David Gaunt

I've only come across it as a bookseller.

I still haven't read it.

I'm nodding in profound appreciation of what Stephen was reading.

Now for something completely different.

Well, this is something that I only found this year, although it was published in 2018.

The first sentence, the day somebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat,

and threatened to shoot me was the same day the Milkman died.

It's the opening sentence of Milkman, which was the 2018 Booker Prize winner.

An extraordinary book, in my opinion, because it's the most audacious use of a voice that I've struck in many years in fiction.

The voice of an 18-year-old who's a captive in her own world.

It's a powerfully dark feminist thing.

I don't understand it, but many people would say this is a very dense and almost incomprehensible book.

It is not.

As soon as you relax yourself into the rhythm of the prose, long, long sentences, long, long paragraphs, but they're all part of the build.

I doubt that James Kelman's, I can't remember the name of that book now, but I doubt whether it would beat that one for low sales.

How late it was, how late.

But there's no doubt that clearly the more unorthodox prose style is.

I mean, people rush to the book in the same way they rush to the Miles Franklin because they trust an award or they trust some awards anyway.

So that could have had a...

And in fact, I noticed that with one of the dual winners this year, Girl Woman Other, had sold something like 40 copies, you know, in the UK before it won the award and exponential sales followed.