Toby Clements in the Telegraph says that many novelists would love to write novellas like Ian McEwan, but publishers are only interested in the shorter form if it has the name of a bestselling author attached to it
Links of the week October 15 2012 (42)
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22 October 2012
The Booker-prize winning author Ian McEwan asserted at the weekend that the novella is a superior literary form to the novel. If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy," he said. Anyone who has read his work might have guessed he felt this way. He he started his career in 1975 with a blistering collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites and his first novel was the slender but disproportionately powerful. The Cement Garden which came in at a mere 144 pages - but it is interesting to hear him come out and say it. Not just because he is arguing against the general sense that a thumping great novel is more worthy of of prizes, of being paid for - than a slim volume, but because it is not absolutely clear what he means.