Apparently there was a bit of controversy when "How Late It Was, How Late" won the Booker prize in 1994 which seems to have been mainly concerned with the use of 'fuck' in the novel. I myself was a bit worried about the novel having been written in dialect, which can often be inscrutable, but I found it flowed quite easily and I was quickly immersed in the mystery and drama of the story. Quite frankly, the story would have been ridiculous in 'proper English'. The swearing, when not flowing smoothly, was more comedic than vulgar. However if you do find 'that sort of language' distasteful, you're probably going to want to skip this novel!
There was a passage early on in the novel that caught my eye and seems to define a lot of 'literature' to me, so I thought I'd share that with you:
"Funny how ye tell people a story to make a point and ye fail, ye fail, a total disaster. Not only do ye no make yer point it winds up the exact fucking opposite man, the exact fucking opposite. That isnay a misunderstanding it's a total
whatever."
So true, right?
I was going to spend my audio book time (also known as Knitting Time) with the prequels to Pat Barker's 1995 Booker prize winner, "The Ghost Road", but I ended up finding a copy of Rachael Herron's "How to Knit a Love Song" in the library audio downloads... Funny how that happens! I read her memoir, "A Life In Stitches", in the spring (but didn't count it as reading a whole book, because I read it over several months... oh shut up.) and I really enjoyed it. So, I listened to that instead the Regeneration books, because I am a total sucker for romance novels, and also knitting novels. It's a pretty fun novel - life on a sheep farm, within view of the ocean, with a hot rancher?? Yes Please!! It even made me want to try out spinning, which I've been very resistant to. I mean, who has the time?! Plus, spinning wheels take up so much space... Anyway, I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the series - there are a couple of characters from this novel who I'd love to spend more time with!
All by way of explaining that my next read is not "The Ghost Road", as I haven't finished the first two novels in the trilogy. So I'm instead moving on to read Graham Swift's "Last Orders", which I started yesterday, because this post is actually several days in the making. Not that time has improved the quality of the content in any way. I feel like I'm staring down another deadline, so hopefully a little fire under my butt gets me through a couple novels in quick succession here! Stay tuned, and
Happy reading!
