For the readers’ group helping to assess the 2014
contenders, it’s been a sometimes arduous but always enjoyable journey
We
were the six readers who made up this year’s Lewes readers’ group for the
Guardian first book award. We’d been invited to take part in judging this year’s
competition early in September, after applying to our local Waterstones, and for
eight weeks the pile of 11 hardbacks we’d been presented with after joining the
group dominated our reading lives. We’d read whenever and wherever we could,
particularly in week four, when Lucie from Waterstones paired the dark novel
After Me Comes the Flood with the emotionally draining memoir The Iceberg, and
in Week six, when the 620 pages of We Are Not Ourselves tested our endurance
while at the same time filling us with admiration for the skilled way in which
Matthew Thomas steered us through his central characters’ experiences of
marriage, ambition and loss.
The
knowledge that the writers of these books had lots weighing on our choices meant
that we took each book extremely seriously. There’s a £10,000 award for the
winner, and all of the writers can be assured that as readers we held each book
up to the light and discussed its strengths and weaknesses in full.
There
were vigorous good-humoured debates about each of the 11 books on the longlist.
We finished by ranking them at a meeting in the shop, watched over as we did so
by less distinguished titles such as Dogs in Cars. We judged the books
ultimately on how they had ranked as reading experiences. Style mattered, as did
story; the fiction titles had to make us care about their characters and believe
in the worlds they created, whilst the non-fiction ones needed to have a shape
which gave coherence to their interests and concerns and make those concerns
engage our attention and interest.
Some
needed a little more editorial discipline in order to reign in their enthusiasm
for lengthy footnotes or tortuous sub-plots. Strangely, given the rich variety
of fiction and non-fiction we had to choose from, we didn’t disagree by much and
our choices were satisfyingly mirrored in the shortlist published last Saturday.
The shortlisted books don’t tell the whole story, however; no one reading In The
Light of What We Know, with its epic coverage of nations breaking up and its
searching exploration of love, science, faith and war, could feel that they were
experiencing anything less than the arrival of a major new literary talent, and
likewise the bizarre and mysterious world created by Sarah Perry in After Me
Comes the Flood makes for a highly original and disturbing experience.
All
that’s left for us now is to attend Wednesday’s award ceremony in London. We’ll
enjoy being there and we’re all looking forward to a chance to meet the authors
and find out who our fellow readers were. We know who we think deserves to win,
and we’ll be glad to share in the celebrations, but we’ll miss our weekly
meetings and we’ll miss the challenges that come with reading so many books in
such a short time.
Watch
out forthe result: the winner will have come through a really tough and
demanding judging process and the first book award will be just one of many
still to come!
•
The winner is announced at 8pm. Peter Shears was part of the Lewes Waterstones
reading group. With thanks to Lucie, Bridget, Anna, Barbara, Ian and
Tessa
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