(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~~