Book of the Decade? Silly award, web poll, really good result

PRESENT TENSE:The children's book that surprisingly topped the latest online literary poll shows how we could sell Irishness, writes SHANE HEGARTY

IF YOU WERE going to come up with a wheeze for a prize that would get you maximum publicity with minimum credibility, you could do worse than follow the lead of the Irish Book of the Decade. It was a brilliant idea, involving a big list, big names, a longlist followed by a shortlist for that double whammy of publicity, and a slice of popular culture that we like to gab about. Someone should win a prize for coming up with that prize.

The winner was chosen by an online poll. These polls can be distorted by fan groups, mail campaigns or someone getting the fine idea that, as once happened, it would be great to make A Nation Once Againthe world's most popular song. They are easily undermined, easily turned into a joke and easily the least accurate guides to anything.

Which makes it quite a surprise that the Irish Book of the Decade stumbled on to something pretty interesting: it picked a kids' book, Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy. Or, at least, its young readers voted in enough numbers to outweigh the votes for Banville or McCann or Tóibín or any of the other 40-plus books on the list – most of which would be read by nobody under 16.

The win was ridiculous, in the way that the whole idea of comparing utterly different books, across a variety of genres, was ridiculous. Yet it hit on something important. Because, while it may not be a book that most adult readers are aware of, it is a good winner for two reasons: (1) it represents the rise of genre fiction in Ireland, and (2) it’s really good.

The other children’s book on the list was Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, the first in a series of bestsellers about a juvenile master criminal. Apart from their target market, the works of Landy and Colfer have something else in common: they’re both very Irish. Not just Irish in that they’re written here, or have an Irish sensibility to their humour, but in that they are set in Ireland.

Skulduggery Pleasant may feature a wisecracking skeleton detective wizard whose wife and child were killed centuries before, but it’s set in a small coastal town not unlike Lusk, where Landy lives, and takes occasional trips to Grafton Street. Artemis Fowl goes to a private school in Co Wicklow and takes occasional trips to the underworld.

The combined sales of the two authors reach into millions. On one level, then, we once again return to the topical but fuzzy notion of what we mean when we talk about exporting and exploiting Irish culture and the rest of the world’s idea of it. There are hundreds of thousands of kids around the world whose idea of Ireland is partly informed by books that most Irish adults will never read.

Some of our children’s writers, though, have been going about their business with only occasional publicity, which is not always relative to their success. There is also a host of writers and illustrators of younger children’s books who do brilliant work that goes beyond their success in making children’s bedtime as entertaining for the parents as for the kids.

There were books on the Irish Book of the Decade longlist that could not match the creativity and intelligence of the books of, say, Oliver Jeffers, a writer and illustrator probably unknown to most Irish people old enough to be read. Could his The Incredible Book-Eating Boy have featured on a list of Irish books of the decade? Maybe not, but he would definitely have made a similar list of Irish writers.

Another list – that of the most-borrowed books from Irish libraries – was also published this week. Seven of the 10 most borrowed authors write for children. Colfer was among the three most-borrowed Irish authors, but the list was topped by Darren Shan, whose vampire series has sold 15 million copies.

These writers are adding to the success of crime and women’s fiction in changing the stereotype of Irish fiction. In the official version, the version in which we export our culture for some monetary return, Irish fiction is something grand and weighty. When Colm Tóibín, in the guise of Brooklyn, writes a Maeve Binchy book, it’s literary fiction. When Binchy writes a book, it is not. When Listowel Writers’ Week chose a shortlist for its Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, it selected some literary fiction that was obviously inferior to several excellent crime novels published in Ireland last year.

And, normally, vampires or skeleton detectives or book-eating boys don't feature in our idea of Irish fiction or culture either. They should. Skulduggery Pleasantwon a silly award this week. It would be nice to think it could have serious repercussions.