Kathy Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "hilary-mantel"
Does Size Matter?
I cheered when I learned that Eleanor Catton had won the 2013 Man Booker prize for her 800+ page novel, The Luminaries. Not because I know her (I don’t) or have read her book (although I plan to) but because it has been criticised for being too long. Writing for The Observer on October 15th, Robert McCrum called it ‘a doorstop of a novel’ and wished that Catton had remembered Robert Louis Stevenson’s aphorism that ‘the only art is to omit.’
That’s one school of thought. Here’s my opinion. The length of a book bears no relation to its literary value. Wolf Hall, one of my favourite novels in recent years, has around 650 pages and as far as I’m concerned, none of them are superfluous. Far from thinking Hilary Mantel guilty of crimes against brevity, I believe every word is carefully considered. Wolf Hall is big because that is how it needed to be for Mantel to tell the story she wanted to tell.
Consider a few other ‘doorstop’ novels such as War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Les Misérables and Vanity Fair. Should someone have taken Tolstoy to one side and told him to watch his word count? Would Becky Sharp’s relentless social climbing be as memorable if Thackeray had condensed her tale into 250 pages? I don’t think so but then I’m biased because I dearly love a chunky novel.
Then again, I also love a slim novel, the point being that while various features contribute to my enjoyment of a book - amongst them the plot, prose style, characterisation and sense of place – size is not an issue. Outsize, middling or lean, the only novels I dislike are those that fail to engage me.
That’s one school of thought. Here’s my opinion. The length of a book bears no relation to its literary value. Wolf Hall, one of my favourite novels in recent years, has around 650 pages and as far as I’m concerned, none of them are superfluous. Far from thinking Hilary Mantel guilty of crimes against brevity, I believe every word is carefully considered. Wolf Hall is big because that is how it needed to be for Mantel to tell the story she wanted to tell.
Consider a few other ‘doorstop’ novels such as War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Les Misérables and Vanity Fair. Should someone have taken Tolstoy to one side and told him to watch his word count? Would Becky Sharp’s relentless social climbing be as memorable if Thackeray had condensed her tale into 250 pages? I don’t think so but then I’m biased because I dearly love a chunky novel.
Then again, I also love a slim novel, the point being that while various features contribute to my enjoyment of a book - amongst them the plot, prose style, characterisation and sense of place – size is not an issue. Outsize, middling or lean, the only novels I dislike are those that fail to engage me.
