The English Roses

The children's book by Madonna.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

MARK LAWSON:
Elaine, pop star probably A-plus, movie star, C minus. What about as a children's writer?

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
Absolutely failure. The heroine is Binah, a name from Kabala. Its only legitimacy is that at least it's more attractive than if you called her Hochmar. The characters are completely undistinguished. I thought the illustrations were really amateurish and commercial, and I thought this was a pretty much of a failure all the way round.

MARK LAWSON:
Paul, if she were the unknown Mrs Madge Ritchie, would it have been published?

PAUL MORLEY:
No. I think its a fabulous notion that to be a writer at that level, really all you have to do is do this and you have the sense you are an author. It's the perfect follow-up to 'Sex'. It's taken a long time to do it, about a word every year. It's a great gift book. It's for ten or 11-year-olds but in some ways it's written for five or six-year-olds. I am not sure where it fits. In the hope she will allow me one day to interview her, I will give it eight out of ten!

MARK LAWSON:
Do you understand why she has done this?

DEBORAH BULL:
If you believe the jacket, all the proceeds are going to charity. I think it's just something for her to do. I had a real problem with it because the moral of the story that envy is a bad thing is a great moral. But I have a real problem because all the girls within the book had these Atkins diet thin legs and impossibly large Bambi eyes and they are little girls which little girls would be envious of. If I had a kid, I wouldn't want them to be looking at those girls wishing they were them.

MARK LAWSON:
Elaine, do you understand why she has done it?

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
Well, legitimacy. "I too can be a writer."

PAUL MORLEY:
She has done it because she can.

MARK LAWSON:
She has become obsessed the idea she can re-invent herself.