Category Archives: Booker Prize

March 16, 2026 · 1:23 pm

Flesh: Weird and great

It’s hard to describe the narrative style of David Szalay’s Flesh, except maybe to say it’s unsettling? Other reviews describe it as ‘sparse,’ which I guess is a nod to the matter-of-fact descriptions and the abrupt changes to our protagonist, István’s, life. Like between two paragraphs he murders a man (accidentally?) and then in the gap between chapters goes to prison or war or or or.

I happened to enjoy the (somewhat jarring) jumps in time and the oddity of István as a protagonist (like he seems primarily motivated by whatever holds his attention in the moment, and achingly insecure), but I can see how another reader might find the narration hard to settle in to or missing something (though not the Booker jury who awarded it the 2025 prize).

There’s probably an undergraduate essay or thesis to be made of the representation of women in the novel – from the opening older woman (a gasp, 40 something) who first seduces István and then teaches him how to be an attentive lover until he (problematically) falls in love with her to the rich woman he chauffeurs around before (series of spoilers and events) marrying her and settling into a life of wealth and leisure (though it’s a stretch to say he settles in because isn’t he always a bit at odds with it all). Women then are tempting and distracting and absorbing – and (understandably because the book is about István) represented as in service to István’s character development.

Anyway, I liked it though I’m not sure I’d recommend it? Like maybe you have to be in the right mood for something kinda weird and different. If you’ve read it, let me know what you think.

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February 24, 2025 · 3:09 am

The Wren, the Wren: It might be brilliant; it might be boring

Honestly? I’m not sure. There were moments reading Anne Enright’s The Wren, the Wren that I was convinced it was genius. Sublime writing that catches you and holds you. Simple thematic question – what do we owe our inheritance, what do we blame the fathers and men. Rich, rich, imagery and poetry and playful form.

And then moments where I just didn’t care very much what happened to the characters, or couldn’t remember who a character was talking to or why, or whether an image was meant to be Significant or whether it was just there to prove the great writing.

I could let it percolate another few days and maybe I’d be clearer. But I think if I do the likelihood I forget the book entirely is high. There’s just not much there to hang on to; instead, a lot of imagery, a lot of certainty it is Very Beautiful Writing.

So sure – it won the Booker, and – as I Keep On Saying – it’s quite beautiful. And there are scenes I think might haunt me. But would I recommend it? Goddddd. I just don’t know.

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March 17, 2024 · 8:22 pm

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is lovely. A short – novella? – novel that follows Furlong, the small town coal-delivery man as he discovers truths both of his own past and of the horrors of the Catholic “mother and baby homes.” When Furlong discovers a young woman being held captive in a coal shed the nuns who have kept her there implicitly threaten to deny Furlong’s own daughters access to the Church-run school. Furlong must then decide between preserving the goodwill of the Church for his own family and rescuing – at least one – of these trapped women. Complicating his choice is Furlong’s status as a bastard himself, raised to ‘goodness’ through the mercy of a wealthy woman who allowed his own mother to stay with her despite her ‘fallen’ status.

What, the book asks, should we be willing to give up for a just cause? What personal sacrifice do we owe when institutional harm and state violence is being wreaked upon the innocent? How can we imagine ourselves inherently good or worthy or kind when so much of what we are and what we have owes to chance and circumstance? And so, with the privilege we do hold, what moral obligation do we have to use this privilege well?

For Furlong this is a question pondered by the fire with a decision that he recognizes as implicating those he loves best and. For the reader these are the questions that are not – as historical fiction always reminds us – of the past, but urgently present.

It is an excellent read and one offered on St. Patrick’s day for its very certain setting. Oh and to let you know it was adapted for TV with Cillian Murphy starring, so you know, that’s also a good reason to read it.

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October 9, 2021 · 1:57 am

Shuggie Bain: Not a cheerful read, and other true things.

Douglas Stuart’s 2020 Booker Prize Winner, Shuggie Bain, is the sort of fat novel you crawl inside. It’s not particularly plot-y, but it is an entirely realized world of a falling apart family and a boy realizing himself. It opens with fifteen year old Shuggie on his own in a dire rooming house, before flashing back to his years as a young child growing up with his alcoholic mum, Agnes, and his serially cheating dad, Shug. Plus his half-siblings who are busy protecting themselves and his grandparents who blame themselves for Agnes’ behaviour, but aren’t equipped to recognize what needs to be done to protect Shuggie. We leap around in time following Shuggie – and Agnes – as the gay son navigates a world with parents who do little, but are somehow still sympathetic.

With that, the novel unfolds around Shuggie and what we can reasonably hope for his life given what surrounds him. And maybe that’s what makes it such a claustrophobic novel. The sort where you where you know from the opening pages that nothing good will happen. Thatcher’s Glasgow sort of nothing good will happen.

But the writing. It’s such beautiful writing.

So maybe if you’re ready – 2020 was probably not the right time to read it – you could give it a read.

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