Do you read for two hours to decide if you’ve found a good book? From now on, I’m just reading page 112

I try my hardest to keep up with literary prize-related reading but I’m hopelessly behind on the latest Booker, Costa and Samuel Johnson winners (although I thoroughly and wholeheartedly recommend Andrew Michael Hurley’s Costa first novel award-winning The Loney). It’s depressing, sometimes, to admit that I’m never going to get up to date. So I was relieved to see, thanks to the Complete Review, a literary prize that I can get on board with: Le Prix de la Page 112, which has just announced its shortlist.

Inspired by a line from Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters – “Don’t forget the poem on page 112. It reminded me of you!” – the French literary award asks its jury, at first, to read only page 112 of each novel.

“For several decades, editors and writers have given an exceptional care to the beginning of a book, in order to impress the reader immediately,” the prize explains. “But what happens in the rest of the book? Alas … too often, nothing at all.”

So they came up with a theory: page 112 is the point at which they believe the attention of an author and a publisher is most likely to have lapsed.

“Everyone neglects page 112,” they write. “That’s why we chose it. Our logic is simple. If a remarkable page 112 is rare, then it is allowed to hope that the novel in which it appears might also be remarkable, from beginning to end.” If a novel has a beautiful 112, the jury will read the rest of the book.

This seems … a reasonable theory. I’ve grabbed three books from my shelves to see if it works. In Rebecca, we have the narrator being told that “you are so very different from Rebecca” and Maxim angrily dragging her out on a walk. I’d definitely read on.

The Chrysalids? There’s David communicating with Petra and talking about how “it is not at all easy to explain in words how one can make intelligible thought-shapes”. If I didn’t know what was going on, I think I’d be intrigued enough to read more.

The Lives of Christopher Chant? Christopher is stepping into a pentagram so the number of remaining lives he has can be investigated.

I like this – a lot. No more judging a book by cover, blurb and the first few pages in a bookshop. I’ll be turning straight to page 112 from now on, to make my decision. What are the best 112s on your shelves? Please leave them in the comments, so we can all have a squiz.