In the musty old bookworld, prizes are terribly exciting. Yes, book awards will never reach the world-televised-designer-frock-paraded-on-red-carpet level of the Oscars, but any keen bookish person was waiting with baited breath for the announcement of the Costa Book of the Year last Tuesday night.
The Costa Prize was the acme of literary excitement of the year so far. (Granted, we’re only a month in.) It has been the hub of excited discussions both in bookshops and across the literary press. So I thought it only fitting to join the fray.
I’ll come right out and say it. I am sick to death of reading the endless whines about the silliness or eccentricity of the prize for making the judges pick a winner across genres. Pretty much everyone, with no thought for the unoriginality of their quibble, argues along the lines of: How can a biography possibly be compared to a novel? Who could compare a collection of poetry to a children’s book? Even (my hero) Robert McCrum in the Observer called it ‘an impossible choice’.
On the contrary, it is a wonderful thing that the Costa Prize recognises the fact that some books are, quite simply, better than others. When it comes to brilliance, a book’s genre is irrelevant.
The Costa Prize asks us to burrow beneath the superficial layer of genre. It forces the realisation that, fundamentally, all books are fashioned out of language. Books are ways of telling stories — whether they are about real people or imagined scenarios, whether they are conjured using prose or verse doesn’t, or shouldn’t, matter. It is for the author to choose what story to tell and how to tell it.
I hope that you’ve read a truly brilliant book. If so, then you’ll know the joy one can feel at reading a well-formed phrase, a perfectly rendered image, a clearly expressed idea. A brilliant book lifts you out of humdrum and transports you to a place where everything is perfect. There are no ‘ums and ahs’, no instances of ‘damn I’ve forgotten the word for it’, no strained images. It is a way of seeing everything in perfect focus, in super-sharp HD.
And if you’ve read a brilliant book, you’ll want everyone else to read it too. I know it’s not just me who presses my favourite books into the hands of my friends, and begs them to read them. Witness the publishing sensation that was Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes. Working in a bookshop, I saw several people buying at least five copies to give away. (Although, sadly, it won only the Costa Biography Award, not Book of the Year.)
The point is that the experience of reading a brilliant book doesn’t happen very often. And when it does happen, it happens completely regardless of a book’s genre. It’s not impossible to think about five books and know which one of them is exceptional. You just have to ask yourself a few questions. Which book lifted you out of daily drudgery? Which author created the book’s world completely perfectly? To hack up a famous Ezra Pound quotation, which writer charges language with meaning to the utmost possible degree?
Help me prove my point! Think through all the books you’ve read in the past year and pick your Best Book of 2011. Unlike the Costa, you don’t have to limit yourself to books published last year, just books you read over the past year. (If it helps, you can see my own longlist on my blog.)
Weighing up all those different books now, my Book of the Year Award comes down to a choice between Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. A memoir versus a novel. It might seem awkward to compare between genres, but all you need do is recall the experience of reading them. For me, Rebecca wins hands down. Lucky I wasn’t on the Costa Panel as, in light of that decision, I’d inevitably be accused of the Bookerish faux pas of brow-lowering.
Emily Rhodes works in an independent bookstore in London and is writing a novel. She blogs at Emily Books and tweets @EmilyBooksBlog.
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