It seems you have to be in the business of escapism if you want to get one of these. Photograph: Linda Nylind
In 1920, an American economist named George Taylor came up with the theory that hemlines were a good predictor of national economic health. When women had the money to wear good silk stockings, he reasoned, hemlines went up.
I've got my own indicator. It has to do with plot.
Everything I've read lately seems to be set either somewhere else or some time other. Escapism is very trendy, sales of fantasy and historical fiction are way up. Could it be that we're losing the plot on contemporary living?
For some good examples of this phenomenon, have a look at the 2008 CILIP Carnegie Medal shortlist, announced today. Philip Reeve does an interesting take on spin-doctoring, circa 500AD in Here Lies Arthur. Tanya Landman takes us to Mexico in the late 1800s in Apache, Kevin Crossley Holland (Gatty's Tale) and Elizabeth Laird (Crusade) get stuck in the middle ages, and Linzi Glass takes us to South Africa in the middle of Apartheid (Ruby Red).
Even Jenny Valentine's Finding Violet Park dips back into the 1950s. My own novel, What I Was, is set in East Anglia way back in 1962 against a background of the first millennium (the Dark Ages, as anyone who followed the title crisis about a year ago might remember).
Despite being one of the wealthiest, most comfortable societies on earth, it appears we would rather be elsewhere - preferably in a parallel universe where house prices and hemlines are still going up. Maybe we'll even find some answers to our own problems there.
Me, I'm interested in the disproportionate number of books set in a weirdly dystopian present - Delia's How To Cheat at Cooking, for instance. May I offer an economic prediction of my own here?
We're doomed.
