Amidst all the chaos of flooding you may have heard the story about the man who plagiarised Jane Austen and that only one editor - Alex Bowler, assistant editor at Jonathan Cape and a very fine person indeed - appeared to have recognised the manuscript before him as a (slightly) revamped Pride and Prejudice. Much credit to him and also to his reader whose name escapes me but who Alex gave all due respect to in his Front Row interview last Thursday.

Putting aside debates about the value of the - so called - experiment (it is probably better described as an exercise in time wasting) to see if Austen would make the cut with the publishing houses of today, I would like to take this opportunity to raise yet another reason why you should all put those Harry Potter books down and go out and buy yourself a copy of Tod Wodicka's All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well.

What is that reason? Alex Bowler (yes the very same Austen spotter) is the editor. And a wonderful job he has done with Wodicka's book too: here we have a good editor who can spot good literature when he sees it and doesn't like to see it messed around with.

Short Stories

I've mentioned in the past my love of short stories. I'm lucky that AL Kennedy - a writer whose work I greatly admire (as I know you will know I never tire of saying) - writes very fine short stories. Back in June she wrote an article for The Independent about short stories and below is an extract:

"Stories are allegedly what novelists knock off when they're feeling lazy, mere journalism with a dash of purple prose, something to read in the toilet, a waste of trees.

At which point I get a migraine and then ask you to bear with me for a moment, because together we have to rediscover what the short story is really all about. So go and get a glass, maybe one with a stem, if you're in that kind of household, but definitely a glass, not one of those plastic things your children chuck at one another. I'll wait here.

Sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Tap the glass gently with your nail, or a pen. If the glass has a fault or a crack, it won't make much of a sound. If it's flawless, it will sing, resonate beyond itself. That's the best way I can show you the nature of the short story. It may be small, fragile, but to create that kind of seamless clarity - that's a massive challenge to any writer, and a remarkable gift for any reader... make no mistake, the short story is an exercise in perfection."

A perfect description of a perfect form.

The full article can be read on The Independent's website.

I mentioned the other day that Tod Wodicka's wonderful first novel All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well, has a wonderful cover so here it is. It is published next Thursday, and it is in paperback so no excuses about it being too heavy for your luggage when you go on holiday.