Hilary Mantel
I would like to recommend a novel by a young man from Glasgow . . . no, don't make those retching noises and run out of the room, just calm down and listen for a second; this has nothing to do with the Booker.
Carl MacDougall did win the Winifred Holtby prize for The Lights Below (Secker, £7.99); the money isn't so much, but the competition was stiff. This wonderful book has a plot, has fresh and impressive descriptive prose, is very funny and has a fine sense of place. It is a polemic without bitterness, and an original achievement; months after first reading, I keep picking it up to look at my favourite paragraphs and see how it's done. It has both integrity and charm: two qualities that are in short supply, and not often found together.
Evelyn Waugh is my great literary hero, so I relished every page of Selina Hastings' biography (Sinclair-Stevenson, £20). Here is sympathy without sycophancy; a witty biographer for a supremely witty man.
Previous page
