I've probably already revealed my best reads of 2008 with all these prize draws (though you'll get a list anyway) but if there has been one discovery this year that has moved me beyond all other it is the writing of Janet Frame.
That will come as no surprise to regular visitors here because I've been waxing uncontrollably lyrical about Janet who has hovered there on the edges of my reading radar for so long. You may recall it was Stella Duffy's passionate pleading (and that laugh) at the du Maurier festival back in May that finally tipped me over the edge and into reading and Linda Grant who egged me on to discover more.
Now I find that I have gathered in another one of those special writers who, no exaggeration, will be at my reading right-hand and alongside me forever. I'll read and re-read and though the books are not easy to find here in the UK at the moment I suspect that Janet's star will be in the ascendency in 2009 as Virago bring more of her books back into print here.
So we must all be prepared with an advent of our own and of course I'll willingly guide you in the right direction, so six very lucky winners today as Virago have kindly offered three copies of Janet's complete autobiography An Angel at My Table and three copies of the previously unpublished novel Towards Another Summer.
Is that good or is that absolutely amazing?
This prize draw so ecstatically marvellous that I almost wish I could enter it myself except I've got both books welded to my reading hand already, and I have a Janet Frame shelf slowly filling up too, and I've even got a little pet kiwi on my desk.
Names in comments and God bless Janet I say (oh yes and New Zealand too of course).
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