The approach of the Not the Booker deadline saw a flurry of reviews, including RachaelKerr on Tales from the Mall and mjwri1 on The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder.
But a spirit of subversion has reigned this week, with the approach of the Booker prize – the other Booker prize – putting reviewers in playful mood.
After reading Nicola Barker's Burley Cross Postbox Theft, Donniek was moved to write a "letter of complaint" to the literary director of the Man Booker prize, Ion Trewin. "Unbelievably," he or she writes, "it wasn't even on the long list" for the 2010 award.
Burley Cross Postbox Theft, he continues is "an epistolary novel (which I'm sure you're aware is one that is comprised entirely of letters)" constructed from the correspondence between the residents of the eponymous village. "If that sounds complicated, it is a testament to the quality of Barker's writing that it's both simple and hilarious."
Donniek admits the novel "is not without its flaws", not least the problematic nature of such correspondence, which can feel "a little contrived" in "the modern age". The epistolary novel also brings unavoidable problems in structure:
"As the letters have been sent by individual members of the community, one finds oneself 'tracking back' to remind oneself if the character has been introduced before. More often though here, a joke started in one letter finds the punch line delivered in another – demonstrating the authors mastery of comic timing."
After demonstrating the "complete foul up" made in omitting Burley Cross Postbox Theft from the Booker longlist, Donniek finishes by hoping the judges "make a better fist of it next time".
Any judge still wondering how to avoid botching the selection of this year's winner might want to cast an eye over Simon92's review of Will Self's "Ambitious" Umbrella. Though it may have moved Simon92 to verse, it seems that ambition isn't quite enough:
"It may seem churlish – for I've been asking
These books for heave – but modernism
Happened for a reason then, & isn't
For a reason now"
"Learnt, 'tis too relaxing," he continues, suggesting that while Homer and Gododdin haunted the depths of the early modernist imagination, Self's "popular songs" are "overly neat".
Many thanks to all this week's reviewers. As ever, if we've mentioned your review, drop Claire Armitstead a line and we'll send you a book from our cupboards!
