Lost for Words: in defence of Edward St Aubyn's prize satire

It got a thumbs down from reviewers, but the Wodehouse comic fiction prize was right to recognise this delicious jeu d'esprit

Edward St Aubyn's satirical novel Lost for Words, which depicts the fools and frauds who judge a prestigious literary prize and the charlatans who compete for it, has just won a prestigious literary prize. This year's Wodehouse prize for comic fiction has gone to a novel that had received a general thumbs down from reviewers (including in this newspaper). Do the judges know something the critics don't?

Well, yes. The many characters in this short book are all superficially drawn, but the narrative does delicious justice to each one's particular follies. St Aubyn's usual method in his novels is to move disconcertingly between the points of view of his characters, including the idiots and the monsters. In Lost for Words each short chapter is a capsule for one person's habits of thought, pursued with elegant ruthlessness by the author. The author has spoken of writing speedily, abandoning his usual practice of endless revision. Plot and structure matter little, but any page has something delicious.

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