This send-up of the
selection process for major literary awards should have been more amusing than
it was. When MP Malcolm Craig, who is
from Scotland, is asked to assemble a committee to choose this year’s winner of
the prestigious Elysian Prize for fiction, a dubious cast of characters is
assembled as the judges – a popular crime novelist, an actor who misses most of
the meetings, an Oxbridge scholar, a journalist. Some of the candidates for the long and then
short list include the irresistible and promiscuous novelist Katherine Burns;
first novelist Sam Black, who lusts after Katherine; an Indian named Sonny who
has produced a 2,000 page magnum opus; and a couple of books, wot u starin at being one title of
supposedly gritty realism, by Scottish authors who are favored by Malcolm. Snippets of the short listed book are quoted
throughout. When Katherine’s publisher
inadvertently submits a cookbook by Sonny’s aunt in place of her novel, things
become even more problematical. Didn’t
make me laugh…. 261 pp.
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