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A review by jennyreadsalot
Lost for Words by Edward St Aubyn
1.0
Hard pass thank you.
This was written to obviously throw shade at high end literary prizes, a little research on my part told me it was about everything that went down around the 2011 Booker which I do vaguely remember being a controversial year. Here's the problem, anyone who pays any attention to these kind of prizes already knows that it is more about the politicking and backscratching than about which book is actually best (part of why I stopped paying attention to them several years back).
The whole thing ends up being not so much cheeky and fun instead more bitter and sour grapes, the author of this book very clearly pissed that his work has not been selected for recognition and is lashing out at those he think has wronged him. Is he accurate in this satire of literary prizes, sure it's not far off. But the whole thing is so clearly tinged with the flavour of "it should have been me" that it left a really bad taste in my mouth. To be clear I did my research on what happened around the prize after I read the book so I came to these conclusions without that context, it was nice to have suspicions confirmed though.
Hard pass and I would not recommend
This was written to obviously throw shade at high end literary prizes, a little research on my part told me it was about everything that went down around the 2011 Booker which I do vaguely remember being a controversial year. Here's the problem, anyone who pays any attention to these kind of prizes already knows that it is more about the politicking and backscratching than about which book is actually best (part of why I stopped paying attention to them several years back).
The whole thing ends up being not so much cheeky and fun instead more bitter and sour grapes, the author of this book very clearly pissed that his work has not been selected for recognition and is lashing out at those he think has wronged him. Is he accurate in this satire of literary prizes, sure it's not far off. But the whole thing is so clearly tinged with the flavour of "it should have been me" that it left a really bad taste in my mouth. To be clear I did my research on what happened around the prize after I read the book so I came to these conclusions without that context, it was nice to have suspicions confirmed though.
Hard pass and I would not recommend