Sometimes great writing does not make a great novel. Among the books notably missed on this year’s just-announced Booker Prize short list is “Kieron Smith, boy” (Harcourt, 432 pages, $26) by James Kelman, who won the Booker in 1994 for “How late it was, how late.” Published earlier this year in England, the new book, a long narrative told in the voice of a young boy, is one of Mr. Kelman’s most sustained, impressive efforts — and yet the Booker committee’s exclusion of it is no crime.