A Brace of Booker Books: The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Dan Stevens: Judge

Morning all: I've reviewed a couple of Man Booker longlisted novels for The Telegraph - The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. Both are brilliant, skewed, original and gripping. Click on the links to read the reviews. Dan Stevens (pictured, as Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey) is one of the judges that chose an interesting longlist - much more so than last year, I think - and one that clearly favours experimentation. I'd say that Michael Frayn, Hilary Mantel, Will Self, Nicola Barker and André Brink were dead certs for the shortlist, but with a list like this it's hard to guess. Number six could be Ned Beauman or Deborah Levy; I don't think Alison Moore or Jeet Thayil will make it on. We wait with breath bated...


 

A Dashing Duo of Literary Delights: The Desmond Elliott First novel, and The Times Literary Supplement Summer Party

You wait all day for a literary party, and then three come along at once. Last night was positively abounding with them: I only managed to go to two, which is extremely unlike me I know, but you have to draw the line somewhere. The first was the Desmond Elliott First novel award. There was a strong shortlist, including Ned Beauman's Boxer, Beetle; (the longlist had on it both Jonathan Lee's Who is Mr Satoshi? and Leo Benedictus' The Afterparty); the gong was gonged to Anjali Joseph's Saraswati Park, which I haven't read yet, but now most certainly intend to. Edward Stourton was the gonger.  The party was in Fortnum and Masons, which meant the best sausages and mash and excellent champagne, whilst young literary types (including Jonathan Lee, and the dashing brace of Literary Review editors, Tom Fleming and Jonathan Beckman) quaffed ale (well, champagne) and I wish I could have stayed longer but I couldn't because...

... then it was a dash up the dashing Jubilee line to the imposing house of Peter Stothard for the TLS Summer Party. It was in an enormous marquee which covered the back garden. I spotted Ferdinand Mount in a very smart seersucker jacket; although it was eclipsed by a man in a blue and white checked suit who was wearing a bow tie; and a very small old man (who I think was a poet) who was wearing a purple suit that looked like it had been made out of the tablecloths. Miniburgers were the order of the day. Soon-to-be-novelist Cressida Connolly was there; I'm sure there were lots of other lights of the literary scene but I was having too much fun perching on the rim of the pond and trying not to fall in whilst holding a champagne glass. Novelist Anna Stothard was there, of course, and the young editor of the White Review, Jacques Testard. I misplaced my bag, more than once.

I think we went to a pizza restaurant afterwards. The other party was beyond me. It was Hodder Headline, in a church in Marylebone, and apparently there were chicken shish kebabs, but I think mini-burgers are better, don't you?

My First Birthday

Quick! Whilst he's (you know who I'm talking about - The Boss) looking the other way I'll try and get a word in edgeways. Hello and welcome! I'm Philip Womack's Blog - Hah! He won't like that - he hates the word blog, flits around calling it 'Web-log', as if anyone does that. He's been using / misusing / desecrating me for one whole exact year now. He's a good enough master, on the whole; still, he hasn't done anything to celebrate my first birthday... He might at least have got me a re-design. Is that too much to ask? Sometimes I dream about becoming more than a mere, simple, clod-hopping blog. Perhaps one day I could, like chrysalis to butterfly (doesn't that just sound like something HE'D write), become a website - or, dare I even think it, a multi-platform user-friendly interface... Excuse me for a second, I am sorry. I'd better be quick. I can hear him rummaging around in the drawer looking for a pen. Imagine - he still uses pens!

You might think that I'm quite articulate for a one-year-old, but we blogs grow up fast. I now have 27 'followers' - twenty-seven! - only one of whom is related to The Boss, and only twenty-six of whom were physically bullied into following. I have had over 1,500 visits a month. My visitors are unpredictable in their likings; though most of them (don't tell The Boss this) tend to be searching for Philip Womack, quite a lot of them stumble across me by accident (I won't mention exactly what words you were searching for. I'm not that kind of blog).

In the past year The Boss has written on anything from A A Milne to Zurich; I've allowed him to indulge his penchant for classical literature and to show off about everything he's been writing. He's written a book called The Liberators, which was published just before I was born, and which he has been systematically and endlessly promoting; he's continued to write for The Daily Telegraph, The Literary Review and The Financial Times and sundry other papers, and has just started being involved with Port. He's visited several schools; his book's been reviewed in papers from the School Librarian to the South China Post. It's been an exciting year - for him, at any rate; I just look on from the sidelines and think about being a server.

These, then, are the top five things you've been looking at. There appears to be no rhyme or reason in them:

1. The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming: Party

2. The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus: review

3. I'm Late, I'm Late... Christian Marclay's The Clock

4. Books of the Year: Final Day: Children's Books

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One: Review

You've also displayed a fondness for Adam O'Riordan, Zadie Smith, Ned Beauman, and Robert Saxton (the poet).

He's found a pen - he's coming back - look, I'd better go - but hey, I for one am glad that I've had so many visitors, and maybe I can persuade some of you to follow me without The Boss sending round the heavies. See you all soon...

Love from

Philip's Blog
xx

(PS The picture is of a Black Box by Liza Campbell. It's called Fatty Had a Party and Nobody Came. Let's hope that some of you come to mine...)

Boxer, Beetle, Beauman

Parties in dirigibles, parties in swimming baths... and now parties in boxing rings, for last night heralded the bright new dawn of Ned Beauman's debut novel, Boxer, Beetle, which has already drawn exuberant praise from reviewers. Plastic beetles pointed the way along the street; under lights so bright we were practically photosynthesising, we stood around an actual boxing ring in Hoxton (in 'London's trendy Hoxton', I should write) and drank wine. Girls in leggings and dresses, boys in cardigans and multicoloured shoes: yes, this was The East. Ned Beauman himself, a ganglyish, soft-voiced chap, gave an excellent speech from the boxing ring. He challenged us all to a fight, and offered half his royalties if he were beaten. Nobody took up the offer: although two of the guests were later seen making an attempt at cagefighting (I think). Beauman also spoke eloquently about the mental landscape around the book, and its place in 'experimental' fiction; in particular he took exception to Gabriel Josipovici. 'Asking what happened to modernism is like asking what happened to punk,' he said. Beauman goes, at a tender age, to be a writer in residence somewhere in Germany. I await his next pronouncement (or tome) with anticipation.

I have spent the last two weeks holed up in Yorkshire, scribbling away at one book or another. Let us hope that good news will follow soon. Whilst there I met the poet Edward Barker, who sent me a poem called The Reader by Richard Wilbur, about an old lady looking back at books she's once read. I urge you to seek it out. It ends:

'Caught in the flow of things wherever bound,
The blind delight of being, ready still
To enter life on life and see them through'.


TO BUY NED BEAUMAN'S BOOK, CLICK HERE