A BIT EARLY FOR VALENTINE’S DAY, I come to tell you that romance is not dead (to be honest, I’m not entirely sure who proclaimed it to be so in the first place, but it seems customary when talking about romance always to begin by disavowing its deceased status). Not, at least, in the world of literary prizes: this week the shortlists were announced for two dedicated to romantic fiction. They are Le Prince Maurice Prize, designed to celebrate the literary love story, and Not Just A Girl Thing: The Foster Grant Reading Glasses Romantic Novel of the Year Award.
Let’s take a quick glance at the judging panels for these two: Le Prince Maurice includes Mark Lawson, Helen Dunmore, Blake Morrison and Jacqueline Wilson. The Foster Grant is chaired by Dr Susan Horsewood-Lee, described as “a GP with a busy Central London practice”, Sue Baker, books editor of Publishing News, and Matt Bates, fiction Buyer at WH Smith Travel. Now, I don’t for a minute want to impugn the literary judgment of GPs — especially ones with busy Central London practices — nor anyone at Smith’s or Publishing News, but you have to say that the line-up for Le Prince Maurice is the more stellar.
This may be something to do with the fact that Le Prince Maurice is sponsored by Le Prince Maurice, a five-star hotel in Mauritius, and being a judge involves a free week-long holiday at Le — I’ll say it one more time — Prince Maurice. I don’t know what being a judge on Not Just A Girl Thing gets you, but I suspect it’s a brand spanking new pair of Foster Grant reading glasses. You do the math.
The other thing the Not Just A Girl Thing press release emphasises is that, indeed, romantic fiction is not just a girl thing, and in evidence of same, it highlights the inclusion on the shortlist of the writers Douglas Kennedy and Nicholas Sparks. However, when one actually examines the 25-strong shortlist, it can’t escape the attention that Messrs Kennedy and Sparks are the only non-girls on the list, so that in terms of romantic fiction writers, that leave us with a boy-girl ratio of about 1:12, which might suggest that the prize should really be named Still Mainly A Girl Thing, Actually.
Even then, I’m not sure, as a quick look at the titles — Daughter of Mine, Winds of Honour, The Tea House on Mulberry Street — and indeed some of the first names of the authors — Iris, Eva, Veronica — might confirm the belief that this kind of romantic fiction is the last thing that girls read — girls read chick-lit, Smirnoff Ice labels, and Grazia — and, therefore, really the main market is still my mum and most of her friends: thus the title should in fact be Still Mainly A Post-Menopausal Woman Desperately Disappointed By Her Marriage Thing. Actually. But I guess that doesn’t have so much of a ring to it.
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Le Prince Maurice prize is keen to distance itself from this stereotype of romantic fiction: the prize’s president, Tim Lott, himself a fine novelist specialising in what you might call male-female stuff, has talked about how, in finding a winner, there should be a lack of “boundaries . . . the book could have a tender voice, or be about family love as well as romantic love” and the shortlist is much more self-consciously literary, including Zadie Smith and Julian Fellowes.
I wonder, though, if once you begin to expand the idea of romantic fiction away from the Barbara Cartland/Little Britain trope of the ancient woman with big pink hair dictating from her chaise-longue, the category begins somewhat to dissolve. Lott has also attempted to distinguish Le Prince Maurice from the Man Booker, suggesting that that prize rewards “technical ability, but neglects humour and love stories”. This may be so, but how much fiction is there that, under this remit, doesn’t merit inclusion? The Sea by John Banville, this year’s Booker winner, is nothing if not a love story, an extended monologue from a man stricken by grief for the loss of his wife and his first childhood love. One of the strands of Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George, at one point the Booker favourite, is the story of Conan Doyle’s anguished love for Jean Leckie, and the moment when they kiss is one of the most romantic scenes in recent literature.
My point is that under Lott’s description, virtually all writing about human beings could be classed as romantic fiction. One could probably make a case for the high priest of the anti-romantic, Michel Houllebecq, to be included in the French section, as his work is clearly motivated by a deep despair at the reality of life without love. Not that I’m having a go at all this focus on romance: my experience as I get older is that all I want to read about — and write about — is love, as long as we’re talking about love in all its complexity: including its shadows, its transience, its dysfunction, the terrible pressure its mythology forces on our lives, as well as its comfort and joy. If all writing about human beings does come under this category, that’s fine with me. And of course I’m not having a go at Le Prince Maurice prize. Certainly not if the hotel looks anything like the picture in the brochure.