Up up and away…..

I’ll be leaving Devon Libraries at the end of October 2009, so although Devon may well “Do Man Booker” in the future, I won’t – or rather, I will, but not on this site. Please follow me,if you will, to my new incarnation at
www.liberatedreader.wordpress.com
Not much to see there until I return from a brief holiday, but come back again ……..

When you’re in, you’re everywhere

So when the BBC runs a news piece about the death of the book/coming of the Kindle – how does it chose to make its point? Why, by waving copies of Wolf Hall throughout the interviews, of course, with a final shot of Kindle and WH side by side. Thank the gods for Man Booker – without it the Beeb would have been obliged to wave copies of Dan Brown’s latest instead…..(since they don’t expect us to have heard of any other titles, they would naturally assume that we would fail to recognise the non-Kindle object)

Mantel Wins Man Booker

Suitably regally attired, Mantel wins Gold

After a disgracefully long absence, I can now reveal that Hilary Mantel won the 2009 Man booker prize…..just in case you managed to miss every newspaper, journal, magazine, news bulletin. As one who punched the air footballer-style at the announcement, having taken due precautions to appease any gods who might try to catch me out ( having put celebratory champagne in the fridge earlier in the evening, I took it out again lest that offend them) I have been amused and bemused by the immediate take on the result. “No surprise” they all said – “Front runner from the start”. Well, yes – we know about the William Hill flurry, but since then it’s seemed to me there’s been a steady drip feed in the media against WH with several articles questioning the validity of including genre fiction – and the forum on MBP’s own website blasted the book for all sorts of reasons.
The power of the prize was clearly demonstrated in the days following the announcement when every newspaper carried photographs and articles by or about Hilary Mantel.
As we say in literary circles – Result!

And so, off to check out all new publications which might just make it to next year’s list. I have draft reviews of the other shortlisted titles, but somehow it doesn’t seem worth printing them now….that’s prizes for you!

What do readers think?

He may not attend - so this is what he looks like

While we wait for The Word from Naughtie and Co, I’ll share with you some of the thoughts of the Exeter Central Reading Group. I attended their meeting last Thursday, and it encapsulated all that is good- and bad – in shadowing a prize like this. The time frame is so very short – from the shortlist announcement on Sept 8th to a verdict on Oct 6th. Factor in the difficulties in elbowing out all comers to get hold of copies of the books (thank you, Paul at Exeter Roman Gate Waterstones!) and even without 2 contenders weighing in at 600+ pages, it was never going to be possible for all members to read all of the books. To their credit, many of them read several. What followed was a round robin of comment and reflection. Some people spoke movingly about some of the books, and those who hadn’t read them made a note to do so, whether or not they win. There were some (polite) arguments – could a novel based on historical fact really be a novel at all? Ditto a novel based on memoir? One member caused heads to nod in agreement when she spoke of the difficulty of reading with 2 sensibilities – “what is my reaction/response to this book?” and “what might the judges think of it?”.
In the end we decided to leave the judges to consider – or not – the issues that seem to most concern the pundits …..will Coetzee get a third? Will Byatt get a second? We just voted for the one we liked best. And in the end, by a short head, The Glass Room won over Wolf Hall. Of course, we’ve only read each book once, or not at all, and we suspect that re-reading and re-re-reading might cause judge-ly views to change en route.

Our discussions were given an extra dimension by Rosemary – who had known Coetzee at Cape Town University. I asked her permission to include her notes on the book – produced after a considerable period of thought -
“Coetzee’s “posthumous” biography of the years 1971-76, told through the eyes of people who knew him and his own notebooks, left an impression of overwhelming sadness. What motivated the author to portray himself so cruelly – as a lover, as a teacher, as a writer, as a person – a misfit in his society? Exiled from family, friends and his beloved Karoo, it seems as though his has been a life of lonliness and unhappiness. His Summertime has been bleak, but by fitionalising his death perhaps there is still time for a more mellow volume in Autumn.”

I’ve read them all (getting hold of the books was a perk of the trade) but not yet blogged some of them, and today doesn’t seem like the day…..It seems unlikely that we’ll have the sort of drama which has enlivened awards in the past – John Berger in 1972 denouncing Booker’s “colonialist policy in the West Indies” and announcing his intention to donate half his prize to the Black Panthers (a movement which had dissolved 2 years before) for example, or Julia Neuberger dissociating herself from the decision to award the prize in 1994 to James Kelman’s How late it was, how late

Omens abound – in 1990, when Byatt won with Possession the judging panel consisted of, among others – Hilary Mantel……..

Great Books revisited

Sometimes, among the riches of the best of contemporary fiction, it can be a relief to re-visit old friends. Judith Kerr…..thank you.

And still the tiger.......

A BudLitfest coup

welcome to the First Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival

When the determined folk of Budleigh Salterton planned their first Literary Festival, they could hardly have expected such a coup – Hilary Mantel, on holiday in East Devon, saw an early notice about the festival and contacted them to offer her services. By the time she made her appearance on Sept 19th, they were welcoming a Man Booker shortlisted author, and the Temple church was packed to its beautiful wood-lined roof.

A stroll on the beach after the event

The audience was treated to a gentle lesson in Tudor history, with Henry VIII’s desperate desire for a male heir really a need for peace and stability for his kingdom – what we now know as the Tudor dynasty at this point just one generation old, and a recurrence of the civil wars an ever-present threat. For after all, everyone knew that only a robust male heir could control the country.

The current showing of The Tudors on television led several of the audience to ask questions about its portrayal of Cromwell – Hilary Mantel professed herself pleasantly surprised at what she felt was a more multi-layered character than might have been expected.

It was the only event I was able to attend – but the programme was a full and busy one, with talks by Val McDermid, Michael Morpurgo, and Virginia Ironside, among others, as well as creative writing workshops and children’s poetry workshops.
An upside of Devon’s high number of second homes can be seen in the list of sponsors and supporters, including Mr and Mrs Andrew Marr, and President of the festival Sue Lawley. The organisers and committee were looking pretty exhausted, but the obvious success of the festival will no doubt work its magic, and plans may already be afoot for 2010.

Judge not, lest….

The Chair Speaks

One of the eternal truths about Man Booker is that almost as many column inches will be expended on the whos and whys of the judging as on the merits of the books themselves. The day after the shortlist party saw The Worthies widely reporting on James Naughtie’s Chairmanly musings. As already reported in these pages, he was scrupulously fair in mentioning the chosen six books in alphabetical order. He said that he and his team were proud of the list, which they had judged on merit, and not on reputation…..quite a few bad books had been entered he said, and commented rather waspishly that “just because you are an accomplished writer with a great reputation it does not mean you can’t write a bad book” (ooh – tell us more!).
Some commentators still obsess over reputations though – will Coetzee bag the accolade of first-ever third-time winner? Will ASByatt become a second-time winner? Other pundits reflect more thoughtfully on the books – Boyd Tonkin of the Independent produced a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece on Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room, celebrating that ” unhyped authors with a substantial backlist of finely-crafted fiction can still catch the judges’ eye”. This is Mawer’s eighth book, and very welcome it is in a world where publishers no longer wait around for an author to produce a best-seller. Tonkin goes on to express a hope that the subject matter of The Glass Room (see next post) will “ignite a deeper curiosity about the culture and nation it salutes”. Well – it did in this reader, Boyd. It’s still possible to find copies in stock (if not in great number) in Devon libraries, but the newer Czech authors he names I found were in short supply – until I came across a single copy of Emil Hakl’s Of Kids and Parents allegedly on the shelf in Exeter Central. so there I’m bound…..

The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds

Adam Foulds

Adam Foulds recently published both an acclaimed first novel, The Truth About These Strange Times, and a prize-winning long poem “The Broken Word”.
The jumping off point for this fascinating new book is the coincidence that the poet John Clare was a patient in an Epping Forest asylum from 1837 to 1841, at the same time that Alfred Tennyson was a regular visitor to his brother Septimus, also a resident. Foulds doesn’t engineer a meeting between the two poets, but instead takes us into the minds of each of these troubled men.

The High Beach Private Asylum was founded by Matthew Allen and gave shelter to John Clare, “Northamptonshire’s peasant poet” when, with his popularity fading and his literary style out of fashion, he grew increasingly erratic and wild, spending the unexpected wealth which came to him as a darling of society on drinking sprees. Cut off from the countryside which has been his inspiration, Clare’s “progress” in High Beach falters and finally he is imprisoned in the section set aside for the most seriously ill and self-harmers.

The theme of imprisonment unfolds – Tennyson, while theoretically free, feels himself shackled by the “black blood” of his family and the depression which shadows them. His success and fame as Poet Laureate are in the future – at this time his own mind constantly harks back to the loss of a dear friend and inspiration. Other characters too are seeking freedom – Allen’s daughter Hannah sees her way of escape in an ultimately fruitless pursuit of a romance with Tennyson.

Adam bravely took on the marketing department and chose his own book jacket

When we first encounter Allen he seems to be a man of liberal sympathies for his time, trying where possible to cure his patients by talking to them and organising occupational therapy, and incarcerating them only as a last resort. We see him trying to reconcile family life with work life – his wife takes a practical role in managing the asylum, and his son is apprenticed to help him – and only gradually learn about problems of debt in his past and his tendency to involve himself in self-delusional business projects.

As he involves Tennyson in a project to produce a steam-driven machine for wood carving (one in which Tennyson and his family did actually invest) events at High Beach move inexorably towards disaster.

So is it “poetic”? I thought so – the prose is compelling and moving …but also at times muscular (cf the account of Allen, aided rather unwillingly by his son, administering an enema to a delusional patient who refuses to give up his stools). The real power of the book lies in setting the poetic sensibilities against a background of Victorian society – ruthless capitalism; liberal reformers seduced by dreams of wealth and fame; the powerlessness of the ill and old; and “carers” like the sly and brutal Stockdale, able to undo any good which may have been done to the helpless wretches in their charge.

I’m not surprised it made it to the shortlist, since it’s the sort of book that would survive the re-reading necessary to get there……

Party time

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Beautiful evening, beautiful setting - and thanks to Paul Tovell of Notts libraries for the picture

We already knew who’d “made it” (and by the same token, who hadn’t…) since the press release came out earlier in the day. That meant it didn’t have the nail-biting effect of the Orange Prize Award ceremony – my only other experience of the Big Time, but instead took the form of a jolly to celebrate the MBP Six (they looked quite relaxed, having known several days earlier that they were in). Four of the authors made it to the party – Coetzee still a continent away and ASB heading back from France – as did the judges and enough bright lights from the literary world to keep the Reading group members and librarians nudging each other… “isn’t that..so and so?..”

The weather was September-soft with a cloudless sky as we lucky representatives of Exeter Central Library Reading Group made our way to the Orangery in Kensington Gardens. Armed with our name badges we sauntered casually in, heading for the charming young people bearing (huge) glasses of champagne, then straight out to the terrace. Some milling about and nibbling at unbelievably dainty canapes before going indoors to hear James Naughtie speak. He carefully listed and described the books in alphabetical order – and claimed that as far as the judges had revealed to each other, there was no single cert amongst the shortlist – that at this stage all were as good and as likely to win as each other. He seemed to feel obliged to echo the litcrits and wonder why there was no book on the shortlist about the current state of the world – and given that the pack always has to bitch about something, it’s true their theme was handed to them on a plate this year.

Still, we didn’t worry about that – just drifted out into the warm evening prepared to roll up our reading sleeves and tackle the shortlist. For the judges it’ll be for the third or fourth time – interesting to see how first-time or second-time perceptions may have altered … and surely that’s what leads them to choose their winner in the end, isn’t it, rather than all the motives attributed by the columnists?

Foulds, Mantel, Mawer, Waters

Shortlist’s out!

The final six.....

So – here’s the six from which one will emerge on October 6th.

The Children’s Book by A S Byatt
Summertime by J M Coetzee
The Quickening Maze by Adam Fould
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

It seems unworthy to ditch Samantha Harvey’s excellent The Wilderness, which I’m enjoying and valuing very much – but I can only carry one book on the train, so perhaps it will have to be the Coetzee, which I haven’t got round to yet, always being a bit daunted by him. I’m sure to come back to Harvey at a later stage, but it’s such a complex weaving of narrative that I’ll need to begin again.

Booklists -
Books I haven’t yet read which are on the shortlist -
Summertime -J M Coetzee; The Glass Room – Simon Mawer; The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

Books I have read which aren’t on the shortlist -
Brooklyn – Colm Toibin (shame); Me Cheeta – James Lever; Love and Summer – William Trevor

Books I haven’t read which aren’t on the shortlist -
Not Untrue and Not Unkind – Ed O’Loughlin; Heliopolis – James Scudamore; How to paint a Dead Man – Sarah Hall – and I suppose I should include The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey

Kensington Gardens, here we come – I’m not sure of the protocol, whether all the authors get a chance to come, and if so, how the unselected 7 will feel about it….. I’ll tell you tomorrow, or soon