Lost for Words

by Edward St. Aubyn

The judges on the panel of the Elysian Prize for Literature must get through hundreds of submissions to find the best book of the year. Meanwhile, a host of writers are desperate for Elysian attention: the brilliant writer and serial heartbreaker Katherine Burns; the lovelorn debut novelist Sam Black; and Bunjee, convinced that his magnum opus, The Mulberry Elephant, will take the literary world by storm. Things go terribly wrong when Katherine’s publisher accidentally submits a cookery book in place of her novel; one of the judges finds himself in the middle of a scandal; and Bunjee, aghast to learn his book isn’t on the short list, seeks revenge.

Lost for Words is a witty, fabulously entertaining satire that cuts to the quick of some of the deepest questions about the place of art in our celebrity-obsessed culture, and asks how we can ever hope to recognize real talent when everyone has an agenda.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Books About Books, Novels

261 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of six novels, the most recent of which, ‘Mother’s Milk’, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.

His first novel, ‘Never Mind’ (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with ‘Bad News’ (1992) and ‘Some Hope’ (1994) became a trilogy, now collectively published under the title ‘Some Hope’.

His other fiction consists of ‘On the Edge’ (1998) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and A Clue to the Exit (2000).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

What would Evelyn Waugh have to say about the current-day British literary scene and such things as the Booker Prize? No doubt, we'd be in store for a measure of scalding irony and wit expressed in exquisite prose, exactly what we find in Edward St. Aubyrn's Lost for Words.

The British author told an interviewer his Patrick Melborn novels were very upsetting and difficult to write; he thought he'd either have to finish his novels or finish himself off. Indeed, a not-so-pleasant reality - he wrote with suicide and madness continually in the background. But there came a point where he had to ask himself: Does it have to be that way? The answer: No! He wanted to switch things up and see what it would be like to write a novel where the writing process was actually enjoyable, even fun, write as if playing a game, something he had little chance to experience when he was a lad growing up. Thus, we have the comic novel under review.

Lost for Words is a treasure, a joy to read. It is a novel where every single page displays finely crafted sentences that could be used as models in a master class on writing. All of these are contained within a story revolving around the five-person committee charged with choosing the book to win the coveted Elysian Prize.

Ah, the glorious Elysian Prize, where there's so much prestige and attention. English gambling houses even display the odds and the public places bets on what books will make the long list, the short list, and finally, with a drumroll with fanfare, the winner. The sponsor of the Elysian is a Monsanto-like agriculture company accused by environmentalists (damn liberal spoilsports!) of Elysian products causing cancer, disrupting the food chain and, since St. Aubyn's satire can occasionally become Monty Pythonesque, turning cattle into cannibals.

As for the committee members themselves, St. Aubyn surely had a few chuckles having an old Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office do the choosing of judges to be on the committee. Apart from one academic, the geezer chose a gaggle of totally unqualified Brit nincompoops, beginning with Malcolm Craig, a pompous dipstick who accepted the chairmanship since he was bored as a Parliament backbencher and clamored after a measure of public attention.

Regarding the four other members, we have Jo Cross, a gossip columnist who writes mostly about problems with her family and values “relevance” in novels; Penny Feathers, a former member of the Foreign Office and one of the geezer's old girlfriends who is currently writing another one of her shitty third-rate thrillers, Roger and Out; and Tobias Benedict, the geezer's Godson, a young actor too busy playing Estragon in a hip-hop version of Waiting for Godot touring England to actually read novels or attend any committee meetings. Rounding out the committee and bestowing a touch of respectability is the aforementioned academic, Vanessa, who has spent a lifetime immersed in the British classics.

I laughed out loud every time Vanessa interacts with her fellow committee members. At one point, Malcolm blabbers on about opposing the London literary establishment and bringing “the marginalized and the politically repressed voices from the periphery” into the spotlight (Malcolm has a definite political agenda geared to Scottish novels). Vanessa retorts, “Before we all stand up and sing “The Internationale”, do you think we could take a glance at what we've been “duly appointed” to do?'" She then goes on to speak about the true nature of literature. Ha! You can imagine how her talking about literary standards and good writing is received by this bunch of non-literary boobs.

Turning to the Elysian Prize itself, St. Aubyn sharpens his satirical needle to give us select passages from the contenders. The British author said, with a laugh, that writing these bits of mimicry and parody flowed seamlessly, unlike the dozens of rewrites he usually must work through in his own writing. There are excerpts from novels such as an Irvine Welsh-like mauling of the English language in wot u starin at and All the World's a Stage, a historical novel written from the point of view of William Shakespeare. These snatches of awful writing are truly howlers, yet another reason to treat yourself to Lost in Words or listen to the audiobook expertly narrated by Alex Jennings.

And there's plenty of drama (and much comedy) beyond the posturing within the committee. Penny is involved in a bit of nastiness with her daughter, Nicola. Vanessa must deal with Poppy, her daughter who is in the hospital suffering from anorexia, and her son who recently returned from a shamanic vision quest. However, two characters must be highlighted above all others: Katherine and Sonny.

Katherine is a fine novelist. Her novel, Consequences, might have won the Elysian if it had been sent to the committee, but, alas, through a comedy of errors, it was not. Katherine is also a beautiful woman who has a talent for making men fall in love with her, which causes many problems. "Katherine's genius for engendering desire and devotion couldn't be expected to deal with all of its consequences." Much of the tale's heartfelt emotion features a number of men passionately loving her, including Alan, her editor, and another novelist, Sam, who himself has a novel on the Elysian shortlist.

The zaniest, most over-the-top humor centers on Sonny, a royal personage from India, a true descendant of Krishna, who self-published his two-thousand-page autobiographical magnum opus, The Mulberry Elephant, and travels to London so the British literary world can honor him for winning their Elysian Prize. Edward St. Aubyn must have laughed his loudest when writing about this boorish egomaniac. And what did Sonny do when he learned that his great work didn't even make the longlist? Sonny plans his revenge by, believe it or not, murdering the committee members.

In her New York Times review, Anne Enright concludes by stating, “Everything St. Aubyn writes is worth reading for the cleansing rancor of his intelligence and the fierce elegance of his prose — but rollicking, he is not. A knockabout comic novel needs a plot that believes in its own twists and turns, and that is not on offer here.” I disagree. By my reading, Lost for Words is a rollicking romp that believes wholeheartedly in its twists and turns, a comic novel about the literary world, including its prizes, that's not to be missed.


British author Edward St. Aubyn, born 1960

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Edward St. Aubyn's dead and his legacy gets hammered out, Lost for Words will be considered one of his minor works.

Don't get me wrong, this book was fun enough. I read it in a day, and when I put it down, looked forward to picking it up again. But ultimately I found it slight, disappointing, and not nearly as good as its writer.

Which is, you know, fine. We're all entitled to a good time, and St. Aubyn has the right to hit the little bloop single instead of crushing everything out of the park. Though I'm normally very cheap and a big library user, I plopped down almost thirty bucks for this skinny thing yesterday, and I'm not bitter or regretful at all. I'm happy to have supported my local bookstore, FSG, and this gifted writer; I should buy new books more often. Lost for Words eased the pain of a trip to the DMV and provided an evening of diversion ("arresting my attention in the midst of distraction," as one character might have it), and I'm not asking for my money back.

There were some things that kind of bummed me out about this book, though. A satire of the Booker Prize selection process from an author who's been subject to it sounds pretty fun, and I guess it is, but the book lacks the sense of special access that I would have liked. Of course, there must of been tons of this and it was just such inside baseball that it all just flew way over my head, but unfortunately a lot of the characters just seemed like stock caricatures so it didn't matter if they were based on real people in ways that would've been hilarious had I only known. And not to sound like a shrew, but the female characters mostly sucked, from the man-eating sex siren to the not-one-but-two negligent mothers who'd alienated their offspring by focusing too much on their careers. I guess to be fair, though, the male characters kind of sucked too. I felt I'd seen most of them before, except for the Indian prince, and there were good reasons for that... Let's just say that if St. Aubyn were normally a sculptor, this cast of characters would represent his foray into two-dimensional media.

Which again, hey, that's fine, man. Paint a picture, draw a comic, take it easy for a change! Here's the thing I didn't like here, though no other readers seemed to mind it so probably I'm just too dumb to understand the brilliance of this book: satire of low-hanging fruit, that has good guys and bad guys, doesn't mean all that much at the end of the day. It's essentially television. That is, it can represent something and make a statement about it, but it doesn't really do what I think a novel's meant to do, and expose a truth to transform the way its readers understand the world. Some of the characters in this book are ridiculous idiots, while others are -- I think -- supposed to be sympathetic real-ish people, and this split just didn't work for me. At first I assumed we were all in for it, but by the end I felt that some of us had become cartoons while others of us got to be turned into real boys with dignity by an authorial blue fairy, and maybe I just didn't understand the book properly, but I found this disappointing. It seemed like I was supposed to side with certain characters' views of literature and come out of it all with my own cherished notions intact, and I just expected to finish this with more damage than a giggle at some pretty predictable targets. That is, I feel St. Aubyn is capable of a brutal scorched earth campaign but he restrained himself here to selective shots and not very difficult ones. (Unless I missed the whole point, which is always highly possible, and in this case I'm suspicious that I did.)

Finally, a lot of this book comprises parodies of various literary (or not so literary) styles, and while they're cute, they're not nearly as awesome or as funny as I wanted them to be. That kind of trick -- whatever it's called -- is one of my all-time favorite literary devices, but for it to work the way it's supposed to I need to look forward to the italicized parts. I didn't at all here, though, and sort of groaned when I got to them, because St. Aubyn writing as St. Aubyn is a billion times better than St. Aubyn writing as Irvine Welsh or whoever.

Which brings me to my real final point, which is that while the end of this book was completely stupid (which did leave me cranky) and the characters were lame, it was still written extraordinarily well by a guy who truly understands the English language, so who fucking cares? I'd read Edward St. Aubyn's g-chats -- in fact, I kind of feel I just have -- and it'd still be more enjoyable than most of the crap that gets published and given prestigious prizes these days... which was maybe all he was trying to say.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2011 Booker awards season is the gift that keeps on giving.

The chair that year was Stella Rimington, an ex-spymaster for MI5 whose purported link to literature is her retirement hobby of penning apparently adequately competent spy thrillers. She wasn’t off to a good start with the literary critics (who she likened to the KGB) when she announced that this year the focus would be on “readability”. One of her judges supported her by saying that for him, the novels “had to zip along”. Oh. My. God! exclaimed the literati. Zippiness? Readability? What about the quality of the writing, of the deeper meanings and layers of the story?

Well, there certainly are books that embrace all of those qualities — they are not mutually exclusive. But they also weren’t on that Booker list. My own conspiracy theory was that the presence of Snowdrops was a case of mistaken identity: the nomination should have gone to Andrew Miller, author of the far better book Pure, rather than Andrew Miller (A.D. Miller), author of the mediocre Snowdrops. But once such a mistake is committed, it would be impossible to correct.
It was fun, nonetheless, to read the snarky articles and comments that permeated the book pages at the Guardian etc as well as the book blogs.

Redemption was achieved when Julian Barnes won. And now it has also provided inspiration for this book.

This is a deliciously fun romp. The sponsor of the prestigious book prize is Elysian, a controversial manufacturer of herbicides and pesticides, ”…a leader in the field of genetically modified crops, crossing wheat with Arctic cod to make it frost resistant, or lemons with bullet ants to give them extra zest.” They are the usual corporate bad guy looking for disguise in the purifying robes of “the Arts”.
The Chair of the jury, an MP on the downhill slope, accepts the job because of “backbench boredom”, and a need to get more public attention. The jurors include a celebrity columnist whose “ruling passion was ‘relevance’”. “The question I’ll be asking myself as I read a book is just how relevant is this to my readers.” Another juror is an academic, an unavoidable but undesirable type — but”…there was no harm in having one expert on the history of literature, if it reassured the public.” There is an ex-girlfriend of the Elysian director in charge of the awards. She writes. Badly. But her books are popular. These were some of the funniest parts of the book, written in a free indirect style of Penny Feathers. Excerpts of her writings show flat, plodding simple sentences notable only for the extraordinary density of cliches. I thought of my GR friends when Penny rewards her own hard work with a Paris weekend at the Ritz, ”… a favourite haunt of Marcel Proust’s. Although she sympathized with his choice of watering hole, Penny couldn’t help reflecting that he was exactly the kind of author who would not have made it onto this year’s Short List. She hadn’t actually read any Proust, but she knew perfectly well that he was a long-winded snob, with far too much private money and some very unconventional sexual tastes: just the sort of thing they had been trying to avoid.”

And just as the quality of the jury is questionable, so too is that of the books on the long list. This includes an accidentally submitted cookbook, which the columnist champions as a “ludic, postmodern, multi-media masterpiece.” Could this be the parallel to the Andrew Millers mix-up of the real Booker?
It all proceeds in a somewhat chaotic fashion, hopping from one viewpoint to the other, and like all good satire, revealing truths along the way. ”Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. Only the mediocre, pushing forward a commonplace view of life in a commonplace language, can really be compared, but my wife thinks that “least mediocre of the mediocre” is a discouraging title for a prize.”

And who can resist the ultimate irony that this book turned out itself to win a major award, The Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction, which encourages even more sniping — the book is too superficial, the satire too broad, the targets too easy. It is what it is, and for what it is, it is a funny and well-written commentary on the world of literary awards. Just have fun with it.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I begin this review, let me just state that I loved the Edward St Aubyn Patrick Melrose novels. When my book club chose this as a monthly choice, I was very pleased and eager to read something else by him. Unlike previous works by St Aubyn which I have read, this is a satirical look at a fictitious literary prize, the Elysian Prize; although the author barely bothers to disguise the fact that he is writing about the Booker.

We begin with a backbench MP with an ailing career, Malcolm Craig, being asked to chair the committee. Hoping for some press coverage he agrees, but is obviously only interested in pushing through the books he is backing and being generally in control. Also on the committee is an actor who virtually never appears at meetings, a well known columnist and media personality who is passionate about ‘relevance,’ an Oxbridge academic, with an anorexic daughter, who is interested in ‘good writing,’ and thriller writer, Penny, an old girlfriend of Sir David Hampshire who organised the committee.

Along with these characters are, of course, the writers. They mostly circle around the beautiful novelist, Katherine Burns, and include the neurotic Sam Black, who years for her, Sonny, an upper class Indian with designs on the Elysian Prize, his aunt who somehow finds her cook book entered by mistake and a scattered number of publishers and agents.

Although this was humorous, and is filled with excepts from the various novels either submitted or written by the characters, you cannot help but feel St Aubyn had more fun writing this than we have reading it. There are a lot of jokes that have circled around the Booker – bizarre choices, books submitted by mistake and more. However, it is full of stereotypes and did not really do more than make me smile in places. I forgive this author anything for the sublime Melrose novels, but sadly this did not really match those in any way, despite being a pleasant enough read.

[Steffi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Die Idee ist gut: Eine Jury eines Literaturpreises, in der sich teilweise Menschen tummeln, die von Literatur wenig Ahnung haben, dafür aber umso lieber Ränke schmieden. Autoren, die höchst eitel sind. Bücher, die nur aus Versehen auf die Longlist geraten. Befindlichkeiten und Intrigen, wenig Literatur.

Oder nein, nicht ganz: Von einigen der Autoren lesen wir auch Auszüge ihres Schaffens. Was St. Aubyn die Gelegenheit verschafft, sich in verschiedenen Genres und auf unterschiedlichen Niveaus zu bewegen.

Warum hat mich dieser Roman dennoch gelangweilt? Weilt die Figuren seltsam fleischlos wirken. Vor allem aber, weil ich St. Aubyn von der Melrose-Reihe als wesentlich pointierter und zynischer kenne. Das hätte dieser Geschichte auch gut getan.

Also alles in allem: Akzeptable Unterhaltung, nicht mehr. Und damit drei sehr freundliche Sterne.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spoof on a literary prize event, that is also a telling indictment on this form of reward system that is skewing literary appreciation for writers.

An environmentally unfriendly company manufacturing cancer-causing herbicides and pesticides (familiar?) decides to buy some goodwill by sponsoring a Commonwealth-wide literary prize. The politician appointed to chair the selection committee, Malcolm, is “pre-advised” as to which books need to make the long list by the head of the prize granting organization. The rest of the committee is made up of a secretary who is dreaming of her own writing career, an actor who is mostly off-stage, a journalist who favours underdogs, and a lone literary voice who believes that “literature must have depth, beauty, structural integrity and an ability to revive tired imaginations.” This idealism is lost on Malcolm of course, who, in keeping with his political conditioning, is looking for “compromise among all members” as his goal, irrespective of the outcome.

Among the candidates in the running for the prize: Katherine, a nymphomaniacal ingénue who is sleeping with her editor Allan, and with two other writers at the same time: Didier the paradoxical theorist and Sam the angst-ridden insomniac; Sonny, the maharajah from India who believes his self-published book is a winner; and the aforementioned Sam, who is also probably the best of the literary lot. Oh, and lest we forget there, is also an Indian Cookbook, written by Sonny’s aunty that gets submitted by accident and is included in the long list due to the journalist committee member’s desire to favour the underdog!

St. Aubyn is a briliant wordsmith and delivers this story in beautifully constructed prose, weaving his plot skillfully as we pop in an out of the heads of the entire cast. Ego’s rise and fall: Katherine breaks up with Sam as his book goes ahead of hers into the short list; Allan gets fired for screwing up Katherine’s submission; and Sonny cooks up a diabolical plan to assassinate the committee for spurning his book. Literary truisms abound: “Art based on impact, rather than process, structure, or insight is doomed to the jackhammer of monotony of having to shock again and again.” “Money has value because it can be exchanged for something else. Art only has value because it can’t.” and “What’s worse than an unexploded bomb in your basement? An exploding one!”

The finale, of course, is the predictable awards ceremony at which we find the committee still in deadlock at the eleventh hour, split between the purists and the politicians, between the deserving and the undeserving. And of course, what happens if you end up with two favourites and cannot decide between them? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out. As for literary merit, it doesn't count for much with this award.

I’m not sure St. Aubyn would have made a lot of friends in the literary establishment with this novel, but it’s a topical book for our times, especially when winning prizes seems the only way to vault into the literary big leagues today. And where there is money, there is rot. And if the end game is compromise, then mediocrity is the result.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters in St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose cycle are at once caricatures and possessed of extraordinary emotional depth. In Lost For Words - a satire of a literary prize closely resembling the Booker - they lean far more towards the caricature, although some members of the large cast are granted real personality. And a dash of angst.

Essentially, this is a specimen of the English Comic Novel, with its fair share of farcical situations, silly names, allusions to news old and, er, new, and a few familiar character types. (Though being St. Aubyn, some of it is sharper and deeper than the typical example.) This sort of thing wowed me when I read What A Carve Up in the mid-90s, but two decades later, even though it still makes me laugh, I find it a bit routine and occasionally clumsy: comfort-reading material. I'm still not sure whether setting Lost for Words in a parallel universe, one in which digital media either do not exist or have had no adverse effect on publishing, sharpens the focus on character, or makes the book feel slightly dated. Probably both. (Authors with one or two literary novels under their belt can still swan about in hotels, rather than working as the night porter and revising drafts on their days off. They can email one another though.) At any rate, it's nowhere near so dark as Patrick Melrose and it's a book I'd recommend more readily.

What makes it stand out from a dozen other middle-class comedies is the precision of insight into emotional pain and screwed-up-ness, succinctly expressed, and saying things others never articulate: judge Vanessa decided to reclaim some floor space by throwing out the hopeless cases (she thought involuntarily of Poppy's bed at the clinic being liberated by her death) (how much that says about the dynamic of the entire household, and how crucial that 'involuntarily' is); novelist and female Casanova Katherine likes sex so much partly because it's a liberation from, something entirely different from, all those damn words; and the different, detailed experiences of heartbreak of two characters. And that particular way St. Aubyn has of at once mocking and having empathy with a state or idea. That shows best of all in the philosophical musings - especially with debut novelist Sam (who put his rejected experimental works in a box on top of the wardrobe and found acclaim with a thinly-disguised autobiographical novel) and French "public intellectual" Didier - what they say is silly and arguably ivory tower / self-absorbed, yet also pertinent and insightful in the situation. It's a very British way of not being able to take things entirely seriously even when you are serious, and he captures it precisely without ever explaining it.

I'm not generally a fan of novels about novelists and the literary scene (needless to say St.A has characters comment on that very idea) and was a bit hesitant about what one of my favourite authors might do with such a well-worn and insular topic. Pleased to say that - although it wasn't perfect - I quite liked it, it was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and occasionally resonant.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward St Aubyn’s Lost for Words is a weak satire on literary prizes, in particular the Booker Prize and the 2011 judging panel. Headed by former MI5 head turned novelist Stella Rimington, the 2011 panel chose to focus on accessible books for the public to enjoy - because, y’know, reading can be enjoyable - rather than pretentiously written books, which usually take home the prize.

This angered the literati, not least because they have no clue how to write a compelling story, and the prize became the most controversial in years. That and the fact that St Aubyn was nominated for the prize in 2006 for Mother’s Milk and didn’t win, brings us to Lost for Words, a so-called comedy that very tamely claws the prize.

The story follows the selection of the Elysian Prize’s judges through to its long and then shortlisting. Each chapter follows a different character from the head of the judging panel, Malcolm, who’s an opportunist MP, to Alan, an editor having an affair with Katherine, a novelist, who failed to get onto the list this year because her publisher submitted the wrong book - an actual cookbook called The Palace Cookbook.

There are numerous other characters and at first it can seem a bit overwhelming - who’s Sonny? Sam? Vanessa? - but by about halfway through you’re more or less familiar with the cast. Except for the female judges of whom I think there were three but it was hard to distinguish between them. I think Vanessa was the one with the troublesome daughter and wanted the literary book to win, or maybe that was Jo? And there was definitely a third but her name and motivations escape me. It doesn’t help that St Aubyn can’t write individual voices so that most of the characters sound the same.

If satirising the prize itself feels a bit thin, plot-wise, St Aubyn throws in a half-baked romance plot that bores beyond belief. Katherine, the novelist, is included in this book solely because she sleeps with practically every male character. Sam the novelist loves her, Alan the editor loves her too but he’s far older and left his wife for her, Sonny the Indian prince kinda likes her, and so on. St Aubyn’s psychological analysis of Katherine’s behaviour is that her dad walked out on her as a kid so now she breaks off relationships with men before they can abandon her. Yawn. Wow, very insightful, never heard that before! So her inclusion was to deliver that piece of trite commentary?

There’s an even more flimsy assassination subplot as Sonny the Indian prince, hating exclusion on the list for his self-published 2000 page novel, gets his manservant to prepare to kill the winner. St Aubyn barely pursues this thread and gives up on it long before the end so that when it comes to the ceremony it’s hardly worth mentioning, it’s such a dead end.

St Aubyn also includes fictional passages from the shortlisted novels. “wot u starin at” is an Irvine Welsh-esque novel full of Scots injecting drugs, while “All the World’s a Stage” is an historical novel along the lines of Hilary Mantel’s books starring William Shakespeare, and “The Palace Cookbook” is literally a cookbook full of recipes interspersed with anecdotes from the family’s history. The joke here is that the tasteless judges think it’s an experimental piece.

The fictional passages make for an interesting change of pace but they’re not as well written as St Aubyn’s prose and not as enjoyable to read. St Aubyn also includes numerous passages from Didier, a French deconstructionist, who discourses at length on semiotics, which were the most tedious things to read. I understand the joke is that he’s being hyper-pretentious, but, yeesh, what a struggle to get through those passages!

Do we need to satirise the Booker Prize - does anyone take it seriously? You shouldn’t, it - and other literary prizes like it - are politicized like hell and the winner is rarely the best novel as the judges often have to compromise. But if you’ve read St Aubyn before, you’ll know his subject matter is often sharp and dark - drug abuse, child rape - so you’d expect his satire on the Booker would cut much deeper than it does. Satire is supposed to reveal hidden truths, right? As it is, you find out: writers are pretentious twits, literary judges are conniving idiots who know nothing about books and judge them purely for political reasons, and the prize itself is a joke. As if anyone reading this didn’t already know all of that! St Aubyn’s take is too easy and not inventive enough.

Humour is subjective but I didn’t laugh once during this comedic novel and didn’t really spot many jokes. One of the publishers was called Page & Turner (geddit?) and a novelist uses software where you type in a word and it spits out a pre-packaged sentence (because that’s how generic writing has become today!!) but St Aubyn’s attempts at humour are feeble at best. That’s not to say I didn’t like the book but it works best as a light novel gently satirising literary prizes than a great comic novel - that Lost for Words won this year’s Wodehouse prize only shows what a slow year it’s been for comic novels.

The parts where the judges get together to discuss the books were the best parts of the novel. St Aubyn gives us his take on literary judges and literary books, and that’s what the whole novel should’ve been about. The other parts, especially the extremely tedious romance subplots involving Katherine as well as the faux literary excerpts, could’ve been expelled from the novel with no effect on the story, and would’ve made the novel much more enjoyable.

Lost for Words is a book that rolls its eyes at literary culture while also giving the impression that its author is deeply entrenched within it. As it is, it’s good in parts, terrible in others, and it’s a light, quick read from a writer who usually produces work with more bite. But as a satire, it fails as it refuses to go for the jugular.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satirical and ironic telling of the back door dealings present during and leading up to the presenting of a prestigious award. Although for the sake of the novel it is named differently, it is said that this parody of sorts is about the Booker Award.
The maneuvering, the picking of the judges, each who have a book they want to make it into the short list. One judge doesn't even bother to read the top twenty. The authors themselves, pushing their books to make the long list. Really rather interesting.

This author can put words and make beautiful sentences. He is a master at adjectives and uses them with flourish. Some of this book was very amusing but really never really had any feelings for the characters, neither like nor dislike, maybe appalled at some of their hubris. There were even some pages of the some of the books being considered. When the prize it announced, the best book may not have won, but the most honest person did.

Maybe a little to clever for me.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wodge
Of Lodge.
But not as witty
More's the pity.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) A buoyant, if slight, literary farce. The send-up of the 2011 Booker Prize race* may be a bit obvious, and some of the characters are rather thin, but I found the literary pastiches (especially of paint-by-numbers thrillers, Hilary Mantel-esque historical fiction, Irvine Welsh and Slavoj Žižek – Didier was my favorite character) absolutely hilarious. And who wouldn’t love that ending, as the whole competition descends into absurdity and a cookbook takes the nation’s top fiction prize?!

I take it this is rather different from the usual St. Aubyn fare (the Guardian review called it “undoubtedly his weakest book,” even though it went on to win the 2014 Wodehouse award for comic fiction), but I enjoyed the writing so much I’d be willing to try something else by him. (Any recommendations?)

P.S. I’d actually be really interested in reading a PhD thesis on the history of the semicolon. Does that make me pathetic?


*For my thoughts on the 2011 Booker Prize race, see my Bookkaholic article on readability.

[Oriana]

Here's a guy I've never read and whom I actually have zero partially formed snobbish opinions about.

And here's what Flavorwire says about this one:

Edward St. Aubyn, Saint of Bitingly Funny, Dark as Fuck, and Gritty English Realism, we know how herculean a task it is to try and get readers talking about anything other than your perfect Patrick Melrose books. Thankfully, with Lost for Words, you move on from deplorable English aristocracy to an even madder group of people: writers.

Dang. Give me it!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The focus of St. Aubyn's immensely charming literary souffle is on a small group of people brought together for the purpose of deciding the winner of the prestigious Elysian Prize for the year 2013. This is a surefire idea for a comic novel and St. Aubyn doesn't disappoint. It's quite the romp!

Once thrown together, the prize committee members are almost immediately at odds with each other, revealing that the competition between the nominated novelists is nothing compared with the somewhat-savage competition (for taste) running loose through the committee.

Since each committee member has a story of his/her own, 'LFW' breaks down, in pinball fashion, into a series of brush-stroke chapters broadly outlining considerable personal drama. It's not until the book's final, lengthy chapter - Award Night, of course - that St. Aubyn allows himself the floodgate opportunity of what he has been setting up all along. The climax has something of the feeling of a merry-go-round at full gallop.

Along the way there, St. Aubyn amuses himself (and us) by poking fun at various styles of fiction; we see snippets not only of what's in the running for the Elysian Prize but also what some of the novel's characters themselves are creatively whipping up. There's a good deal to enjoy in these parodies (the author comes up with great titles for all of the works glanced at within) - some which seem served up with genuine affection, others with gleeful venom.

As opposed to comic novels by the likes of Patrick Dennis and Joe Keenan, 'LFW' is not consistently laugh-out-loud funny (although, at times, it very much is) but it nevertheless possesses a deep, intellectual wit that's wildly impressive for its rather sharp edges.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

The committee for the Elysium Prize (a thinly-disguised stand-in for the Man Booker Prize) sets out to create the long list of novels for the prize, followed by the short list. A giant clusterfuck follows.

That's really about the size of the plot, such as it is; unfortunately, "giant clusterfuck" is a pretty good description of Edward St. Aubyn's latest novel. A satire that isn't especially funny is usually pretty dispiriting, and this satire rarely comes close to being mildly amusing, much less funny or trenchant.

First of all, the novel is populated by a bunch of characters who are boring and irritating. A great character can be irritating -- look at Milo Minderbinder or Holden Caulfield -- but not boring too. Unfortunately, almost every character here is both at once. The story arc of the one character who might be interesting (Sonny, a no-talent Indian aristocrat who inexplicably thinks he's a shoo-in for the prize) just kind of peters out and goes nowhere. Except for one, the other characters are so bland that I had trouble keeping them straight. And the one I could keep straight -- Didier, a French writer so drawn from central casting that I was surprised St. Aubyn didn't name him Pierre and have him exclaiming "Sacre Bleu!" in every paragraph -- I just wished would go away, as I frankly have no fucking idea what he was doing in the book in the first place. At best, he seemed to be reverse engineered to help with the silly and predictable denouement -- not exactly a terrific reason for the existence of a central character. It didn't help that large swaths of the book were composed of Didier's boring ramblings on the nature of art. Yes, I get it -- that was the point. But it doesn't help much to bore the readers to death in the service of making a point about how postmodernists bore you to death.

And even apart from the dull characters, there's nothing here to hold your interest. There were two decent pieces of satirical writing, and St. Aubyn ruins one of them (a pretty funny jab at Irvine Welsh) because he insists on elbowing us in the ribs and explaining the joke. I'm not sure whether he thought we wouldn't get it unless he spelled it out for us, but whatever the reason, it makes the satire fall flat on its face. I don't know whether St. Aubyn thought he was writing some sort of satire-cum-exposé, but surely someone as canny as he is didn't actually believe he was telling us something we didn't already know. (You mean the Man Booker committee might be motivated by something other than literary merit? Gosh, you don't say!) If you're writing something obvious, you'd better have a really sharp take on it; this novel isn't it.

St. Aubyn was, word has it, a bit miffed about not winning the Booker; this book is presumably his way of trying to work it out, or maybe just to stick it to the committee. Let's hope it helped him with the former; it certainly doesn't do much of the latter.

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is probably a 3.5; there were a few funny moments, but the super meta and satirical "inside literary establishment" trope feels too overdone to me to be a full 4 stars.

St. Aubyn himself does a great job of showing the importance of words (even if the book is lost for words) with his (one has to assume deliberate) over-writing of stereotypical characters and random book passages. The schtick if you will is the political relationships among the various authors and literary figures on the committee for the elite Elysian prize, but it also feels like St. Aubyn had a bunch of story ideas and wanted to illustrate them. One wonders if the book would have been more interesting as a collection of short stories that had longer passages from all these "short list" books. Alas, instead we just get odd (but funny) passages sprinkled throughout. Anyway, my point is that St. Aubyn does create different voices for all of these fictional novels, mostly with such varied word choice.

As an odd, random aside I found Vanessa's inability to have a free afternoon and her need to schedule/fill/and constantly be doing to be funny and very personally relevant. Specifically: "the strain of leaving her afternoon empty" because her "judgemental mind" characterizes it "as mere laziness" to be something with which I personally struggle.

Overall it was an entertaining and page turning kind of read with some funny comments (like, "Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent. Only the mediocre, pushing forward a commonplace view of life in a commonplace language, can really be compared"), but nothing spectacular and not overly original.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn is a clever, well-written novel about a committee chosen to award a prestigious literary prize. The book narrates the absurd politics behind the scenes and skewers many other professions (but especially literary ones) in the process. There is also a love story, of sorts. Katherine is a girl who can't commit and specializes in breaking hearts. The question is, Will she find love by the end of this story?

My problem, and I do mean my personal problem is that I end up feeling sorry for and kind of sad about people's absurdities. There are a few in this genre that I find irresistible (such as the Mapp and Lucia series) so I'm not above it. But I always fear that looked at in a certain way I and my life would look equally absurd and pitiful. Which is not the right reaction.

So I think this book would be a lot more pleasurable for a lot of people. I did find the character of Didier, the Roland Barthes/Derrida/etc. post-post-modernist very amusing. And I enjoyed the last quarter of the book the most, having accepted all these people and their quirks and being curious to see how it all ends.

Which I won't give away.

So I recommend it as an enjoyable and somewhat amusing (possibly hilarious for others) book that is worth the time spent reading.

[Linda Robinson]

A recurring discussion with friends is the tendency in films, in writing to look out the corner of an eye at a cultural meme that we could do without anyway. Including a wink*wink in a scene that clearly says "yeah, we know this is sexist, but doesn't the fact that we know we know get us a pass? And isn't that hil-ar-i-ous!" No, it's not. St. Aubyn is skewering the Man Booker Prize, which is already cheeky and feels too personal. The Prize deserves a poke from anyone with a reading brain, but putting 3 women on his committee to review the Elysian Prize, one of whom I have a suspicion will continue to wink*wink/hint sleep her way to the top, and one with the name Penny Feathers - all of whom St. Aubyn dismisses as political, or old girlfriend or not worthy "what in God's name are you doing on MY committee?" The women are not qualified, yet the narrator has his secretary read the books with an eye toward subjects that are interesting only to him. Aargh. I think the Man Booker Prize (with awardees like "The Sense of an Ending") is a sexist cauldron, and satirizing it with more sexism is...unreadable.

[ΑνναΦ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non straordinario come i “Melrose”, ma molto gradevole, divertente, perfino irridente e di un'ironia aspra (se avessi il programma Ghost Gold, come una delle scrittrici qui ritratte, avrei forse trovato un sinonimo più originale, bof), una satira del un mondo letterario dei nostri giorni, fatto di autori, editor, agenti letterari e premi. Sempre molto bravo, St. Aubyn, a sfornare carrellate di personaggi un po' fuori le righe, strambi, o forse solo eccentrici come i migliori inglesi sanno essere. Tra i personaggi il mio preferito è però l'indiano Sonny, assolutamente delirante, divertente, eccessivo e snob. Quando leggo St. Aubyn, mi sembra sempre di leggere il fratello minore di Amis, solo un filo meno satirico. Se devo trovargli un difetto: sembra troppo scritto a tavolino, trama troppo perfettamente incastrata con happy ending da commedia brillante, inoltre, personaggi non troppo originali, benché ottimamente delineati. Insomma, un po' troppo preconfezionato, come una sceneggiatura per un film, ma magari questo non è un difetto ma una lungimirante precauzione.

[Roslyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5?

This was a very quick, fun read, but I'm still not sure exactly what I read. Well, I know I was reading a satire, but there were parts that I was sure were serious; I was just never exactly sure. Most of it was pure farce, but there's a point when farce can lose its point because it's just so over-the-top. For instance, the book contained 'extracts' from the short-listed books in the (fictional) Elysian prize (apparently a send-up of the Booker) which were so over-the-top silly and representative of bad writing that they almost ceased being funny, except that that they often were in fact very funny. I'm not sure how to evaluate the novel, but I did enjoy it quite a lot.

[Stephanie Sun · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn't teach me how to write a great satire, which had been the hope that shot it to the top of my reading queue a few days ago.

It did, on the other hand, remind me why I love not just books but the people who make them.

Along with the too-breezy farce and missed opportunities for acid takedown of literary pomposity and pomp that disappointed many professional reviewers, Lost for Words offers up some of the most sincere and thought-provoking inquiry into the question—Why Literature?—that I have read in some time.

The academic, on Page 50:

"[T]he only book she wholeheartedly admired... had what she wanted to call an experience of literature built into it, an inherent density of reflection on the medium in which it took place: the black backing that makes the mirror shine."

The academic, on Page 106, after taking comfort in a bit of King Lear:

"...she found herself wondering why any book should win this fucking prize... unless it had a chance of doing what had just happened: coming back to a person when she wanted to cry but couldn't, or wanted to think but couldn't think clearly, or wanted to laugh but saw no reason to."

And then there is this late speech from one of the long-listed authors, which starts off with a rhetorical question that has been ghost-written by a professional bullshitter:

"'What is literature?' she began, feeling that her voice was not her own. 'What is this privilege we grant to certain verbal combinations, although they employ the very same words we use to buy our bread and count our money?'"

The author cuts off the ghost-written portion of her speech and gives a kind of answer in her own words:

"The palaces have fallen into disrepair, or been turned into hotels—but I hoped that perhaps I could... preserve some of the splendour of that tradition by sharing it more widely."

And then the brief moments when Lost for Words does find its teeth are pretty glorious. Here are some of my favorites:

"'Despite his contempt for The Palace Cookbook, he couldn't help reproaching himself for a lack of cynicism: to have two books on the Short List, especially one that was so ludicrously unworthy, would have done his reputation for shrewdness and prescience no harm. 'Sometimes you have to read the judges rather than the books,' he could imagine himself saying in the long Vanity Fair profile that would one day inevitably be written about him.'"

"That was the wonderful thing about historical novels, one met so many famous people. It was like reading a very old copy of Hello! magazine."

"In England, art was much less likely to be mentioned in polite society than sexual perversions or methods of torture; the word 'elitist' could be spat out with the same confident contempt as 'coward' at a court martial... Perhaps in future generations a law would be passed allowing consenting adults to practise art openly; an Intellect Relations Board might be set up to encourage tolerance towards people who, through no fault of their own, were interested in ideas."

And the obligatory Andrew Wylie shark literary agent character is named John Elton! That's actually a great litmus test for this book. If you find that joke funny, you should pick this book up. If not, give it a pass.

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Умеренно едкая сатира о мире писателей, читателей, книгоиздателей и больших литературных призов; ничего особенно выдающегося, но главная функция выполнена на отлично: книга развлекает и с легкостью читается за пару часов. Этакий Дэвид Лодж-лайт.

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si chiama crudele ironia, come la mia dipendenza dal tuo aiuto.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of Edward St. Aubyn's new book "Lost for Words" is aptly chosen for this extremely funny, ironic parody of the Man Booker prize for literature. They are not, however, words that could ever apply to its author. St. Aubyn is best known for the Melrose novels, two of which, "Mother's Milk" and "At Last", were shortlisted for the Booker. St. Aubyn's dry wit and perfect sentences like, "Her openness to infidelity filled him with an optimism that her choice of indemnity discouraged", make me swoon. I loved the Melrose novels but they were very grim, thinly disguised autobiographical stories about his horrendous childhood with drunk aristocratic parents and his later years as a drug addict. What a pleasure to read something funny and light but with the same amazing style as his previous works. You know how the NYT's alsways asks authors which writers (dead or alive) they would like to invite to a dinner party? St. Aubyn would be one of mine (together with Jennifer Eagan and maybe Dorothy Parker) although I doubt I would dare talk.

[Loes Dissel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and biting satire on literary prizes. Witty and very entertaining.

[آرزو مقدس · Rating 1 out of 5]

واقعاً بد. اصلاً توقع نداشتم کسی که پتریک ملروزها رو اونجور زیبا نوشته بود چنین زباله‌ای بنویسه.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather clever piece of work. I admire how St Aubyn writes, in the appropriately diverse styles, long tracts by the various authors who are the subjects of this satire of the workings of a literary prize judging panel.

[Kseniya Melnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gobbled this up in a day. As a writer, from time to time I find myself craving one of three types of writing-related books: a book of author interviews or profiles (latest discovery was John Reed's "How to Read a Novelist); a writing companion book that is comforting but honest, and full of wise advice on craft and the writing life (latest favorite was "Still Writing" by Dani Shapiro), or a novel about writers and/or the literary world. The latter--the funnier, the better.
LOST FOR WORDS certainly delivered. It is a satire and yes, some characters are a bit caricaturish, but it is a very smart and funny book, a joy to read, and it has moments of transcendence.
Here are some quotes I loved:

On what books can do: "And then she found herself wondering why any book should win this fucking prize she had become involved with unless it had a chance of doing what had just happened: coming back to a person when she wanted to cry but couldn't, or wanted to think but couldn't think clearly, or wanted to laugh but saw no reason to."

And: "She kept trying to argue that the other novels lacked the qualities that characterized a work of literature: 'depth, beauty, structural integrity, and an ability to revive our tired imaginations with the precision of its language.'"

Looking forward to diving into the Patrick Melrose novels.

[Bettie]

Description: Intertwining the stories of several writers as they compete ever more viciously to win their laurels, Lost For Words is a wonderful send up of literary prizes that nearly every writer who has run the gamut of prize competitions will identify with. Complete with an accidental entry, a scandal involving a judge and a vengeful reject, St. Aubyn’s novel nails his anti-heroes right where they’re most sensitive: in the giant, swelling balloons of their literary egos. And here we thought the art of writing was sublime!

Read an excerpt here.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent satire, I'll never again look at another Man Booker contender (or any other literary prize) without contemplating the politics behind the choices. "Perhaps in future generations a law would be passed allowing consenting adults to practice art openly;an Intellect Relations Board might be set up to encourage tolerance towards people who, through no fault of their own, were interested in ideas. Meanwhile, it was just as well to keep quiet and play the fool."
Just re-read (actually listened) to this book and enjoyed it once more

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cleverness is still no excuse for misogyny.