Vacation makes her more pointed

Fiona, one of the Crime Fiction Dossier’s co-bloggers, has returned from her vacation in Greece*, and although she got quite a lot of reading done (14 books) one of them decidedly did not measure up:

I began by starting DBC Pierre’s debut and Booker winner, Vernon God Little. Unfortunately, it is so BAD that I had discarded it for Paul Johnston’s A Deeper Shade of Blue (a detective series set in Greece, what joy; I’ve been waiting years for it, and was almost on the point of starting one myself. I jest) even by the time the plane had left the ground. I’ve never come across such a lot of self-indulgent rubbish. It’s supposed to be a satire (it’s styled “A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death”) but as satires go it certainly isn’t piercing. Some Americans are fat and watch quite a bit of TV? Wow – astute. Texans like devouring BBQ Chicken and using the death penalty? Hilarious. Calling a mu-mu a moo-moo? Witty, man. I found it incredibly annoying, a tiny bit exploitive. I cannot remember the last time I put a book down after only 65 pages (it might eve never have happened; once I get that far in I like to continue), and that I have now disappoints me a great deal. Every book is someone’s award winner, (hell, even James Patterson has won an Edgar), but how this beat Zoë Heller or Margaret Atwood will, in the fullness of time, become one of life’s great mysteries. You mark my words.

I must say, I’m shocked Fiona lasted that long. But it’s nice that someone else shares my head-scratching wonder at how, simply how this book won last year’s Booker Prize. I wonder if, in several decades’ time, it will be regarded in the same way that The Greatest Show on Earth is regarded among film buffs…

*Excellent idea to go before the madness that will be the Olympics.