Literary critics vie for award: potted shrimp

 
14 January 2014

Hurrah! It’s time for The Hatchet Job of the Year award again. The annual prize awards the best devastating book reviews, and the most sharp-quilled critic wins a year’s supply of potted shrimp.

Those in the running for the seafood-fest include the Sunday Times’s AA Gill, our own literary editor David Sexton and Frederic Raphael, who has a double honour. Raphael has been nominated both as hatcheter and hatchetee, with his own book, Distant Intimacy, diced up by Craig Brown.

Among The Londoner’s favourites on the list are AA Gill’s merciless destruction of Morrissey’s memoir: “It is a heavy tome, utterly devoid of insight, warmth, wisdom or likeability.” An honourable mention goes to Peter Kemp, also writing in the Sunday Times, who finds Donna Tartt’s epic novel The Goldfinch resembles another animal, “a turkey”.

Rachel Cooke, in the Observer, cuts little slack for the saintly Ann Widdecombe’s new autobiography. “Is Widdecombe’s writing any better than her dancing?” she asks. “No.” The kindest thing she can muster is that “her grammar is fine”.

Professor John Sutherland, campaigner Rosie Boycott and art critic Brian Sewell have the honour of analysing the eight reviews. “This year’s shortlist shows embattled critics still have enough fight left in them to puncture publishing hype,” says Omnivore editor Fleur Macdonald, who runs the prize with Anna Baddeley. The Fish Society will be doling out potted shrimp to all at the awards party at Soho’s finest drinking joint The Coach & Horses in February.

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