THE OVERFLOW: Rosemary Sorensen February 02, 2008 From The Australian

THE announcement of a literary prize always brings with it that lovely shiver of anticipatory excitement.

And so it was when Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy took out this year's Costa award (which used to be the reliable Whitbread) with a novel called Day. Off went The Overflow to seek out Day, and she found herself at the author's website. Well, did that put the damper on our enthusiasm. Kennedy has a section on her site for reviews, which she divides into those that are good, which she lists without comment, those that are bad, which she snipes at, and those she deems odd or silly. That's fine, but when it comes to listing reviews for Day, she decides not to: "I've got sort of tired by the whole media reporting on the media and don't want to help it along even by this tiny degree." Oh, you wearisome creature. Instead, she provides us with a sound recording of her reading from the book and answering questions at the Edinburgh Book Festival to help us "make up your own mind". It's difficult to be keen about reading novels by authors who are this self-absorbed.

* * *THE under-rated Marianne Wiggins is on the novels short list for the American National Book Critics Circle Awards, with The Shadow Catcher (paperback due for release in Australia midyear). If you can find a copy of her Evidence of Things Unseen, about the ethics of science in the atomic age, you'll find her brilliantly entertaining. Winners will be announced on March 6.

* * *WE dipped our toes into the second-hand book pond at The Overflow last week and now we're up to our neck in it. Online second-hand book network AbeBooks reports that the highest price last year was paid for a first edition copy of Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales by John White, written in 1790, which sold for $10,332. That's the quality end of the market. As for quantity, we would dearly like to know why the second best-selling second-hand book last year was William Stuart Long's The Imperialists: The Australians, a tale of dashing heroes conquering a dark continent, written, by the looks of it, morefor sensationalism than accuracy. Forthe record, the top-seller was William Bridges's Transitions: Making Sense of Life'sChanges.

* * *THAT Dimitri Nabokov. He's very good at keeping his dad's name up there in lights. Will he or won't he burn the so-called Laura manuscript? For two years, we are told, he's been wrestling with his conscience about whether to respect the dying wishes of his father, the author of Lolita, to destroy it. But will the world be deprived of a mini-masterpiece? Stay tuned. No doubt Dimitri will tell us more, eventually.

* * *THE wonderfully named American Brunonia Barry, from Salem, Massachusetts, joins the list of writers who have self-published and gone on to make a squillion. Her novel The Lace Reader has apparently become popular enough for her to sign a $2.2million two-book deal with the publisher William Morrow. It will republish the book later this year.
overflow@theaustralian.com.au