LONDON (AP) ― A critic who dismissed a divorce memoir as a stew of “vague literary blah’’ has won a prize celebrating the year’s most lacerating book reviews.
Camilla Long’s review of Rachel Cusk’s “Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation’’ for the Sunday Times newspaper was named winner of the Hatchet Job of the Year Award on Tuesday.
Long acknowledged finding the book ― in which Cusk, an award-winning novelist, recounts the breakdown of her marriage ― full of narrative gaps and “quite simply, bizarre.’’
She described Cusk as a “peerless narcissist’’ and the book as “acres of poetic whimsy and vague literary blah, a needy, neurotic mandolin solo of reflections on child sacrifice and asides about drains.’’
Cusk’s book was published last year to generally negative reviews, although The Daily Telegraph found it “full of beauty’’ and The Independent praised Cusk’s “honesty, courage, and the ability to depict her experiences in exquisitely crafted language.’’
Long’s prize consists of a golden hatchet and a year’s supply of potted shrimp from the award’s sponsor, a fishmonger.
The Hatchet Job award was established by literary website The Omnivore to honor “the angriest, funniest, most trenchant’’ review published in a newspaper or magazine.
