Tag 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.

Leave a comment

Filed under Bestseller, Booker Prize, Fiction, Prize Winner

Tagged as , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under Booker Prize, Fiction

Tagged as , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under Booker Prize, Fiction, Prize Winner

Tagged as ,

June 6, 2016 · 5:21 pm

The Paying Guests: Books to Avoid Reading On Your First Week of Carpool

Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests is set in 1922 London. Setting is important here because the backdrop of postwar changes in economics and class, social and gender expectations and disaffection with the grand truths of justice deepen the themes explored in this erotic noir. (I didn’t realize I was choosing a novel with erotic scenes when I picked it up from my shelf (the last of the holiday haul), though I ought to have known better having read – and enjoyed – Waters’ The Little Stranger and The Night Watch. Reading it during my first weeks of a carpool positions me to give this advice: be prepared to squirm for ten odd pages).

The novel follows the life of Frances as she struggles to maintain the family home in the absence of male income (see Remains of the Day). Forced to take on ‘paying guests,’ she and her mother are joined in their aging home by the lower-class, freer spirits of Lilian and Leonard Barber. If the first half of the novel traces the budding… relationships between Frances and the couple, the second half takes a decidedly different turn in exploring love tested not by societal expectation, but by conscience and trust. Rather than fuss too much about who loves whom, the novel instead explores the nervousness of (new) love and the doubt that accompanies it (and it goes to some plot extremes to do so).

I very much enjoyed this one. Well crafted, expert character development, written with careful and evocative language (*cough*) it is a delight to be immersed in.  Though I’ll admit that after A. pointed out the frequency of the word ‘queer’ in the novel I was somewhat distracted by its repetition (a project for some student to trace and explore diction in Waters’ work – the way she works the connotations of the early 20th century against that of the contemporary reader).

In entirely unrelated matters, I finished reading the novel in the campus gardens during lunch today. In writing this post a bug has flown out of my hair and now I can’t stop checking to make sure there aren’t more insects all. over. me. Such are the hazards of having this literary vice.

Leave a comment

Filed under Bestseller, British literature, Fiction, Mystery, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,