Spectator Books of the Year: The story that’s too funny for the Man Booker Prize

I loved Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton, £12.99). It’s a short, characteristically oblique story of a young woman in southern Spain with her crapulous mother, there to attend a dodgy-sounding, marble-adorned medical establishment where they hope to find — at last — a cure for the mother’s inability to walk. It’s no surprise it didn’t win the Man Booker prize, because as well as being elegant and deeply strange, it’s hummingly funny throughout. As we all know, prize juries regard jokes as a distinct

disadvantage.

I’m reviewing the year’s cricket books at the moment for next April’s Wisden, and the outstanding volume so far has been The Grade Cricketer, by Dave Edwards, Sam Perry and Ian Higgins (Melbourne Books, £14.99). This is actually even funnier than Hot Milk, a faux-memoir by a low-level Australian cricketer of modest talents, who knows that scoring runs and taking wickets matter less than the possession of a good ‘rig’ (body) and a decent grasp of Anchorman quotes. ‘Most grade cricketers have contemplated switching clubs at one stage or another. As humans, we have an inherent tendency to think the grass is greener on the other side. But all grass looks the same when you’re standing on it for six fucking hours every Saturday, wondering what you’re doing with your life.’

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