Newsletter: October 2004

October is the month of the Man Booker Prize, probably the UK's most prestigious fiction award. The judges have each read a staggering 132 books, and from this enormous pile chosen their shortlist of six. The favourite to win this year was David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and the outsiders were Sarah Hall's The Electric Michelangelo, and Gerard Woodward's I'll Go to Bed at Noon (when Woodward was told he was on the shortlist he said 'I'm not am I? That's unbelievable').

In the event though, the prize was taken by Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.

The book picks up where his first novel, The Swimming Pool Library, left off, following the characters through a decade in Britain, the 1980s, dominated by the politics of Margaret Thatcher. Hollinghurst, who was also shortlisted in 1994 for The Folding Star, wins £50,000, and a huge rise in sales of his book is virtually guaranteed. You'll find three of Hollinghurst's novels, including The Line of Beauty, listed on enCompass if you want to find out more.

Just by chance, I seem to have been reading a lot of writing by women this month: Jackie Kay's first collection of short stories, Why Don't You Stop Talking?, Jeanette Winterson's tale of virtual love and storytelling, The PowerBook, a collection of prize-winning stories by women called Shoe Fly Baby, and an old favourite, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The last is what we'll be discussing in our reading group this month, though I suspect it might not turn out to be one of our most rigorous, argumentative discussions, as surely everyone will love it! I've worked out that I first read the book 17 years ago, which, apart from making me feel quite old, makes me wonder about what happens to books when we come back to them. With Mockingbird it felt rather like sinking into something familiar, cosy, discovering all the pleasures of it all over again. But there are certainly times I've reread books when I've wished I hadn't - they seem different, disappointing, and I can't remember what I was so impressed in the first place. Of course, it's us as readers who change, not the books. But it's sometimes a risky business returning to something you loved first time around… If you've had any experiences like this, drop me an e-mail and let me know.

Susan Tranter

Online Reader in Residence

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