The Best Bad Book Reviews of the Year

The Omnivore has announced the shortlist for The Hatchet Job of the Year, a distinction thrust upon “the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.”

The shortlisted reviewers are:

Craig Brown on Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Internet by Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein, The Mail on Sunday
Rachel Cooke on Strictly Ann: The Autobiography by Ann Widdecombe, The Observer
Lucy Ellmann on Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland, The Guardian
A A Gill on Autobiography by Morrissey, The Sunday Times
Peter Kemp on The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, The Sunday Times
Frederic Raphael on A Delicate Truth by John le Carré, The TLS
David Sexton on The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, London Evening Standard
Hedley Twidle on The Last Train to Zona Verde by Paul Theroux, New Statesman

For more “best of” book reviewing, don’t miss Brian Hurley’s Critical Hit Awards column.