Does award-winning always mean good?

Twice in the last month I have had discussions around the issue of whether ‘award-winning’ necessarily equates to good. Different audiences, different situations. The discussions were around books and what enhances or detracts from their enjoyment. More concisely: does the fact that a book is listed as an award-winning work mean that, after we all rush off to buy our respective copies, due to its elevated status as a literary work, we will necessarily find it a good read?

Yes, the enjoyment or lack of, of literary works, appreciation of art, theatre or similar such pursuits is subjective and therefore cannot be generalized; but are the many award lists out there that some of these works find themselves on not a way of affirming that the book has passed some judgement and is therefore 'good'; that it will be liked, irrespective of readers' diverse tastes? Being an award-winning book, work of art or theatre production does affirm the 'stamp of approval' already garnered from the publication, exhibition or production of said work.

Which then makes me wonder: What if, after reading a 'great literary work' as affirmed by whatever latest award it has been endowed, you find yourself unmoved and failing to find an interpretation that makes sense – assuming that you were able to finish the book in the first place. Can you confidently criticise the book without suffering the wrath of the literary gods? Most of us tend not to do this, at the risk of being labelled cultural or literary obtuse. Why is that?

Ben Okri’s The Famished Road was a part of this discussion and in a room of nine

intelligent, educated, well-read women there was not a single voice that affirmed that The Famished Road was as good as the judges of the Man Booker Prize of 1991,and the rest of the world thought it to be. Even as I write this post I tremble in fear of one day having to face Mr. Okri  to defend my words. But the truth is that the magic realism in this particular work did not appeal to any of our tastes.

Comments abound were: “ I did not finish that book”;  “I tried but I did not get it”;  “that was a difficult read” . After a extended discussion of The Famished Road - which in itself shows the success of the book for there we were, for a good part of the evening sitting and discussing this book in great detail - we all felt vilified in some small way because we were indeed not the obtuse literary philistines we may

have secretly thought we were. 

Would this explain my feelings of The Famished Road?

This handful of people all somehow felt that perhaps the 1991 Man Booker judges could have done better in their selection; or perhaps it was slim pickings that year from African entrants; or that whatever criteria used could have been revised. What are your thoughts on Ben Okri's book, a book that has widely come to be regarded as a literary masterpiece?

I still have The Famished Road on my bookshelf, perhaps I will tackle it again one day. Then after I will also get around to Infinite Riches, which for now sits unread, right next to its predecessor.

Two days after the Ben Okri evening,  a book club member mentioned that she was in the middle of a book which she had bought because, amongst other reasons, it had been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. She was struggling to get through it, but she was determined to finish it because ‘it was shortlisted…’

Once again the 'award-winning spectre' had reared its ugly head. I am not disputing that most literary works that have been judged as worthy of reading, are indeed so. But I am wondering whether the criteria of their selection can create a bias to their selection from year to year irrespective of whether they are masterpieces or not.

How often have your reading choices been influenced by the literary awards garnered by those works?