September 2008 Archives

Right, so three solid days of answering emails and texts after the Prize (in the nicest possible way, I might add, lovely to hear from you, and since you're here, why not sponsor me for the marathon?) leaves me eager to get back to work, since I do have book three of the trilogy to write, after all.

But there was a nice profile of me in yesterday's Guardian (and, if you got the paper edition, a not half-bad photo, which is difficult to achieve with someone who tenses up in front of a camera as badly as I do, so hats off to Eamonn McCabe).

Also, the paperback of The Knife of Never Letting Go has been moved even earlier; it'll actually be in bookstores on 13 October, if you can believe it (even earlier than it currently says on Amazon), with "Winner of..." across the top.

Cool stuff, but back to the blank page...

Yes, I know it's tooting my own horn (but if not me, who?), but last night I - or I should say, my book, The Knife of Never Letting Go - won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.  Which is astonishing (it was a very strong shortlist) but, as you might expect, very pleasing.

And what a fun evening!  They'd invited along all the winners of the Young Critics' Competition, so there were lots of bright and articulate young people and their proud parents, which made for a great atmosphere.  And I got to sign a lot of autographs, too.  And they all laughed at my jokes during my speech, which is pretty much all I really cared about.

There's more about it at the Guardian books site (though I didn't quite say that it was a story that needed to be "shouted from the rooftops"; what I said was that, if you treat teenagers with respect, then they'll be more willing to follow you to far-off places and that means you can really "swing for the rafters" - which sort of morphed, I guess, into "shouted from the rooftops" - but that's fine, I'll happily be shouting from the rooftops for a couple days...

The 'One' section of my iPod turns out to be rather good, a wide range of tracks, hardly any duffers, and only one crushing embarrassment which won't be mentioned here.  And so I give you the iPod EP of One:

One by Metallica  (yes, well, but sometimes you just need to sing along to "darkness/imprisoning me/all I see/absolute horror" - we all have days like that, don't we?)

One Day Like This by Elbow (suddenly trendy, but who cares?  Most joyous indie pop song since "Do You Realize?")

One Grey Morning by Ron Sexsmith (a jaunty song about depression with a horn section)

One of Us by Joan Osborne (a rarity, a pop song that actually asks an interesting philosophical question:  "If God had a face/would you want to see,/if seeing meant that you would have to believe?")

One of Us by ABBA  (fun in that it's impossible not to make up your own lyrics, "One of us makes strudel/We are all from Sweden/Then we got we divorced...")

One Step Ahead by Split Enz  (Crying out for a good remake)

The One Thing by INXS  (Remember the video?  All that food and white background and curly hair?)

The One You Love by Rufus Wainwright  (if only because the melody of the verses is unbelievably insinuating, "one little move and for sure you will be stung").

Yeah, okay, I went overboard a little, but that's still leaving out Blondie, Pet Shop Boys, Aimee Mann...  Oh, and now that I look, there'll be an iPod of Two coming soon.

At last, some wonderful theatre to report on.  I really hated the last couple of things I've seen (Now or Later at the Royal Court, which felt like an A-Level exam, and Kicking A Dead Horse at the Almeida, which made 70 minutes feel like an eternity), but at last, something excellent to report.

I was worried that the Donmar on the West End season could easily have been a bust of good intentions and over-acting, but Ivanov with Kenneth Branagh was something of a miracle last night:  funny and fast and unexpectedly moving.  Every actor delivered and it was extremely well-directed, with serious energy and pace.  All the laughter made the pain even more surprising, and the ending packs a wallop.

Kenneth Branagh is never even hammy, and the one part where he might be is skilfully re-interpreted by Tom Stoppard as a comedy piece for another actor to complain how overwrought he's being.  Great stuff.  Go see it, seriously.

I'm absolutely astonished and terribly disappointed at the news that David Foster Wallace has killed himself.  As someone who read every one of the 1,079 pages of Infinite Jest, as well as his less well-known first novel The Broom of the System and pretty much every single one of his other books, fiction and non-fiction, here was a guy so much smarter than everyone else, you never wanted to admit how much of his writing you couldn't understand.

Seriously, it was like reading fiction from the future, so cutting-edge and deadpan and different that you whimpered at the thought of how much better you were going to have to be to keep up.

I'm sad for him, sad for any suicide, and selfishly sad that there'll be no more books.  Bloody hell.

There's something more than usually depressing about spam, isn't there?  Just the sheer, mindless cynicism of it, every dismaying bit of humanity that's ever been joyless or merciless or relentless.  It doesn't matter how crappy it makes the world or that everyone hates it, just as long as whoever sends it gets a hit or two out of twenty billion.

I mean, seriously, in the past twelve hours, my comments page has been hit by 21 separate messages trying to sell non-prescription tramadol.  If you're dumb enough to buy non-prescription tramadol, are you really going to be reading a books website?

So, anyway, the visitor's page has been set to moderated and soon I'll get one of those swirly-word generators to try and stop the onslaught before I get too depressed about our species.

(If you want to cheer me up, you could always sponsor me for the Marathon)

Today is the release date for The Knife of Never Letting Go in America.  So, for all you Americans reading who keep wondering what's this book I keep going on about, you now have your chance to actually take your own look.

It's published by the very good folk at Candlewick, and it has a completely different cover than the UK version.  But everything on the inside stays the same, so you can see for yourself if all these prize folks are getting it right (hey, they might not, look at the interesting-if-slightly-perplexing Booker Shortlist, also announced today).

And a reminder, I'm running a whole marathon in April, so why not support a great charity and sponsor me?

I must say, for me, it's been a startling week for shortlists.  After making the shortlist of the very excellent Booktrust Teenage Prize, just this morning The Knife of Never Letting Go was put on the shortlist for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, so it's all quite perky and sparkling, isn't it?  The Guardian shortlist is only four books long, too, and the other three are extremely good (and this isn't the usual I'm-just-grateful-to-be-nominated bullshit, the other books are incredible).  So that makes it doubly nice, to be in such strong company. 

What an honor, eh?  I'm so pleased for the book and pleased, too, for my publishers for all the work they've put into it.  The last thing I was ever shortlisted for was a Wandsworth Council short story prize 8 years ago (I came in second, won 60 quid, and I gotta tell ya, was just as happy about that as I am about this, which is to say: very happy indeed).

Catching a play the night before my sister and her husband arrive for a visit from the US, I saw Now or Later at The Royal Court.  Now, the less said about the play the better (didactic in the extreme, based on a ridiculous false premise (that the son of a President-elect wouldn't know that it was incendiary to dress up as Mohammad), and at the end, I felt I'd been assigned an essay), but a funny thing happened, which reflects well on the theatre.

I've always moaned about the Royal Court audiences as being (by far) the wankiest in London, but tonight we were sitting in our seats and two people very politely said they thought we were sitting in theirs.  I was certain they were wrong and brought out my tickets with great confidence.

Turns out my tickets were indeed correct.  For the following night.  Oops.  We all had a good laugh, and I went to the Royal Court staff to point out my mistake.  Quite pleasingly, they were extremely helpful and gave us two empty seats fifth row centre.  Now, there's good customer service.

Pity about the play, though.

Just found out I've been shortlisted for the very, very excellent BookTrust Teenage Prize for my book The Knife of Never Letting Go (and here if you're American, where it comes out next week), which is just brilliant, frankly (the shortlisting, that is).  I even did a little interview for the Guardian about it (and here it is, up already), though I've no idea if I said anything interesting or coherent.

The shortlist is here on Bookheads and is a fairly dark, exciting list.  And my publisher (the esteemed Walker Books) has three of the titles, so, go team!

Seriously, a cool thing, this.