In the words of the immortal Ronnie Barker ‘It’s been a funny old week’. Actually I think he always said ‘day’ but whatever. Doris Lessing is named as the Nobel Laureate, winning $1.6 million bleedin’ dollars at the age of 88 for goodness sake, her descendants will be delighted – and there is only one grumble. Harold Bloom, US literary critic, said the academy's decision was “pure political correctness”, and “although Ms Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable … fourth-rate science fiction.” Miaow! However, I’m afraid I agree, shock horror, although her early stuff I loved more than Harold did, I think.

And now Mister Pip has not won the Booker. I was one who dared to believe Lloyd could bring home the big one (or take it to Berlin, in fact), but Keri, your place in history is safe. However, as Geoff Walker says in his NZ Book Month blog, “Mister Pip is in many ways the real winner of the overall process. In a few weeks it has gone from 20 to 1 to 2 to 1 in the betting. None of the other novels have gone through such a transformation.” And hey, Lloyd still gets to meet the Queen, which, slag her off as you may, will probably be quite cool.

The winner of the Booker, Anne Enright’s The Gathering promises to be a jolly old read, bulging with angst, violence, poverty and alcoholism with bit of sexual abuse to round it out. She said it: “When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book”. D’you know – I won’t.

This is possibly due to the fact that I’ve been on a bit of a roll with grim reads. Paul Shannon’s Totem Hole had a small smattering of dark laughs and very interesting use or non-use of punctuation to set the scene, but on several occasions I had to put it down and have a slightly dazed rest from it, it was so gut-churningly yucky. Paul, I hope you had a good cleansing veggie juice and a respectful cuddle in some freshly-laundered jarmies with your spouse after that lot. I know I did.

Owen Marshall’s Drybread was not big on laughs at all, dark or light. Extremely crafted, beautiful spare writing, a look into the mind of a man on the verge of a mid-life crisis, an extraordinary, toe-curling Chapter 15 all about one’s relationship with one’s parents, as Graham Beattie raved about in his interview with Owen at the Going West Festival. But apart from light use of the wry office funny man, jesus it’s grim, grim, grim.

Even the lovely, delightfully marmalade-mad Shonagh Koea’s latest offering The Kindness of Strangers, while more uplilfting than the other two, is still a bit g-word, splattered as it is with freaky anecdotes about her evil bastard of a father who used to terrorise her and her mother to the point of insanity: stamping on the bath towels with muddy boots and raiding the house for anything saleable to drive away with. It's remarkable when you realise how this brilliant writer has battled to be who she is, of course, but g-g-grim.

Notwithstanding, I liked it a lot, in fact all three are excellent in very different ways, but I’m now craving something warm and comfy. I may have to dose myself with some old, battered Iris Murdoch, or… my extremely knackered, curly-sellotaped copy of National Velvet. The literary equivalent of some trackies, my Dad’s cardy, fluffy socks and a packet of sultana pasties. One thing I won’t be doing is rushing out and buying the new Booker winner. I have a feeling it’d be like squeezing into my tightest pair of skinny jeans (why? why?) and my highest heels and walking the length of Ponsonby Road for a very small salad. You kind of feel like you have to do it sometimes, but it ends up being an exercise in self-flagellation, and it’s just not good for the soul.