I made the mistake of reading a book that won the Booker Prize

I’ve just broken one of my own golden rules – never buy a book that has won the Booker Prize, because it will be crap. So I have only myself to blame. The rule of mine has held reasonably true, with a few exceptions, since the wonderful David Storey won it in 1976 for Saville. 

The committee, whoever is on it, will always choose a book which accords with their asinine political beliefs, especially if it is a ‘warning’ kind of a book. It never used to be quite like that, but that’s how literature is these days. Write a book from a perspective unloved by the metro chattering class and you’ll be lucky to be published, never mind awarded a prize. And so, last year, it was Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, in which a horrible right-wing government takes over in Ireland and starts carting people away. If only. And this year, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which is set on the space station but is really about the state of our planet and global warming, natch. 

I don’t remotely object to writers concerning themselves with global warming: I think they should. But is it really the only thing to write about? Anyway, I read Orbital and thought it very underwhelming. As a philosophical discourse it seemed shallow. As a story it didn’t really exist. Nothing happens, apart from the earth suffering a typhoon down beneath. There were so many indecipherable word salads that I was tempted to give up. It was repetitious and not, like David Peace (and before him Gordon Burn) in a good way. At one point I thought I was reading Alain Robbe-Grillet. It’s not Ms Harvey’s fault, really. She tried. And the idea was I think a good one. But isn’t this why ‘serious’ novels generally do not sell well? The self-indulgence, the obsessiveness, the remoteness from the rest of us?