I Don't Understand...

Radio 4 has struck lead again with its latest Book At Bedtime, which is nearing an end, thank heavens, but seems to have been running for ever. Called An Equal Stillness, it's a heavy-footed chronicle of the rivalrous relationship and marriage between two artists over many decades - a kind of fictionalised version of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Listening to it on the radio (abridged!), you can hear the research, but it seems - to me anyway - entirely lacking in what one might call, rather preciously, felt life. The writer never seems to inhabit either the characters or their world, leaving the listener - this one anyway - wondering why she bothered to invest the time and hard work required to write a full-length novel (and why anyone should invest their time in reading it). Most of my forays into contemporary fiction leave me with this So What feeling (which is why I make so few). And yet this book has been well received - 'an outstanding debut', 'pitch perfect', etc - and is just the kind of work that wins prizes; perhaps it already has. I truly do not understand the present world of fiction publishing and reviewing. It seems every bit as irrelevant, tail-chasing and detached from reality as the political world.