have commented that the list not only features two literary debuts (Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis and Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse) but also, noticeably, excludes some big names. Out with the old, in with the new, right?

In considering this shortlist’s relation to its predecessors, however, it is perhaps too easy to see it as a reaction to last year’s ‘readability’ scandal. For sure, Jeanette Winterson can in no way accuse this shortlist of being “dumbed down”. The authors it contains have upped their highbrow ante: Will Self’s novel Umbrella, without paragraphs or chapters, revels in the Modernist influences that have been present in much of his earlier fiction. Still, it remains unclear how far Winterson’s calls for a seismic change in the prize’s attitude have been addressed.

It is the presence of Hilary Mantel that is most telling. A Booker champion from just three years ago seems out of place in a shortlist that is embracing a new prize-giving ethos. Bring Up the Bodies is not only written by a Booker veteran, it is no less than a sequel to that former victor, Wolf Hall. If the TLS is right in saying that Hilary Mantel is “a committed revolutionary novelist” then this list, with Bring Up the Bodies in it, acknowledges that the Booker Prize has been a place for revolutionary writing in very recent times. How can it be a reaction to a past that it echoes so strongly?

The shortlist, including four novels set in the past, is interested in history; the ostentatious shunning of big publishers and names harks back to a time before the multi-national publishing brand. But commentators are neglecting to remember that former lists also included new writing and little-known writers.

This list is not really a reaction to the choices of the previous committee, it just seeks to distance itself from the few comments that brought it into disrepute last year. The chair, Sir Peter Stothard, betrayed the irony inherent in the list’s reactionary stance, saying that “the judges placed Umbrella on the shortlist with the conviction that those who stick with it will find it much less difficult than it first seems.” Less difficult than it first seems. The list contains powerful and thrilling writing, but it is as readable as last year’s. It is the old disguised as new. Heaven forbid that anyone should notice.