The inimitable Caitlin Moran served on the judging panel for this year's Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. ELLE spoke to her at the awards ceremony in London last week.
What was your verdict on Eimear McBride's Bailey's Prize-winning novel A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing?
I loved it, we all did. I'd gone through about 40 awful books but as soon as I got my copy I started reading it. Halfway through I just bit the book because I thought 'this is so good!' When you've read 130-ish books in such a short amount of time, you're waiting for a book that goes 'it has to be me'. It's like falling in love, you meet this book and you're like 'this is the one I have to marry'. It's ballsy, completely original and tackles really huge topics. You'll be horrified, you'll be crying, but most of all you'll be transported by how beautiful the writing is.
What are you reading at the moment?
Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, which is a series of essays about popular culture. Every page is amazing. I'm also re-reading John Niven's Straight White Male because it's just so funny and dirty and amazing.
If you were a canapé what canapé would you be?
Something with booze in! Failing that, a fag with a polo mint threaded over it (so I can freshen my breath afterwards).
If you could live in any literary world, what would it be?
Narnia, I love Narnia. I quite fancy Aslan, I mean, if you're ever going to cop off with a literary lion, who is also God, it's got to be him. So yeah, I'd live in Narnia so I could get with Aslan.
How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran is out in July
Words by Rhiannon Davies
