I'm thoroughly enjoying the Today programme's interviews this week with the shortlisted authors for the Man Booker prize. However, they don't always do a good selling job on their books. This morning it was the turn of Jeet Thayil to speak about his novel, Narcopolis. Thayil has an interesting personal story; he is a highly educated, recovered alcoholic and opium addict from India's intellectual classes who has published this, his first novel, at the age of 52. It is set in the opium dens of Bombay (as it then was) in the 1970s and 80s and is obviously personal in many ways. So far, so interesting. But as soon as I learnt that the first sentence is six and a half pages long, I turned off (not literally). Now, it may be that this is a completely contextually justified, poetic, narcotic dream-like sequence, but what an off-putting thought; and as a reformed lawyer, I would find it hard to resist punctuating this mega-sentence.
In comparison, Monday's entertaining interview with a chirpy Hilary Mantel whet the appetite for the third book in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. After she won the prize for Woolf Hall in 2009 she was reported as having plans to spend the winnings on "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll". Rebecca Jones politely asked her how this went, only to be told that it was "hideously disappointing"and that paying off the mortgage was a "bigger imperative". Maybe she'll have more fun if she wins second time around.
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