MANBOOKER 2012: Swimming Home
We can agree, I hope, that the holiday book
Is for the English a twentieth century
Pastoral displacement. Witness ‘Hotel du
Lac’ (Booker ‘84), wherein liminality
Allows for stoic self-discovery; also see
‘The Driver’s Seat’, wherein affectless horrors
Ensue abroad; witness the grotesquery
Of Warner’s ‘Morvern Callar’ on the Costa;
Marcella & Chrysostom these ain’t,
Nor the matchless Orinda, & neither, neither
Is this well-done but withheldedly clichéd
Minimal tale of poet-class blather;
This shortest of novels sets familiar plays,
& ultimately has nowt new to say.
(Source: happyvacationholiday.com)
