Chris Paling looked nervous before beginning his reading at the recent Mind Book of the Year shortlist reading. And with good reason: his eighth novel, Minding, already looked awkward and lonely on a list dominated by non-fiction; coming after Gill Hicks' heartrending account, Paling's claim on his audience's attention looked tenuous in the extreme.
Gill Hicks has the smartest walking stick in London, and an easy, yet deeply affecting reading style. Her memoir, One Unknown, tells the harrowing story of surviving the 7/7 attacks. With her deep antipodean accent, Hicks held the room mesmerised as she tenderly and carefully told the story of her torturous wait for rescue, and the "new normality" of disabled life. It felt like Gill's solemn, defiant words were still echoing around the room as Paling took his place at the lectern.
Minding is a spare, unflinching tale of the love between a fractured mother and a confused son. It is complex, slyly humorous, haunting, and to my mind one of the finest books to be published in the last few years. That it wasn't nominated for other awards frankly beggars belief. But its chances of landing the Mind prize is slim; it is, after all, a novel. Coming after Gill's thunder-punctuated reading, how could Paling's characters not fail to seem brittle and anaemic? How could the problems of an imaginary person be compared in any way with the sheer physical tragedy of Gill Hicks' missing legs?
The answer is that they can't. In 27 years, the Mind Book of the Year only 4 novels have won the award. Of that quartet, all fit snugly into the genre of "confessional novels" and two are long out of print. It seems that first-hand experience is the key to fulfilling the prize's aim of raise awareness of mental health.
This, I think, is a shame. Minding hit me no less viscerally than One Unknown, and when Paling eventually started to read, I was once again in the emotionally unstable, ashen world of Jane and Billy. I cared about them, worried about them, just about as much as real people. Looking over at Gill, I briefly wondered if it was wrong to feel that way. Should I feel more because Gill's up there speaking for herself, while Jane can only speak through Chris Paling? Does reality always trump the imagination? Is it more important to have lived it than to have imagined it?
Looking at both books side by side, the judgement on which works best is hard to call. Because I summon Jane into my mind's eye, I know her, I feel, more intimately. I don't know how any judge can say one is better than the other, though I'm glad there's a prize like this in the literary world. One in four people are affected by some kind of mental health issue, and sufferers are twelve times more likely to the victims of crime. The Mind Book of the Year is designed to draw attention to these issues - and, I hope, to both Gill Hicks' and Chris Paling's very different, but equally excellent books.
