Ah humility…as reassuring as a good cuppa tea

Here’s Kiran Desai on her Booker winning novel: The Inheritance of Loss:

“I don’t think it’s a perfect book,” she says of her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. “There are bits that seem too slow or too fast. And in some places, I don’t think it works at all.”

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/desai.html

 Frankly, I think the woman deserved to win on her humility alone and patience sitting at the kitchen table for eight years. It’s uplifting to see writers win who have that dazed, “behind closed curtains for many years” look about them, rather than the chumped up, “I’m pleased with myself on a Monday afternoon whether I win a book prize or not” alternative. There’s no science to a book prize, if there were, books could come with literary steriods such as: yellow ribbons, fifty dollars slipped in the back, nude snaps of authors head on a better body, petrol coupons, green shield stamps for those hoping a 1970’s vibe might swing it for them, or low income tax returns with long overdue bills attached — the mercy inducing steroid. It’s got to be as random as choosing a hamster in a cage of thirty.