Lost for Words: A Novel Read online

  ‘I have no idea why she would say something like that. Nicola has always been fond of a practical joke, but I really think this is going a bit too far. Besides, it makes no sense, since the book I’m supposed to have recommended didn’t win!’

  ‘She says that’s just incompetence,’ said the interviewer. ‘Were you planning to share the money?’

  ‘Now, look here,’ said Penny, genuinely indignant, ‘our committee has been working extremely hard all year, in order to bring the very best works of literature to the public’s attention, and those discussions have always been strictly confidential. To suggest otherwise is not only an insult to me but also to my colleagues and friends.’

  ‘Some of us have been following Jo Cross’s Twitter wars with critics of the Long List for several weeks now,’ said the interviewer.

  ‘I’m not prepared to discuss these matters any further,’ said Penny, ‘for the very reason that they are, as I’ve said, strictly confidential.’

  ‘Are you saying that Twitter is confidential?’

  Penny turned her back on the camera and walked out of shot.

  ‘Oh dear, well, I seem to have lost Penny Feathers,’ said the interviewer. ‘I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot more about this year’s highly controversial Elysian Prize, but that’s all we’ve got time for tonight and so…’

  Katherine switched off the television and tossed the remote control onto the floor under her bedside table.

  ‘I’m sick of prizes,’ she said.

  ‘Comparison, competition, envy and anxiety,’ said Sam.

  ‘Let’s just make love and be happy.’

  ‘Vaste Programme,’ said Sam, ‘as De Gaulle said to the heckler who shouted, “Death to the idiots”.’

  ‘That is too ambitious,’ said Katherine, ‘but my programme is completely realistic, especially the first half.’

  ‘Ah, the first half,’ said Sam, sliding down the sheets.

  ‘Which will lead naturally to the second half,’ said Katherine.

  They smiled at each other and all the irony seemed to have rushed from the world, restoring it to a place where things happened naturally and incomparably.

  ALSO BY EDWARD ST. AUBYN

  Never Mind

  Bad News

  Some Hope

  Mother’s Milk

  At Last

  On the Edge

  A Clue to the Exit

  A Note About the Author

  Edward St. Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of a series of highly acclaimed novels about the Melrose family, including At Last and Mother’s Milk, which was short-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, as well as the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge.

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2014 by Edward St. Aubyn

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2014 by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, Great Britain

  Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2014

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  St. Aubyn, Edward, 1960–

  Lost for words: a novel / Edward St. Aubyn. — First American edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-374-28029-1 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71148-1 (ebook)

  1. Novelists—Fiction. 2. Literary prizes—Fiction. 3. Satire. I. Title.

  PR6069.T134 L68 2014

  823'.914—dc23

  2013048089

  www.fsgbooks.com

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