Tuesday, June 06, 2017

if only I could have dunmore to help

Generally, Electric Halibut is fair and proportionate and equitable in his dealing out of death - the last five literary victims of the ongoing Curse Of Electric Halibut have all been over 80 - but just occasionally he likes to pluck someone younger to his icy bosom just pour encourager les autres. Don't get complacent, younger novelists, he says, this could happen to you.

Sure enough the latest victim, Helen Dunmore, was a fairly youthful 64, which makes her the third-youngest novelist on this grim list (Iain Banks at 59 is the youngest), and one of only five under 80 of the seventeen that are now on the list. Here's the latest list:

Author Date of first book Date of death Age Curse length
Michael Dibdin 31st January 2007 30th March 2007 60 0y 59d
Beryl Bainbridge 14th May 2008 2nd July 2010 77 2y 50d
Russell Hoban 23rd August 2010 13th December 2011 86 1y 113d
Richard Matheson 7th September 2011 23rd June 2013 87 1y 291d
Elmore Leonard April 16th 2009 20th August 2013 87 4y 128d
Iain Banks 6th November 2006 9th June 2013 59 6y 218d
Doris Lessing 8th May 2007 17th November 2013 94 6y 196d
Gabriel García Márquez 10th July 2007 17th April 2014 87 6y 284d
Ruth Rendell 23rd December 2009 2nd May 2015 85 5y 132d
James Salter 4th February 2014 19th June 2015 90 1y 136d
Henning Mankell 6th May 2013 5th October 2015 67 2y 152d
Umberto Eco 30th June 2012 19th February 2016 84 3y 234d
Anita Brookner 15th July 2011 10th March 2016 87 4y 240d
William Trevor 29th May 2010 20th November 2016 88 6y 177d
John Berger 10th November 2009 2nd January 2017 90 7y 55d
Nicholas Mosley 24th September 2011 28th February 2017 93 5y 159d
Helen Dunmore 10th March 2008 5th June 2017 64 9y 89d

You'll notice that Dunmore's curse was the longest to take effect of all, it being a little over nine years since the solitary book review, Talking To The Dead in March 2008. Your Blue-Eyed Boy remains the only other novel of hers that I've read.

She is also the third victim this year, which matches the three in each of 2015 and 2016, though of course the year is only half-gone, so it could be a massacre by December. 2013 is the deadliest complete year so far with four victims. Of course as time goes on and more new authors appear on the list the pool of potential victims increases, assuming that my acquisition of new authors to read books by outstrips the rate of their subsequent demise.

No comments: