In Lost for Words, St Aubyn has constructed a farce centring on the judges of a fictional book prize. But the real-life models for his judges are not hard to identify...
'Joining the festival of self-consciousness' … Edward St Aubyn. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
Literature about literature is booming. The early months of 2014 alone have seen novels depicting Thomas Hardy (by Christopher Nicholson), Mr and Mrs Hemingway (Naomi Wood), Nuala O'Faolain (Hugo Hamilton), Baudelaire (James MacManus), the Blakes and the Mandelstams (David Park), Conan Doyle (Valerie Martin) and EM Forster (Damon Galgut). John Banville produced a homage to Raymond Chandler, Val McDermid an affectionate update of Jane Austen.
Among the highest profile titles have been a memoir-like "novel" about the life of a novelist (Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death in the Family), and a novel about a novelist researching a biography of a novelist, generally assumed to be based on VS Naipaul (Hanif Kureishi's The Last Word).
The spring season's most-hyped crime novel, Joel Dicker's forthcoming The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair , involves one author trying to clear the name of another in a book that beomes a bestseller; in another, Chris Pavone's The Accident, a book takes on the starring role of serial killer, as the manuscript of a potentially explosive biography of a tycoon (entitled The Accident) promises wealth but brings death to anyone who possesses it.Soon joining this festival of self-consciousness will be Edward St Aubyn's Lost for Words, which, like Howard Jacobson's most recent novel Zoo Time – published after he surprised himself by winning the Booker, but conceived and at least partly written before then – is an act of revenge on the book world.
More
Among the highest profile titles have been a memoir-like "novel" about the life of a novelist (Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Death in the Family), and a novel about a novelist researching a biography of a novelist, generally assumed to be based on VS Naipaul (Hanif Kureishi's The Last Word).
The spring season's most-hyped crime novel, Joel Dicker's forthcoming The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair , involves one author trying to clear the name of another in a book that beomes a bestseller; in another, Chris Pavone's The Accident, a book takes on the starring role of serial killer, as the manuscript of a potentially explosive biography of a tycoon (entitled The Accident) promises wealth but brings death to anyone who possesses it.Soon joining this festival of self-consciousness will be Edward St Aubyn's Lost for Words, which, like Howard Jacobson's most recent novel Zoo Time – published after he surprised himself by winning the Booker, but conceived and at least partly written before then – is an act of revenge on the book world.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment