The Desmond Elliott Prize 2015: Why an author's background makes no difference to talent

Louise Doughty celebrates the imagination and flair of the debut novelists who are on the shortlist for this year’s Desmond Elliott Prize

Generation game Shortlisted authors (from left) Carys Bray, Emma Healey and Claire Fuller (Micha Theiner)

Next Wednesday, I will have the great pleasure of handing a debut novelist a cheque for £10,000. As I do, what will be uppermost in my mind will be her achievement in writing a novel that, in the opinion of a judging panel comprised of me, the bookseller Jonathan Ruppin, and the writer and comedian Viv Groskop, is the best of the 77 novels entered for the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize. I will talk about her imagination, her flair for language, and her ability to absorb us in a story during which we really care about what might befall the characters.

Here are the things I will not be talking about: her gender, her skin colour, her shoe size, her body mass index, or her age. None of these factors was mentioned in our impassioned deliberations as we chose a shortlist of three stupendous first novels from a varied and accomplished longlist of 10.

All writers understand the need for their books to be promoted by external factors: much has been made of the comparative youth of one of our shortlistees, Emma Healey, who wrote the bestselling Elizabeth is Missing. Carys Bray’s novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, is about a Mormon family facing a personal tragedy and she has answered endless questions about her own upbringing in the Mormon faith. As the novelist Jill Dawson once said: “There has never been a newspaper headline that reads ‘Author Writes Good Book’.”

It is natural that readers and journalists are curious about authors’ backgrounds but of the many facets of novelists’ biographies, the most irrelevant when it comes to their work is surely the dates on their birth certificates. None of this has prevented the many age-related promotions that exist for writers: in America there is the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Awards and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35. Over here we have the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Such awards are coming under increasing scrutiny as many wonder out loud whether the numerical age of a new or emerging writer matters.

In April this year, the writer Robin Black raised this question in The New York Times in an article entitled “What’s so great about young writers?”, where she declared: “Age-based awards are outdated and discriminatory, even if unintentionally so. Emerging writers are emerging writers.” Black herself was an “emerging” author in her late forties. She’s not alone. A horde of our most famous authors “emerged” a little late for a glossy photo-shoot. Toni Morrison, Anthony Burgess and William S Burroughs were all 39 when their first books were published; George Eliot, Helen Dunmore and William Golding, all in their 40s; Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski, both 51. Golding and Morrison both went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, so being “late starters” didn’t seem to do them much harm.

Emma Healey says: “Despite being the youngest on the shortlist, I do think it seems silly to have a cut-off age for debut novelists. The process of discovery is the same for everyone.” She also raises the relevance of gender to this debate: “It is especially important for women writers that we do away with these age ceilings, as I think it takes women longer to find the confidence to write and send out that first novel, as well as find the time and energy to do so when family life still demands a disproportionate amount of our time.” As Black says: “I do consider this to be a feminist issue – but not only that. Youthful achievement is often linked to privilege. Not everyone can afford to write when young.”

Debbie Taylor, the author and editor of Mslexia magazine, agrees. “I am the founder member of Club 34,” she told The Independent on Sunday last year. “All members of the club, whatever their age, have agreed to say that they are 34. Many authors signed up at the time, including Fay Weldon. The Club was formed as a way of protesting about writing prizes and competitions which operate an upper age limit (typically 35). This kind of cut-off discriminates against women, many of whom have to halt their creative careers when they are looking after children, the disabled or elderly relatives.”

Carys Bray married young and had five children during her twenties. It was only when her youngest child went to school that she was able to consider writing seriously. “I don’t particularly mind being considered an ‘older writer’ (despite the fact that, at 39, I’m not exactly ancient!). I adore Carol Shields’s writing. I felt so inspired when I discovered that she was a mother of five and her first novel was published when she was 40. It gave me a sense that it wasn’t too late for me to start writing.”

Claire Fuller says: “In my twenties and thirties I was running a small business and a home, raising children … I’d rather the focus was on the work, not on the year that the producer of that work happened to be born – I don’t really understand how that is relevant.” She has joined a recently-formed group for writers over 40 called The Prime Writers, which has more than 50 members and also includes Antonia Honeywell (The Ship) and Vanessa Lafaye (Summertime). “We want to celebrate the older debutant and show that you don’t have to be young to be a new writer.”

During our long and heartfelt meeting to draw up our shortlist, nobody once mentioned the ages of the authors we were discussing: it was a happy accident that we have one in their twenties, thirties and forties. Any reader who reads these three brilliant books, each as assured, inventive and engaging as the other, will realise the irrelevance of such categories.

Extracts

Our Endless Numbered Days, by Claire Fuller

Fig Tree, £14.99

“ ‘Dates only make us aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off. From now on, we’re going to live by the sun and the seasons.’ My father spun me around, laughing. ‘Our days will be endless.’

With my father’s final notch, time stopped for us on the 20th of August, 1976.”

A Song for Issy Bradley, by Carys Bray

Hutchinson, £7.99

“She waits outside the door to Issy’s room for a moment. Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe she lacks faith, maybe she’s wrong and there is hope; where there is life there is hope – people say that, don’t they? She pushes the door open, hears the song of the machines and she knows, as surely as if she has plucked the knowledge from a tree and eaten it. She can feel it in her throat where it congregates in a lump she can hardly swallow around. She sits down and Julie hands her a tissue. She wipes her eyes with one hand and strokes Issy’s motionless head with the other. She brushes the tilt of Issy’s jaw, cups the curve of her cheek, follows the swirl of her ear, and she knows.”

Elizabeth is Missing, by Emma Healey

Viking, £7.99

“The thing is to be systematic, try to write everything down. Elizabeth is missing and I must do something to find out what’s happened. But I’m so muddled. I can’t be sure about when I last saw her or what I’ve discovered. I phoned and there’s no answer. I haven’t seen her.”

Louise Doughty is the chair of judges for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2015, which rewards the best debut novel of the year from the UK or Ireland. This year’s winner will be announced on 1 July