Ian McEwan has criticised blockbuster novels, which can run to 900 pages, saying few "earn their length" and are in need of serious editing.
Ian McEwan has just published his sixteenth novel The Childrens Act, which comes in at 224 pages or barely 55,000 words.
Talking to Radio Four’s Today programme, the 66-year-old Man Booker and Jerusalem Prize winner said that when reading long works of fiction, his fingers are “always twitching for a blue pencil.”
Donna Tartt’s recent best-selling novel The Goldfinch runs to 880 pages while Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries endures for all of 848 pages.
“The Americans especially love a really huge novel, they still pursue the notion of a great American novel and it has to be a real brick of an object," declared McEwan. “Very few really long novels earn their length," he added.
Eleanor Catton, who won the Man Booker prize with The Luminaries in 2013, has responded to McEwan’s criticisms. The 28-year-old New Zealand author said: "Four disappointing 200-page novels is four times the disappointment of one disappointing 800-page one, I reckon.
"I do agree with him that length has to be earned, but that's true of every aspect of fiction, so hardly a newsflash. Plus his metaphor is out of date – nobody uses blue pencils any more, Ian."
