Orange Segments: Some Early Thoughts

(Apologies for the disgracefully twee title to this post. I just couldn't help it.)

Thought 1: If there are three more books on the Orange longlist as strong as Wolf Hall, The Little Stranger and This Is How, then I think it has to be the strongest list (by a long way) since 2006.  Surely all three have to be on the shortlist?

Thought 2: Twenty books is a lot of books. I've collected in fifteen of the longlist so far (through a mixture of begging, borrowing and a little buying; a big thank you to the publishers who have kindly sent me review copies) and my bookshelves are absolutely groaning.  Admittedly they were groaning already; now it is just a bit louder.  I hope and pray that bookshelf no. 3 does not topple over and kill the friend we have staying this weekend.

Thought 3: Some of the books are a lot longer than I thought they were.  Has anyone seen the mass market paperback of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver?  It runs to 600+ pages and would make a fine, sturdy house brick.  I thought I better start reading it immediately after finishing This Is How, otherwise it will daunt me from the bookshelves. 

Thought 4: The press has already had comment aplenty about the Orange Prize, as usual. I know the PR people must court controversy on purpose.  Following chairwoman Daisy Goodwin's complaint about books by women being too depressing and humourless, we had some thinly veiled sexism from Giles Coren (with some not so veiled sexism in the comments) and some discouraging stereotypes about women's writing from William Skidelsky in the Guardian.  Meanwhile former Booker judge Philip Hensher was nodding enthusiastically in the Independent (albeit in connection with the state of literary fiction generally).  Rowan Pelling in the Telegraph (also a former Booker judge) suggested a shortlist of humourous women's writing.  At which point I was mightily relieved to read Jean Hannah Edelstein's blog post, which moved the focus of the debate onto the culture of literary publishing.  For my own part, I think it is silly to interpret Daisy Goodwin's comments as about the state of fiction writing by women in general.  We have to assume that she is talking about her reading experience of the 129 books submitted for the Orange Prize in 2009/10.  All of these books were submitted by editors not by authors, and were chosen because they fit a literary profile that the Orange Prize has developed.  If there is an issue it is with the yardstick by which we measure literaryness and what is published as literary fiction, surely.  As both Philip Hensher and Jean Hannah point out: literary fiction by men is just as depressing as anything the Orange Prize has on offer.  The only difference is that nobody is suggesting their writing is depressing because they are men.  Not that Daisy Goodwin suggested that in the first place, but it doesn't take much for a discussion of the Orange Prize to skew into a catfight about the differences between the sexes.

Personally I don't perceive darkness in fiction as a problem, probably because in my experience unrelenting darkness is very rare.  Yes, it's true: fiction that deals with rape or war or bigotry is unlikely to provoke a belly-laugh ala Terry Pratchett, but the dichotomies the press has invented between sad and funny, depressing or witty, are false ones.  It is the balance of hopefulness with the horrors and indiginities which is a better measure, I think. If there is just a little humanity and kindness in a book then that is all the light I need to contrast the darkness.

Thought 5: Oh to be a teenager again. Well, not really. But I would love to sit down in a room with five other people who had read the same 14 Orange Prize winners I had and weigh their merits.  Any bets that Small Island is going to win again?

~~Victoria~~

Comments

[Jenny]

On Thought 4, I also was very pleased to come across Jean Hannah Edelstein's article after reading the mass of other articles about Daisy Goodwin's comments, which ranged from the boring to the sexist to the depressing (and they think novels are miserable? If novels are miserable, then columnists are agonising).

Also, while I haven't read that much of the Orange longlist so far, Wolf Hall wasn't really that miserable. I mean, yeah, you have the whole death and despair Tudor-bits, but taken as a whole - pretty hefty - novel, I didn't find it that heavy. Except, obviously, weight-wise.

Good luck with your Orange longlist reading!

[Teresa]

Totally agree with you on point 4. I don't find fiction by women to any more grim and depressing than fiction by men. It seems like the same could be said of Booker nominees, or really the nominees for any major literary prize. And you make an excellent point that the problem (if there is indeed a problem) is not that cheerful, light books aren't being published but that people putting books forward for prizes consider serious books with heavy themes to be more worthy than their lighter counterparts.

And Jenny makes a good point about Wolf Hall not being miserable. I'd argue the same about The Little Stranger, the only other book on the longlist that I've read. Sure, it's dark, but it's a ghost story! Hardly the stereotypical maudlin "women's fiction" the media seem to be talking about.

[Jackie (Farm Lane Books)]

I think we have been reading very different books as I am surprised by how weak the Orange list is so far!

I have just started The Rehearsal though and it is fantastic so far. Best book I've read in a while and will get my Orange vote at the moment.

[Jodie]

Thinly veiled sexism might be putting it a bit nicely about Giles Coren's article. Lord that was awful to read.

As for Goodwin's comments I think she is once again talking about her own reading preferences (like last years comments on how 'women tend to like certain kinds of things' but without the insulting gender generalisation). She's searching for great fiction that she'd enjoy reading, rather than great fiction as a whole. That's understandable, as all judges are going to have their biases and be weary after reading that much fiction that fast, but its something I think she should have kept to herself. Now it looks like she's encouraging women to stop being gloomy and issuing a directive for the kind of stories women should be writing.

Almost done with 'The Wilding' by the way and sadly as you said it's not the great novel I was hoping for. So I'm looking forward to starting 'The Little Stranger' especially as it will be my first book by Sarah Waters.

[Victoria]

Jenny & Teresa, I agree with you about Wolf Hall (and about The Little Stranger too). Neither novel is 'funny' or overtly 'witty' - both are dark and brooding in their own way - but they are never 'depressing'. In fact, they are exhilarating by virtue of the quality of storytelling and atmosphere they display. I think they perfectly highlight what was wrong with Daisy Goodwin's comments, and the press's response to them.

Jackie, I think it is probably true to say that we could plot our tastes in books on a venn diagram. There are definitely places where our minds meet and then others where we differ. I loved Wolf Hall and The Little Stranger, and I know you weren't as keen (or not keen at all) so that explains it a little. And then you have read different books to me too. It'll be interesting to see the different shortlists we come up with. :-)

Jodie, you have hit the nail on the head about Goodwin's comments. While I accept her subjectivity (and the subjectivity of every reader), I think that Prize judges should attempt to push their boundaries and tastes as far as is possible. Her commentary so far suggests that she has struggled with that. As for The Wilding, I'm almost glad you haven't loved it because then I would think I had missed something. I'll be posting about it in a few days.

[Buried In Print]

Thanks for the great links, and I'm still giggling about the post title: I hope it becomes a regular heading. ::grin::

[Kirsty (Other Stories)]

It strikes me that writing by women just can't win. It's too domestic, or it's too narrow in scope, or it's too depressing. So we defend it, try and celebrate women's writing with an important prize, and then we're told we're sexist to hold the prize, because men and women's writing should compared equally.

In an ideal world, they should be compared equally, all the time. But the complainers need to make up their mind - is women's writing of the same standard as men's, or is it not? It seems to me that different commentators say different things as fashion dictates, much of the time.