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It hardly seemed possible that the story of Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of the missing four-year-old Madeleine, could reach a higher pitch, short of an actual breakthrough in the case. Add the volatile opinions of new Booker Prize-winner Anne Enright - "I disliked the McCanns earlier than most people (I'm not proud of it)" - and the result is a sort of perfect storm, a most odd collision of tragedy and literature.

Then, everything about the McCanns' story is odd - fictional, perhaps, both in the sense that what they're saying may be fiction, and because they're now characters in a story we've created for them. Or rather a thousand stories, involving the same characters and a few varied settings, like the world's most morbid game of Clue.

Enright, the Irish writer who won the Man Booker Prize this week for her novel The Gathering, wrote a bold piece in the London Review of Books two weeks ago in which she expressed her wariness and skepticism about the couple. "Disliking the McCanns is an international sport," she wrote. It is not so much "Madeleine's beautiful mother" who draws her suspicion as the father, whose inauthentic language jars: "His talk of 'information technology' and 'control,' his need to 'look forward.' "

Enright's piece might never have kicked up the dust, had she not come from behind to win the Booker on Tuesday night. As I say, the article was published on Oct. 4, and might have remained a talking point only for the august academics and retired ornithologists who take their talking points from the LRB. The Booker Prize now swims in the middle of commercial culture, though, and its winner is hoisted high and feted. Her past writings are dredged up, especially if she's writing contentiously about the family saga that has gripped the British imagination for the past 170 days.

That's how the papers here write about it: "It's been 170 days since little Madeleine McCann went missing. ..."

Madeleine disappeared from the Mark Warner Ocean Club Resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the evening of May 3. That much is beyond dispute. Her parents had been dining nearby with some friends, grotesquely dubbed "the Tapas Nine" by British tabloids. How nearby? How much wine had they consumed? Who went to check on Madeleine and the McCanns' toddler twins, and when? The Portuguese investigation, shrouded in an official veil of secrecy but shredded by the darts of a million rumours, aims to answer the questions - and, of course, to find Madeleine.

From the beginning, opinion about the McCanns, who are both doctors, was divided. While many grieved for their unimaginable loss, there was equally a sense of suspicion, even before Kate McCann was named an official suspect in the investigation. He was robotic, controlling; she was seen to be unemotional, grim-faced and inexcusably kept to her jogging regime. They were everywhere, on every TV station, on every front page. They wanted to appear on a major American talk show to discuss their daughter, but Portuguese law wouldn't allow it.

Somewhere over the past five months, they've ceased to be human and become characters in Britain's favourite dinner-party game (believe me, you cannot leave your house without talk turning to the McCanns). Kate McCann's increasing gauntness is the subject of daily public examination. Her mother told the press this week that Kate had complained to her: "If I weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic." In other words, if only she looked more like the character in people's heads.

When Enright criticized Gerry McCann in her London Review piece, she focused (fittingly for a novelist) on his use of language. This character's dialogue didn't ring true at all: "The sad fact is that this man cannot speak properly about what is happening to himself and his wife, and about what he wants. The language he uses is more appropriate to a corporate executive than to a desperate father."

It's surprising how much of the criticism aimed at the McCanns is aesthetic: People seem to loathe her pastel wardrobe and constant clutching of Madeleine's stuffed toy, Cuddle Cat, and the way they both wear their daughter's memory on their wristbands. They're hapless screens for our projections. "Yep, if my Second Life avatar was a guilt-ruined, possibly child-endangering GP, you can bet she wouldn't wear that cardigan."

The Kate and Gerry Story receives its most exhaustive retellings on YouTube, not surprisingly. Here, any number of creative types have edited the narrative to present them either as bereaved parents (over syrupy strings) or cold-eyed liars (how else to explain the use of the song Happy Talk?). You want to know what Bible prophecy has to say about Madeleine's disappearance? Wonder what a McCann-starring episode of South Park might look like? The creative spirit lives, and it has dexterous editing fingers.

The story shows no sign of flagging, and will remain on the front pages while a question mark hangs over the ending. Some people profess McCann fatigue, but even that's just a fresh way of carrying on the conversation.

The other day I walked by the spot, a few blocks from my house, where a 14-year-old was knifed to death, apparently for "looking at somebody the wrong way." It happened 52 days after Madeleine's disappearance. The boy's picture was seen in the national media for a day, and then he, too, disappeared. But I guess it wasn't much of a story.