The Booker Prize Foundation is in negotiations with publishers to make all the shortlisted novels available online. That would be very cool. (Unless you’re one of the authors, perhaps.)
By the way, one Booker judge’s opinion of Anne Enright’s The Gathering is not one that sits well with all members of the public.
“We found it a very powerful, uncomfortable and even, at times, angry book,” Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the judges, said after picking the book on Tuesday night. “It is an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language.”
He added: “I think you people will find this a very readable and satisfying novel.”
That was not quite what a lollipop lady, a builder’s yard worker and other locals from the Scottish village of Comrie thought of the novel when presented with the shortlisted books by the BBC, for a Culture Show documentary screened last weekend.
Sara Tiefenbrun, its director, said that they asked regular readers and those who had not touched a book for years to comment on them….”The Gathering didn’t go down well. The Booker judges decided it was ‘accessible’. That’s not what our people found. They found it jumped about, the narrative wasn’t linear and it was quite confusing and gloomy.”
Maybe it was Sir Howard’s “you people” that rankled. I’m just sorry she didn’t ask complete illiterates for their opinions. That’ll show those titled snobs a thing or two.
Filed under: authors, awards, books, reading | Tagged: Anne Enright, Man Booker Prize, stubborn ignorance, The Gathering
