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Spinning yarns: the country awaits Mandelson's memoirs Cherie's were shallow, Blunkett's risible and Campbell's partial. But the memoirs we are most looking forward to from the New Labour cabinet have be those of Lord MandelsonAfter the battle of the polls, the battle of the books. Whatever the outcome of the general election campaign, whose opening salvoes have now been fired, this should be more than matched by the political memoirs of the outgoing Labour Cabinet, books in which our political protagonists strive to establish their version of events.Or will it? So far, at least, New Labour, which always hated history, has largely flunked its literary relationship with posterity. Tony Blair has yet to deliver his memoirs; Cherie's contribution was shallow and disappointing. Further down the totem pole, David Blunkett's was risible and self-serving, Alistair Campbell's bowdlerised and partial. Compared with the great days of Healey's memoirs or Crossman's revelations, or even the many volumes of Wilson's self-justification, these are slim pickings.So who's left? When you get down to it, there are just four Labour politicians from the current field who a British publisher and/or the reading public might want to hear from. First, there's Blair himself. He sold his memoirs to Random House in 2007 for perhaps less than he might have got elsewhere. He has yet to deliver. Next, there's Gordon Brown, but he's a dull writer, and the betting must be that he would write a dull, self-serving book: high on wonky statistics and policy, low on insight and revelation. Thirdly, there's Jack Straw, who's had a front-row seat at most of the political drama of the last decade. Hardly an exciting prospect, but he has the advantage of political longevity. Others in the Cabinet will doubtless fancy their chances with publishers, but I think they would be mistaken. Besides, the prize that everyone will be saving up for are the Life and Times of Lord Mandelson of Foy, aka the Prince of Darkness.Forget Blair, Campbell and the rest, it's Mandelson's memoirs that will have true box office appeal. The weekend newspapers were full of the business secretary's ambition to be foreign secretary, but the lease on that job runs out in June 2010. The bigger story, in the long term, must be the spin that the great spin doctor will decide to put on New Labour's more-than-a-decade in power. As the general election conflict is joined, away from the hand-to-hand fighting between the two main parties will be the no-less-gripping prospect of a great general preparing the ground for that infinitely bigger struggle – the battle for the hearts and minds of posterity. Political afterlives are intense but brief. Mandelson will have a window of opportunity in which to make this transaction that won't extend much beyond the next general election. I'll be expecting the announcement of a massive Mandelson book deal, promising the "full story" of New Labour, some time between Christmas and Easter. Meanwhile, the commentators will have their chance. My colleague Andrew Rawnsley's book, The End of the Party comes out from Penguin in the spring.PoliticsPeter MandelsonGordon BrownTony BlairRobert McCrumguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The ingredients for a blockbuster novel | Jessica Ruston Big, brash and frequently brutal, it is a genre unto itself"What I really want to read is a proper, old-fashioned blockbuster like they used to do. You know?" a friend said to me a couple of years ago. And I did know. I knew exactly the sort of book she was talking about. That conversation planted the seed of the idea which became my first novel, Luxury, which is just that – an old-fashioned blockbuster, brought bang up to date.When I started writing Luxury, I did a lot of thinking about what makes a novel a blockbuster, as opposed to a saga, or chick lit. While the traditional definition of a blockbuster is simply a mega-seller, like their cinematic counterparts, to call a book a blockbuster implies something more than simply selling in droves – although of course one always hopes they will do that as well. I did a lot of reading around the subject, devouring reams of exotic locations and deliciously deviant behaviour. I read Shirley Conran, Irvin Shaw, Tom Wolfe, Jackie Collins, Sally Beauman. I started making lots of lists, of the "essential ingredients" of a blockbuster. Blockbusters are, invariably, long. There is no such thing as a slim blockbuster. They make their presence felt on the bookshelf with their heft and, frequently, the raised metallic lettering on their spines. Luxury is, if anything, at the svelter end of the scale, at around 550 pages; they can easily run into four figures.These are big books not just physically, but in every way. The lives of the characters in a blockbuster happen on a grand scale. Poverty is extreme, the frequently chronicled rise to stratospheric wealth even more so. There is little in the way of middle ground. Addiction devastates, ambition turbo-charges, passion fuels an inferno. Whether it is the sexily scandalous Hollywood excesses of Jackie Collins, or the catastrophic meltdown of Atlantan titan of business Charlie Croker in A Man in Full, these are lives lived in technicolour.Blockbusters often span both decades and continents, skipping through years and countries with ease. There is usually a major city involved, often counterpointed by a country escape, or a remote and exotic location. In Luxury this role is played by an elite and ultra-exclusive private island hotel which caters to the every whim of its pampered and famous guests; in Conran's Savages, one of the greatest blockbusters ever, almost all of the action takes place on the desert island where the characters are marooned, their city lifestyles a distant memory.People very often aren't nice in blockbusters. These are not the sympathetic characters of chick lit, the sweet girls searching for love. Instead, here are characters who can walk into a room and ask, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" (in Shirley Conran's Lace) or who, like my own Nicolo Flores, are so consumed by envy and the addictive desire for revenge that they spend most of their lives trying to bring down the friend who betrayed them.Blockbusters teem with detail: great chorus lines of supporting characters, colourful backdrops, jewels and glamour and sex. They are page-turners, where story comes first – though this doesn't mean they can't be literary as well – Irvin Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man, is a perfect example, and there's plenty of Dickens that would, if it were written today, fall neatly into the blockbuster category.They are the literary version of the cinematic epic, of a huge sandwich loaded up with all of your favourite things, of a box set of Dynasty. A shameless guilty pleasure.FictionJessica Rustonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Spats, symbols and posthumous publications: 2009, a year in books It was the year when poetry made the front pages - for good and bad reasons - when Dan Brown broke publishing records and when everyone from Mark Twain to Vladimir Nabokov brought out books from beyond the grave. We take a look back at the literary events that hit the headlines in 2009January2009 was the year of Dan Brown, e-readers and poetic spats. Thankfully, Dan Brown is still a few months away, but the other two hit the ground running right at the start of the year. The first sales figures for the Sony e-reader are released and show that Waterstone's sold almost 30,000 of the readers since the launch in September, while downloads of electronic books from the chain's site passed the 75,000 mark. And the Oxford professor of poetry contest kicks off. Names under discussion at this stage include British poets Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Jon Stallworthy, JH Prynne and John Wilkinson, along with Australian poet Les Murray, US poet Jorie Graham and New Zealand native Fleur Adcock. There is nary a mention of Ruth Padel and Derek Walcott. If only it was to stay that way ... Meanwhile, Wendy Cope rules herself out of the running for the poet laureateship, calling it a poisoned chalice that should be abolished. In other, less fraught, poetry news, Jen Hadfield wins TS Eliot prize for poetry with her second collection, Nigh-No-Place. Sadly, the poet Mick Imlah, who was also shortlisted for the prize, dies this month, aged 52. We also say goodbye to Pulitzer prize-winning poet WD Snodgrass, Rumpole of the Bailey creator Sir John Mortimer and Rabbit writer John Updike. Neil Gaiman makes a start on what will be a vintage year by winning the Newbery for The Graveyard Book while Sebastian Barry wins the £25,000 Costa book of the year award. Joseph O'Neill only won plaudits for his novel about cricket and post-9/11 New York, Netherland, but it does turn out to have been the literary critics' read of choice last year. 2009 is also set to be the year of intriguing library news and it gets underway this month with the jailing, for two years, of an Iranian academic who stripped pages out of ancient books from the British Library. Overseas, there's strife in Asterix world as Albert Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie, accuses the Asterix co-creator of betraying his hero, selling out to the businessmen and denying "all the values" she was brought up with - "independence, fraternity, conviviality and resistance" - after he authorised the series to continue after his death. He responds by calling her accusations "undignified" and an insult to Asterix readers. Turkey restores the citizenship of its most famous 20th-century poet, Nazim Hikmet, over 50 years after it branded him a traitor. And finally, Mills & Boon and the Rugby Football League team up to publish a series of books featuring tall, dark and handsome rugby heroes - minus cauliflower ears - and their glamorous love interests. They promise "jet-set locations, hunky alpha male heroes and hot sex, but in a rugby context."FebruaryJames Patterson remains Britain's most borrowed author, with the top three positions unchanged from last year - Patterson is closely followed by children's author Jacqueline Wilson and the author of the Rainbow Magic series, Daisy Meadows. She may not get much in the way of public lending rights dosh, but JK Rowling can bask in with the adoration of the French – this month the country honours her with the title of knight of France's prestigious Legion of Honour. She also wins Stephen King's approval, albeit in comparison with Twilight's Stephenie Meyer. "The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good," opined the horror writer, for whom it's a busy month: King also writes a novella, Ur, exclusively for the new version of Amazon's Kindle. It's a good month for protests, too: Margaret Drabble lets rip about about WH Smith's new deal with BAA, which will see it running all the bookshops in BAA's seven UK airports and Margaret Atwood pulls out of the Dubai literary festival over the 'blacklisting' of Geraldine Bedell's The Gulf Between Us, before declaring that she had been misled, and agreeing to take part in a debate on censorship by video link. It is, as she herself puts it, feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Editors’ Choice Recently reviewed books of particular interest. feeds.nytimes.com |