Shane's Reviews > Lost for Words

A spoof on a literary prize event, that is also a telling indictment on this form of reward system that is skewing literary appreciation for writers.

An environmentally unfriendly company manufacturing cancer-causing herbicides and pesticides (familiar?) decides to buy some goodwill by sponsoring a Commonwealth-wide literary prize. The politician appointed to chair the selection committee, Malcolm, is “pre-advised” as to which books need to make the long list by the head of the prize granting organization. The rest of the committee is made up of a secretary who is dreaming of her own writing career, an actor who is mostly off-stage, a journalist who favours underdogs, and a lone literary voice who believes that “literature must have depth, beauty, structural integrity and an ability to revive tired imaginations.” This idealism is lost on Malcolm of course, who, in keeping with his political conditioning, is looking for “compromise among all members” as his goal, irrespective of the outcome.

Among the candidates in the running for the prize: Katherine, a nymphomaniacal ingénue who is sleeping with her editor Allan, and with two other writers at the same time: Didier the paradoxical theorist and Sam the angst-ridden insomniac; Sonny, the maharajah from India who believes his self-published book is a winner; and the aforementioned Sam, who is also probably the best of the literary lot. Oh, and lest we forget there, is also an Indian Cookbook, written by Sonny’s aunty that gets submitted by accident and is included in the long list due to the journalist committee member’s desire to favour the underdog!

St. Aubyn is a briliant wordsmith and delivers this story in beautifully constructed prose, weaving his plot skillfully as we pop in an out of the heads of the entire cast. Ego’s rise and fall: Katherine breaks up with Sam as his book goes ahead of hers into the short list; Allan gets fired for screwing up Katherine’s submission; and Sonny cooks up a diabolical plan to assassinate the committee for spurning his book. Literary truisms abound: “Art based on impact, rather than process, structure, or insight is doomed to the jackhammer of monotony of having to shock again and again.” “Money has value because it can be exchanged for something else. Art only has value because it can’t.” and “What’s worse than an unexploded bomb in your basement? An exploding one!”

The finale, of course, is the predictable awards ceremony at which we find the committee still in deadlock at the eleventh hour, split between the purists and the politicians, between the deserving and the undeserving. And of course, what happens if you end up with two favourites and cannot decide between them? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out. As for literary merit, it doesn't count for much with this award.

I’m not sure St. Aubyn would have made a lot of friends in the literary establishment with this novel, but it’s a topical book for our times, especially when winning prizes seems the only way to vault into the literary big leagues today. And where there is money, there is rot. And if the end game is compromise, then mediocrity is the result.