Lost for Words

Lost for Words by Edward St Aubyn (Picador).

Reviewed by Gordon McLauchlan

I have judged dozens of literary competitions over many years and part of the interest is watching and listening to the other judges as we all haggle over winners and losers. The problem in New Zealand is that the small population means we certainly know of the entrants and often know them personally. This means putting to the back of your mind prejudices for writers you may like a lot and against those for whom you may have some personal antipathy.

Over the years, I have both reviewed well and voted for a couple of writers in my time who I thought were morally reprehensible because, no matter what, they had written an essay or book that was extraordinarily good. I have also, on occasions, suppressed a personal regard, even affection, for writers whose work has not matched that of others in a competition.

Therefore, I read Lost for Words by Edward St Aubyn with an abiding interest once I discovered in the first chapter that it was  about the Elysian Prize for literature, a deft satire on a major book award for fiction, probably the Man Booker. The narrative starts brilliantly and St Aubyn outlines his cast of judges and authors with deft precision. So many characters jump into the story in the opening pages, I had to note who they were to remind myself as the plot developed.

One of the judges writes fiction herself and has a computer programme called “Ghost” that provides sets of clichés: “When you typed in a word, ‘refugee’ for instance, several useful suggestions popped up: ‘clutching a pathetic bundle’, or ‘eyes big with hunger’; for ‘assassin’ you got ‘ice water running through his veins’….”.

The judges, a motley lot, can’t read all the books entered so the bargaining becomes increasingly complex and political. A cookbook by an elderly Indian author includes some family anecdotes and is submitted by a publisher in error. The arguments in favour of its acceptance as a novel demonstrate the author’s accurate ear for the pompous and plausible language of some critics.

What I marvelled at was St Aubyn’s ability to parody various genre as he dealt with the entries. One of the entries, wot u starin at, the inevitable low-life novel of gritty realism, is superbly parodied, and equally good is a send-up of nature writing in a competition entry called A Year in the Wild. All this is fun and an enjoyable read. 

However, I’m not the first reviewer to notice that even given the loose constraints imposed on satirists, the author, an experienced novelist, does let the plot fray. He tests the credulity of  readers, as though he became bored and lost concentration. Loose ends are not tied and how, for example, did an unpublished manuscript get into a book competition?  Vaguely disappointing at the end but an amusing read on the way.


Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland-based author and commentator and a regular reviewer on this blog.