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Adapted from The Independent on Sunday, 10 December 2000
HEADLINE: AMIS COMES TOP IN ANNUAL LITERARY LOVE-IN By Robin Stummer SO NOW we know. Martin loves Saul, but doesn't like Julian. Julian doesn't like Martin as much as he does Graham and Penelope, and Geoffrey loves Martin and his dad. Will and Miranda can't get enough of Carlo, but he's been nabbed by Cressida. Antonia loves Simon, but Simon has a different love. He and Alain adore each other, but Alain has other loves. Everyone's crazy about Zadie, but Zadie has a thing about Martin. Anita and Rupert loved having Giles by their bedsides, and Roger is soft on Nigella. Only Kathy and John like Julian. Confused? You should be. Once upon a time, usually in the week before Christmas or New Year, newspapers and magazines would devote a smallish space to any books published in the previous 12 months that were judged worthy of praise. Goodbye to all that. Now, that low-key affair has swollen into a huge literary love-in, in which column after column, page upon page, is set aside for a relatively small band of writers and associated literati to heap praise upon each other's efforts - or ignore them altogether. In doing so, they offer what amounts to a unique insight into the real ins and outs of the book world, in its way far more telling than the results of a Booker, Orange or Whitbread. That this annual gush-fest now begins in late November is also revealing: these days, readers have ample time to put those choices on the Christmas present list. Especially readers of the Daily Telegraph, who were offered the paper's books of the year on 11 November. Now, in order to make some sense of this outbreak of mass approbation, the Independent on Sunday has conducted its own comprehensive survey of this year's "Books of 2000" choices, and can offer the definitive Premier League of "plugged" fiction and non-fiction, the star writers as chosen by their peers, pundits... and pals. Experience counts, and in his fourth decade as a novelist Martin Amis still rules the roost. Along with his late father, Kingsley, whose letters were published this year, Amis Inc continues to exert a killer's grip over literary affections. But what of J K Rowling? This year's undoubted publishing sensation, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, received a surprisingly modest six recommendations, and half of those came from a bizarre trio of the type you might expect to find in the pages of Rowling's fiction: William Hague, George Melly and W F Deedes. And where is this year's Orange Prize-winner, Linda Grant (When I Lived in Modern Times)? Where is the Booker victor, Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)? Where is Seamus Heaney, winner of the Whitbread (Beowulf)? You'll find them all down in the relegation zone, with a mere handful of puffs between them. And what of Julian Barnes? In the IoS survey, his Love, etc received a mere two ticks. As the compilers of the "Best Books of 2000" lists would no doubt be keen to point out, the choices made are entirely personal. Compiled from The Observer, Spectator, New Statesman, Sunday Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, The Oldie, Daily Telegraph. THE LIST THAT SPEAKS VOLUMES ... 1. Experience by Martin Amis (Cape) - 15 'Books of the Year' mentions. 2. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (Chatto) - 13. 3. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton) - 12. 4. Hey Yeah Right Get a Life by Helen Simpson (Cape) - 11. 5. Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (Fourth Estate) - 10. 6. The Letters of Kingsley Amis (HarperCollins) - 9. 7. The Human Stain by Philip Roth (Cape) 8. Prince of Princes: the Life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Wiedenfeld). 9. Hitler: Hubris and Nemesis by Ian Kershaw (Penguin) [by 8 & 9 received 8 mentions each]. 10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling (Bloomsbury). 11. Rimbaud by Graham Robb (Picador). 12. The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (Macmillan). 13. Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (Viking) 14. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber & Faber). 15. Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (Viking) [7-1 received 6 mentions each]. 16. The Long Afternoon by Giles Waterfield (Headline). 17. Shakespeare's Language by Frank Kermode (Allen, Lane). 18. In the Shape of a Boar by Lawrence Norfolk (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) [16-18 received 5 mentions each]. |
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