Madam, - I notice that on Waterstone's list of the 21 best novels voted by a British readership, eight are written by women. I notice that on your poll, none of the top 10 is written by a woman. I did not send in a list of my preferred 10 since I hadn't read all of the selected 50 and considered myself ill equipped to select the 10 best.
Madam, - I notice that on Waterstone's list of the 21 best novels voted by a British readership, eight are written by women. I notice that on your poll, none of the top 10 is written by a woman. I did not send in a list of my preferred 10 since I hadn't read all of the selected 50 and considered myself ill equipped to select the 10 best.
This raises the question of the politics of reading. There are two novels by Flann O'Brien in your top 10. As a teenager, I read all of Flann O'Brien's books in handsome new Picador editions with trendy Ralph Steadman illustrations. At the same time I read Joyce, Wilde, Swift etc. I had never even heard of Kate O'Brien until my third year as an English undergraduate in UCD. Her set text, The Ante-Room was out of print and there was only one copy in circulation, procured from a dusty shelf on a library somewhere in North Dublin which we were all trying to borrow. It was laughable. I read the entire works of Kate O'Brien only in the 1990s, when they appeared in handsome green paperbacks from Virago Press. My favourite of her novels is The Land of Spices, the one title by her included in your top 50, but Pray For The Wanderer, That Lady, The Flower of May and the elusive The Ante-Room are all terrific.
Molly Keane too had eluded me as a teenager. Later, in the 1990s, I read all of her oeuvre, the three modern novels, and the early ones, then available in handsome green paperbacks from Virago Press (a pattern is emerging here). This is a ferocious talent. The Booker-nominated Good Behaviour, included in your top 50, is an excellent book, but her triumph is Time After Time with its danse macabre of April, May and Baby June and their brother Jasper. And her third late novel, the darkly idiosyncratic Loving and Giving, always seemed to me to be the missing link in the evolution of the Irish novel to The Butcher Boy by Pat McCabe.
My question is: how many of your voters were familiar with the work of these two literary giants, if they could favour the relentlessly joky Flann O'Brien over them? A list of the top 10 Irish novels simply cannot fail to contain these two authors or we are deluding ourselves and denying the facts of the politics of publishing and promotion. The only other conclusion is that Irish readers who vote in polls such as these dislike women, which is always a possibility... - Yours, etc.,
KATY HAYES, Richmond Park, Monkstown, Co Dublin.