The Most Underrated Living Writers View in your browser Friday August 31 2018 Writers We Take for Granted Literary life isn’t fair. Some authors relax in beautiful Hampstead townhouses, listening to the sound of their specially reinforced mantelpieces groaning under the weight of literary prizes. Other equally good writers shiver in shabby bedsits, without so much as a positive Amazon review to console them. We’ve been thinking about underappreciated writers after positive reviews of Andrew Miller’s new novel, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free appeared in The Sunday Times and The Times. We loved his book. But why isn’t he better known? Poor old Miller hasn’t won an important prize since he bagged the Costa in 2011. For some reason, that never won him the public recognition he deserved. That got us thinking — who are our most underrated living novelists? Perhaps if we buy enough of their books we could rescue them from their garrets and send the poor souls to Hampstead. Here are some writers we think are in need of a profile boost: Andrew Miller Miller wowed our critics with Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, a tale of a veteran of the Napoleonic wars on the run from the army. His novel Pure, which won the Costa in 2011, is set in pre-revolutionary France. His first two novels, Ingenious Pain and Casanova, were also set in the 18th century. His previous novel but one, however, was a bit of a departure. The Crossing is a mysterious nontraditional tale whose main character is deliberately left almost blank. Tessa Hadley Hadley, pictured above, published her first novel, Accidents in the Home, in 2000. It follows the romantic and sexual misadventures of middle-class Londoners. But with its fractured narrative and mysterious symbolism, it’s much more interesting than your typical middle-class divorce novel. If you haven’t read Hadley before, her novel The Master Bedroom is another good place to start. This book follows Kate Flynn who, dissatisfied with her life as a lecturer in London, moves to the countryside to care for her ageing mother. Hadley’s a good thing. So why has she never so much as made it on to a Booker longlist? Sarah Moss Sarah Moss’s time could finally be at hand. There’s a lot of buzz about her forthcoming novel, Ghost Wall, which will be published at the end of September. She has never made it on to a significant prize list, but perhaps the new novel will change all that. In the meantime, why not read 2015’s Signs for Lost Children, which follows a married couple’s relationship break — he goes to build lighthouses in Japan, she works in a mental asylum. Adam Thorpe Thorpe is most famous for his extraordinary book Ulverton, which tells the tale of a fictional English village over 300 years, imitating the literary styles of each era. Perhaps surprisingly, Karl Ove Knausgaard has named Ulverton as his favourite English novel. Thorpe's last book, Missing Fay, divided critics, although it has its admirers, not least the Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate. Strangely, Thorpe hasn’t been near a prize since he was shortlisted for the Walter Scott in 2010. Poor lad. Meg Wolitzer Like the homophonous jukebox, Wolitzer has been left to gather dust in a lonely corner of the crowded gastro pub that is contemporary literature. In an article titled "Why Now May (Finally) Be Meg Wolitzer’s Moment", The New York Times wrote that her novel The Interestings stood comparison to The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, or The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Wolitzer had only been ignored, the paper opined, because she was a woman. Unfortunately, that optimistic NYT headline may have been precipitous. Wolitzer’s most recent book, The Female Persuasion, was well received by critics, but failed even to make this year’s Booker longlist. It’s up to readers now. Let’s crank up the Wolitzer and hear its sweet, sweet music! Tim Winton Long-haired Aussie Winton is hardly overlooked in his homeland. He gets stopped in the street for autographs and his latest novel, The Shepherd’s Hut, sold more than 50,000 copies in the two months after its publication. Yet in Britain he’s much less well known. He has never even won the Booker, while his compatriot Peter Carey has won it twice. Why not try 2002’s Dirt Music, which follows a girl named Georgie who becomes fascinated by a mysterious fish-poaching stranger. The novel is characteristic Winton, charting the trials of hardscrabble rural folk in the unforgiving (yet powerfully evoked) Australian landscape. Bernard McLaverty McLaverty’s last book, Midwinter Break, followed the travails of a middle-aged couple stuck in an airport terminal. Metaphorically speaking, McLaverty’s career is stuck in airport terminal too. Will it ever take flight? If you want to help and you’re wondering where to start, you could buy Grace Notes, which follows the postpartum depression of a Northern Irish music teacher. Tim Pears We all know you have to leave pears to ripen for a while before you can enjoy them, but this is ridiculous! At 61 years old, Tim Pears has never been longlisted for a Booker prize, or even a Costa. His well-received first novel, In Place of Fallen Leaves (1993), follows the story of Alison, a 13-year-old girl, growing up in a Devon village. Pears is now at work on his West Country Trilogy, which follows the adventures of Leo, a teenage stablehand in early 20th-century Britain. The Times said the first instalment, The Wanderers (published 2017), was “superb”, but “sadly sank much farther below the radar than it deserved”. Let’s get Pears back on the literary radar. Beep! Beep! Beep! We have located a very fine novelist! James Marriott james.marriott@thetimes.co.uk The Booker Is Bust: Can It Be Fixed? The Man Booker prize is in a bad way, writes Andrew Holgate. Questions of quality aside — and this year’s longlist has drawn a good deal of criticism — the prize is suffering from a fatal triple whammy: declining sales for its winners, growing unhappiness from publishers and authors (many of whom hate that the prize is now open to Americans), and declining interest from the general public. Mention Man Booker in an online headline — for this newsletter, for instance — and viewing figures, we’ve noticed, tend to slump. Not a happy situation. Worse, the Booker seems to be suffering from a collective loss of confidence, and is thrashing around for attention as if it were five years old, rather than 50 this autumn. This loss of confidence began as long ago as 2001 with the introduction of the longlist, where previously there was just a shortlist and then winner announcement. Then a few years ago we got the Americans, and now we have a rather desperate search for new territory — and the inclusion of crime fiction, graphic novels and novels in verse, all of which feature in this year’s longlist. I’ve got no problem at all with the inclusion of genre novels, or verse novels (short story collections would be fine too; this is, after all, an award for fiction). The question, this year, is simply one of quality, and whether the desire to shake things up a bit has taken precedence over questions of quality. (Graphic novels are another matter. By this logic, you may as well include film or play scripts, or libretti. Books that are predominantly pictorial are a different art form.) You feel that something has to change with the Booker, to arrest its decline, and help it to rediscover its authority. And you feel that it has to be pretty dramatic. Putting aside the issue of American authors (everyone has had their say on that), here are two modest proposals, neither of which I expect to be adopted, or even seriously considered: Get rid of the longlist It leads to a disastrous dilution of quality. Look at the longlist of 2001, for instance, and you’ll be hard pressed to remember what some of the novels are. The Booker dozen (of 13 books) has increasingly become an excuse for horse-trading between judges, and for strong preferences by individual judges to be pandered to. The longlist doesn’t do the prize, and its need to prioritise quality above all, any favours. The publishers will hate it, but... Get a new sponsor I have no notion of what goes on at the Man Booker, but there’s an increasing feeling that the tail is wagging the dog with the prize, and that the sponsor is making the running and compromising its essence. The prize is a vast endeavour, with a grotesquely large awards dinner (a corporate jolly at which you will barely see an author) and a grotesquely large dinner too for the International Man Booker for translated fiction. (The cost of taking over part of the V&A for that award must be significant.) And the need to justify that expense with more coverage, more tricks, fresh initiatives must be overwhelming. The Booker doesn’t need this flummery, and it doesn’t need its essence being compromised in the search for cheap headlines. Dump the vast and absurd dinners, trim the vast expense, find a new sponsor who will allow the prize to return to its core mission, and have the Booker regain the authority that it once had, as the ultimate arbiter of the very best (and I mean, in large capital letters, VERY BEST) fiction of the year — literary, crime, short story collection or verse novel. Coming Up in The Times Every week we give newsletter subscribers an exclusive look at what’s coming up in The Times tomorrow. This week, you can have a glance at our pick of September’s best paperbacks. There’s lots to look forward to: from Jaron Lanier’s study of virtual reality and Deborah Cadbury’s book about how Queen Victoria married off her children, to a creepy Gothic novel by Andrew Michael Hurley and a fictional tale of English fascists by Cressida Connolly. If you keep our list to hand you won’t read a duff book for the whole month! Read the full story Coming Up in The Sunday Times And in The Sunday Times this weekend, Max Hastings runs the rule over Isabel Hardman’s Why We Get the Wrong Politicians, the feminist author Naomi Wolf considers Germaine Greer’s controversial book On Rape, we look at arch-Remainer Gina Miller’s memoir, and we run the rule over a new Philip Marlowe novel. Must Read It’s always exciting when you think you’ve found an outstanding new writer, and The Sunday Times’s crime reviewer Joan Smith thinks she has done so with Dominick Donald, who’s debut, Breathe, set in smoggy 1950s London, she made her crime book of the month last Sunday. Joan thinks Donald should be a cert for winning prizes for the book, as does our historical fiction reviewer Nick Rennison, who was vying to review it himself. Read Joan’s review of the book here Read the full story Silly Author Photos For some reason, Slavoj Zizek has been called the “Elvis of Marxism” — we have to assume that refers to the roly-poly middle-aged Elvis. He’s an endearing chap, though: famous for his excitable hand gestures and his lisp. He has also got a good line in author photos, as the Times literary editor spotted when his latest book landed in the books cupboard earlier this week. If you spot a silly author photo, let us know! Acknowledgments An interesting study in contrasts. At the end of his new book Blueprint, the biologist Robert Plomin writes: “Because Blueprint is the culmination of my forty-five year career, it is tempting to use this opportunity to thank the colleagues, students and friends who have helped shape my career and my research. But there are literally hundreds of them, so I can only hope they know who they are…” Quite classy, we thought, compared to the gushing acknowledgments some authors write. From the other end of the spectrum, step forward the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who appends six pages of acknowledgments to his new book, Breaking News. We reckon he names more than 400 people. Review of the Week This week’s review of the week is John Garth’s piece about the new JRR Tolkien book. For many decades JRR’s son, Christopher Tolkien, has been tidying up his dad’s manuscripts and issuing them as books. But he says The Fall of Gondolin will be the last. The book tells the story of the destruction of the ancient Elven city of Gondolin. The young Tolkien began writing it while recovering from trench foot after the Battle of the Somme. Read the full story Jan Morris I was lucky enough to interview Jan Morris, the 91-year-old historian and travel writer, writes Robbie Millen. What a life! In the distant past, as an intrepid reporter for The Times, Morris brought home the news that Everest had been conquered. I don’t think it is provocative to say that her body of 40-odd books — all written in with a wonderful mix of warm and swanky prose — proves that she is one of our finest living writers. For what it’s worth, here are my favourites. 1) The Pax Britannica trilogy (Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress; Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire; Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat) This is a warts and beauty spots history of the rise and fall of the British Empire, full of colour and dash, and tales of villainy and decency. Published between 1968 and 1978, it shows Morris’s command of detail and language. 2) Trieste and The Meaning of Nowhere (2001). Morris is best known for her classic book Venice (1960), but she prefers this very personal and quite eccentric book that reflects on Trieste, the lesser know Italian city on the other side of the Adriatic. The place has an unusual mongrel history, which allows Morris to riff in all sorts of directions. 3) Conundrum (1974). This unusual memoir tells us how James Morris transitioned to become Jan Morris. It is a good-humoured, calm, unstrident, almost matter of fact and very brave. I like this observation about her new life as a woman: “The condescension of men could be infuriating, the courtesies were very welcome.” Read the full story Simon Sebag Montefiore Says His Dog Writes His Books The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore is a trusting chap. When he goes on holiday, he lets his dog write books for him. He posted this picture of his loyal mutt Simba propped up at his writing table on Twitter. Let’s hope Simba’s prose isn’t too “ruff”! Pretension Power The novel is in trouble. Could we all save it by being just a bit more pretentious? James Marriott thinks we could. Read the full story You have received this email as part of your membership entitlement. If you no longer wish to receive these communications, please follow this link to edit your email preferences. You will continue to receive newsletters with exclusive benefits and updates, Times+ newsletters, offers and promotions and market research emails, provided you have not unsubscribed from those individual communications. This email is from a member of the News UK group. News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, with its registered office at 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF, United Kingdom is the holding company for the News UK Group and is registered in England No. 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69. To see our privacy policy, click here.