Fair play to Robert McCrum. Compiling a list over two years entitled The 100 best novels written in English for the Observer and guardian.com is not simply sticking your head over the literary parapet, it is running naked into no-man’s-land with a target painted on your chest and a kick-me sign pinned to your back. The brickbats were not long in coming, not least over the preponderance of dead white males, which engendered a backlash as predictable as it was deserved, led by his colleague Rachel Cooke. Nuala O’Connor, whose new novel, Miss Emily, is published today, observed: “I did see McCrum’s list and wept inwardly. No doubt others will say more coherently what I would say anyway, which...
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