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My agent actually told me that One Good Turn wasn’t put on the longlist for the Booker because it was regarded as genre fiction, and I just thought, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” It is so elitist! To me, it’s like Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose” — well, I say a book is a book is a book. There are good books, bad books, mediocre books. Why is it necessary to say it’s not any good because it is a crime novel, a romance, or whatever? Jane Austen wrote romance for heaven’s sake. Dickens wrote crime novels.

• Powells.com Interviews – Kate Atkinson