Putting the reader first: The Hatchet Job of the Year

David Blackburn

Tuesday, 7th February 2012

The Coach and Horses in Soho, that beery den of iniquity, hosted the Omnivore’s inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award earlier this evening. A large showing from literary London saw Adam Mars-Jones win the prize for this quiet demolition of Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall. Leo Robson was runner-up for his very clever and very funny critique of Richard Bradford’s biography of Martin Amis. Prize judge Sam Leith said that it was a close battle between Mars-Jones and 26-year-old Robson, who is the 'best reviewer of his generation'. 

The prize is intended to reward reviewers who put the reader first. It’s a laudable aim, said Lynn Barber, who presented the awards. ‘Book reviewing is the last bastion of journalism that hasn’t been overcome by PR and commercialism,’ she says. ‘I’m as much to blame as anyone: telling readers to watch films that are not worth watching.’

The bash was an unqualified success, but Geoff Dyer seemed a little irked that his neat assault on Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending had been overlooked. His equilibrium was restored, however, when the evening's sponsor, a genial cove from the Fish Society, quoted a pithy Dyerism in his speech. Dyer inclined his head and nodded in recognition. It was either a show of self-regard or a moment of winning vulnerability. 

There's more hatcheting to be done before self-satisfaction and deference have been entirely purged from the literary world. Roll on next year.

Blog Tags: Fiction , Literature , Prizes