Orange Shortlist

Oh dear, I'd better get reading...

I'm getting a little fed up with the ubiquitous Wolf Hall now. To my mind, it has three faults, and three faults is one too many for it to be great book. (For those of you interested, the three faults are: present tense; too much use of the male singular pronoun, causing confusion in places; and the Henry-Anne story has been done to death, even if this is from a new point of view. And it is the Henry-Anne story, equally as much as it's Cromwell's.) The Booker's enough for any author, surely - let's give someone else a chance.

I'm interested in the Rosie Alison, possibly because it's the right era, although I do realise, looking at the cover, that I've passed over it in bookshops. Again I am forced to consider the importance of a decent jacket.

I'll wait for The Lacuna to come out in paperback, as it's just too big to carry around on a daily basis - shades of The Children's Book in that problem.

It's interesting, as judge Daisy Goodwin comments, that even the long list was filled with "grim" subject matter. Art reacting to The Recession, perhaps? Or a peculiarly female affliction, a post-feminist depression?