Rebecca's Reviews > Lost for Words

(3.5) A buoyant, if slight, literary farce. The send-up of the 2011 Booker Prize race* may be a bit obvious, and some of the characters are rather thin, but I found the literary pastiches (especially of paint-by-numbers thrillers, Hilary Mantel-esque historical fiction, Irvine Welsh and Slavoj Žižek – Didier was my favorite character) absolutely hilarious. And who wouldn’t love that ending, as the whole competition descends into absurdity and (view spoiler)[a cookbook (hide spoiler)] takes the nation’s top fiction prize?!

I take it this is rather different from the usual St. Aubyn fare (the Guardian review called it “undoubtedly his weakest book,” even though it went on to win the 2014 Wodehouse award for comic fiction), but I enjoyed the writing so much I’d be willing to try something else by him. (Any recommendations?)

P.S. I’d actually be really interested in reading a PhD thesis on the history of the semicolon. Does that make me pathetic?


*For my thoughts on the 2011 Booker Prize race, see my Bookkaholic article on readability.