In what will no doubt be remembered - if it is remembered at all - as the least exciting literary race in recent times, the ragged drayhorses of the Booker Prize field are now lurching their way to the October 25 finish line. Yes, like Steve Bradbury before them, one will whoosh past the more deserving contenders - some who were long listed, some who were overlooked entirely - to snatch a spanking new doorstop to show off to their friends. Even my most rabid bookish mates have wandered off to more interesting pastures - I think the most anyone I know has read of the shortlist is four. Sucker is me, then. I've read them all. And I'm here to ramble my way through a form guide so you don't have to bother. Let me say at the outset, they're all pretty good books. I just don't see any particularly worthy of something so prestigious as the Booker. Well, except maybe one. But, in the year that the Nobel committee proved that prestige counts for jack shit, someone is going to be pretty bloody pleased that they kicked Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Chabon, Ali Smith, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Lethem and Zadie Smith's arses. So here's my take.
A Literary Safe Space
Booker is notorious for its literary conservatism so, as always, the more traditional type books sit atop the bookmaker's tables as close favourites*. Madeleine Thien is, perhaps surprisingly, outright top of the list at 2/1 with her epic family saga, Do Not Say We Have Nothing. It's a big and quite lovely book, riffing on the continuity of family through generations, particularly in the face of violent oppression and major societal change. Set mostly through the transitional Mao/Deng period of China and culminating in the Tiananmen Square Massage of 1989, it does not shy away from the brutality and degradation suffered by the "average" Chinese citizen. To me its greatest strength lay in its complexity - it was quite the moral challenge to make sense of characters who went from victims to collaborators to saviours. Thien is a fine, old school writer and this is sure to satisfy the casual reader. I suppose that makes it the safe choice for Team Booker. It's also the boring one. Deborah Levy gets her second chance at a Booker with Hot Milk, another charming (if creepy) addition to what has become a greatly admirable body of work. There are a lot of people who think she should have won it for Swimming Home but I think this is probably the better book. A daughter takes her ailing mother to a seaside Spanish village in search of miracle cure from a patently quackish doctor. It is a steaming, steamy novel - unsettling in its depiction of the tensions between the two women but even more so in its exploration of sexuality and desire. To me there was a distinctly Muriel Sparkish undertone. Think The Driver's Seat, if you will (there was even a stalkerish observer who intruded on the narrative to make sinister observations). I was waiting for a last minute suckerpunch and, although it never came, I closed the book with a sense of satisfaction and damp, sweaty palms. The bookies have Levy at 3/1. The track record for consolation Bookers has me rating it a decent chance. My love for the underdog (see below) kind of hopes it doesn't.
Barbarians at the Gate
This is the third year in which American novels have been eligible for Booker glory and this time round we have two rather unexpected contenders hobbling along the track. Paul Beatty's decidedly loopy comedy The Sellout has already picked up a fair few accolades (most notably the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award) and found itself on pretty much everyone's Best of 2015 list. Everyone but me, that is. As I said in my end of year wrap up, it's a good book with a genius premise and some truly brilliant comic moments but I couldn't help but feel that it overstayed its welcome. Beatty deserves laudatory attention just for the size of his cojones - it takes some massive ones to write about an African American guy attempting to bring back segregation in his neighbourhood and taking on a slave. He's also has a knack for outright hilarity. Every scene with the guy's inventor father is a comedic gem. There is, of course, a much darker side to the book. The Sellout has proven to be incredibly prescient and even necessary in the wake of the Ferguson riots and the frighteningly regressive racial tensions (hello, Trump and his basket of deplorables - special shoutout to the rednecks). Whether it has the legs to bag a Booker has yet to be seen but to my mind it is objectively the strongest contender. The punting public seems to think otherwise. Beatty is sitting at 6/1. The second American entry is even more unsettling - probably the bleakest novel ever to grace a Booker Prize shortlist and the only work likely to knock Ann Enright's The Gathering from its long standing throne of Booker bleakness. Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen is misery porn at its best. Eileen herself is a stunningly realised character - young, working in a boy's prison, single and brimming with self-loathing, she is equal parts tragedy and repulsive failure. Living with her abusive alcoholic father she dreams of physical intimacy (something that appears to have taken the place of "belonging" in her dreams), with the subject of her feelings shifting from person to person until it lands upon a mysterious new girl who comes to work at her prison and seems oddly obsessed with one particular prisoner. Don't look for redemption in this book. It will crush you like a coackroach and smear the muck of your carapace across a shit-stained toilet cubicle. But don't count it out either. The bookies have it as the rank outsider at 8/1. I think it stands a much better chance than punters seem to credit. You could stand to win quite a bit of money by backing it.
The Best Bet Outsider
Leaving Moshfegh aside, there's one other book that strikes me as The Little Engine That Could of Booker 2016. I was quick to dismiss Graeme Macrae Burnett's His Bloody Project as the token genre nomination, not to mention the token Small Press nomination. Then I read it. Wowee. It's a bloody (excuse the pun) excellent read. Indeed, to me it's the most enjoyable, thought provoking and straight-up good book on the shortlist. Of course, I'm one for historical fiction, but even objectively speaking Burnett's chain-of-voices device really works in depicting the injustice of the old Scottish feudal system. Centred around the confession of a young crofter, Roderick Macrae, who killed the oppressive town constable, Lachlan Broad, and two of Broad's children, Burnett also provides us with newspaper clippings from the day, a psychological report and a chronicle of the trial. The genius of the novel lies in its ultimate opacity - it's never entirely clear why Macrae murdered Broad. Sure, the constable was an evil, vindictive arsehole who picked on Macrae and his father, but there is suggestion of a sexual motive as well, not to mention a few other possibilities. We as readers are left to ponder and, I assure you, ponder you shall. As a snapshot of class injustice and the development of Commonwealth law in the 1800s, His Bloody Project is absolutely spot on. As an historical mystery (whydunnit more than whodunnit), it's my favourite since Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost. As a top quality triumph for independent publishing, it is my absolute favourite on the list. As a potential winner, at 4/1, it's a damn good bet.
And You Thought Novellas Were Contentious
Remember when the literary blogosphere went apeshit about Ian McEwan winning for Amsterdam? Then even more apeshit when On Chesil Beach was shortlisted (hopefully McEwan wasn't taking it personally)? Then Julian Barnes took it with a paltry 160 pages for The Sense of an Ending and the gloves were off. How can a novella win the Commonwealth's most prestigious literary prize? Well, step aside amateurs. If you thought length was an issue, then how about form? It would take a spectacularly generous soul to call David Szalay's All That Man Is a novel. It is, to put it bluntly, nine thematically linked short stories. None of them share characters. None of them cross over on plot. It's just a bunch of geographically dislocated losers meditating on their shitty lives and the mistakes they've made. The stories are good. Really good, in fact. But they do not, in any way I can tell, make up a novel. So here's the question. Do we just give it a leave pass and, like Dylan, say fuck the rules? Does Team Booker crown Szalay king of the novelists and then laugh at us from their crystal palace? The bookmakers give it a 6/1 chance of happening. I'm thinking more about snowflakes and hell.
So there you have it. My 2016 Booker Prize Form Guide. The Cliff Notes Version: It's between Beatty and Burnett, with Levy somewhere in the mix. The Bait For Bookworms Caveat: I've never picked it before.
Place your bets, people.
* All odds are from Ladbrokes as of the morning of Sunday 23 October.
Showing posts with label Literary Prizes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literary Prizes. Show all posts
The Nobel Prize 2016: The Fuck You Philip Roth Nobel
on Thursday, October 13, 2016
Ok, well those wacky pranksters at Team Nobel have well and truly punked us all. I was all ready to write how they made an arse out of me for getting the whole date thing wrong then they go and do this: BOB DYLAN! What the actual fuck? Now, I'm a Dylan fan as much as the next guy (I loved him in Pirates of the Caribbean) but, in a world of ever-diminishing giants, why would they give it to the grumpy old troubadour?
If I might put forward a wee theory:
Years ago, the chairman of the Nobel committee totally dissed Philip Roth and American literature in general, proclaiming that the Yanks were all but out of the running. There was, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, something of an outcry. What about McCarthy? Or DeLillo? Or Oates? Or Vollman? or... the list is almost endless. How then to shut up the whingers? Give it to the one guy who has always sat somewhere down the bottom of the betting table but who nobody ever thought stood a genuine chance. It goes to an American of the old guard who isn't Philip Roth. Yes, so far as I can tell, this year's Nobel Prize in Literature was the greatest instance of throwing shade at a single person ever in the history of the prize. It means they don't have to give it to an American for another five or six years, by which time they are counting on Roth having fallen off the perch. Batshit crazy genius!
No doubt there will be a fiery shitstorm in the literary blogosphere. Accusations will be thrown. Questions will be asked. I, of course, only have one question: Will Dylan face the audience when he collects the medal and mumbles his acceptance speech? Recent performances suggest not. At least old Phil won't have to look him in the eye.
Now I'm off to read some Krasznahorkai or Thiong'o. Because in my alternate reality they shared this year's prize. Hoorah!
If I might put forward a wee theory:
Years ago, the chairman of the Nobel committee totally dissed Philip Roth and American literature in general, proclaiming that the Yanks were all but out of the running. There was, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, something of an outcry. What about McCarthy? Or DeLillo? Or Oates? Or Vollman? or... the list is almost endless. How then to shut up the whingers? Give it to the one guy who has always sat somewhere down the bottom of the betting table but who nobody ever thought stood a genuine chance. It goes to an American of the old guard who isn't Philip Roth. Yes, so far as I can tell, this year's Nobel Prize in Literature was the greatest instance of throwing shade at a single person ever in the history of the prize. It means they don't have to give it to an American for another five or six years, by which time they are counting on Roth having fallen off the perch. Batshit crazy genius!
No doubt there will be a fiery shitstorm in the literary blogosphere. Accusations will be thrown. Questions will be asked. I, of course, only have one question: Will Dylan face the audience when he collects the medal and mumbles his acceptance speech? Recent performances suggest not. At least old Phil won't have to look him in the eye.
Now I'm off to read some Krasznahorkai or Thiong'o. Because in my alternate reality they shared this year's prize. Hoorah!
The Nobel Prize 2016: The One Where I Pick It Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
on Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Now I am by no means Sherlock Holmes (or Hercule Poirot or even, for that matter, Encyclopaedia Brown) but I deduce me a Nobel Prize announcement in the next 48 hours. It is, of course, Nobel week - those seven days where the word holds its collective breath to laud a bunch of people of whom they've never heard for the discovery of things they can't ever hope to understand. The Swedish Academy has already announced the gongs for Medicine and Physics. The Nobel Prize for Literature is a notoriously secretive affair, so much so that they won't even give us the date of the announcement. But one needn't possess the greatest sleuthing faculties to work it out. Check out the website. Medicine: October 3. Physics: October 4. Chemistry: October 5. Peace: October 7... Wait... What? NOTHING ON OCTOBER 6? Wow. I wonder what that could possibly mean! Of course, there's always the chance of a weekend reveal. The Economics Prize isn't announced until October 10, well after anyone's stopped giving a shit. But recent history suggests that the prize for Literature will be announced before the Peace Prize so that really only leaves one day.
With that rant done and dusted I now move to the likely laureate. Recent form has seen me so ridiculously off the mark that you can probably rule out whoever I pick. Same, I dare say goes for the bookies' odds. Yet again Haruki Murakami tops the list with short odds of 4/1, proving that should the Nobel ever come down to a popular vote, the prize will go to a throughly underserving person. Much like it often does already. I like that there is a bona fide cult of Murakami tragics and that they're willing to lose money every year in the vain hope of someone they think is cool and quirky snaring a slice of literary immortality, but come on. Murakami? Seriously? Adunis is up there again. He's a poet. His odds are 6/1. He stands a chance. If he wins I'll put him on the pile next to Transtromer (you know, the one that looks good on a coffee table but will never actually be opened). Interestingly, Philip Roth has made it up the list to come third in the betting. I'd love to see him win - he has pretty much defined American literature for the past 50 years and, now that he has retired, has plenty of time to polish whatever medals he can add to the trophy cabinet. The Academy openly hates Americans though so he's much more likely to be adding another face to his dartboard come Thursday. The rest of the top 10 is comprised of familiar names: Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Joyce Carol Oates, Ismail Kadare, Javier Marias, Jon Fosse, Ko Un and John Banville (though, to be fair Antunes, Krasznahorkai and Aria have the same odds as Banville, Un and Fosse).
I'd love to see Krasznahorkai win. The guy is an impenetrable genius. Then there's Kadare. Or Marias. Or Kundera. All brilliant. All unlikely to win now that I've singled them out. In that vein, I choose as my final pick Haruki Murakami. He will definitely win. 100%. You know what that means. No need to thank me.
With that rant done and dusted I now move to the likely laureate. Recent form has seen me so ridiculously off the mark that you can probably rule out whoever I pick. Same, I dare say goes for the bookies' odds. Yet again Haruki Murakami tops the list with short odds of 4/1, proving that should the Nobel ever come down to a popular vote, the prize will go to a throughly underserving person. Much like it often does already. I like that there is a bona fide cult of Murakami tragics and that they're willing to lose money every year in the vain hope of someone they think is cool and quirky snaring a slice of literary immortality, but come on. Murakami? Seriously? Adunis is up there again. He's a poet. His odds are 6/1. He stands a chance. If he wins I'll put him on the pile next to Transtromer (you know, the one that looks good on a coffee table but will never actually be opened). Interestingly, Philip Roth has made it up the list to come third in the betting. I'd love to see him win - he has pretty much defined American literature for the past 50 years and, now that he has retired, has plenty of time to polish whatever medals he can add to the trophy cabinet. The Academy openly hates Americans though so he's much more likely to be adding another face to his dartboard come Thursday. The rest of the top 10 is comprised of familiar names: Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Joyce Carol Oates, Ismail Kadare, Javier Marias, Jon Fosse, Ko Un and John Banville (though, to be fair Antunes, Krasznahorkai and Aria have the same odds as Banville, Un and Fosse).
I'd love to see Krasznahorkai win. The guy is an impenetrable genius. Then there's Kadare. Or Marias. Or Kundera. All brilliant. All unlikely to win now that I've singled them out. In that vein, I choose as my final pick Haruki Murakami. He will definitely win. 100%. You know what that means. No need to thank me.
The Booker Prize 2016: F&*$ The Favourites
on Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Well shiver me timbers and blow me down (and something about a bottle of rum... I could do with one of those). Ian McGuire's Cormac-McCarthy-On-The-High-Seas whaling epic has been scuttled in the harbour. Yep, the Booker Prize shortlist is out and my early pick - not to mention the bookies' favourite - didn't make the cut. Neither did JM Coetzee with his return-to-form The Childhood of Jesus or AL Kennedy with her much-lauded Serious Sweet.
If you haven't seen it yet, the six books vying for Booker glory this year are:
Paul Beatty (US) - The Sellout (Oneworld)
Deborah Levy (UK) - Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) - His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
I'm in two minds about it all. Might 2017 be the year that Booker broke free of its establishment chains and embraced the exciting underdogs? Or was my first impression when reading the long list right - it is a year that will fade into obscurity? For that matter where's the subcontinent? Where's Africa? Where the bloody hell is Australia?
Of course, I've only read one of the shortlisted books: The Sellout. Beatty has been basking in critical sunshine since its release, already having picked up a fair swag of rave reviews and a trusty old 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. I was only lukewarm on it - the idea of an African American guy trying to reintroduce segregation in his local neighbourhood is pretty funny, and the bits about his batshit crazy father are laugh-out-loud hilarious. However, the novel outstays its welcome, drawing the joke out that little bit too far to pack a knockout punch. Indeed, it was a Dishonourable Mention in my 2015 Most Overrated Books.
I've just started Graeme Macrae Burnet's novel and so far it's pretty cool. Notably, it continues the recent Booker trend of picking outsiders from genre fiction to sit alongside the more nose-in-the-air, port-swilling literary types. Deborah Levy is a bit of a Booker favourite, with her novel Swimming Home getting much love when it was shortlisted back in 2012. Reviews for Hot Milk have been generally positive (though not the slobbering adulation of the other) and I'm wondering whether Levy might be in line for one of those consolation Bookers a la Ian McEwan who won for Amsterdam when they regretted not having given it to him for his masterpiece, Enduring Love. That's not to say Hot Milk may not be deserving in its own right. I just haven't read it yet. Of the others, Szalay and Thien are unknown quantities and, tempting as it is to make wild and loose predictive pontifications (that's why you come here, right?), I might hold off until I've had the chance to give them a proper go.
That leaves Ottessa Moshfegh, the one contender that really interests me. Team Booker mistakenly bill it as her first novel but she did publish a decent length novella (of the kind for which both McEwan and Barnes won Bookers) called McGlue a couple of years back. The book was gritty, unrelenting and bleak yet still possessed of a strangely humorous undercurrent. If it's any indication of what to expect from Eileen, I suspect we have us a pretty strong dark horse.
It remains to be seen whether this really will be the blah-Booker or something completely refreshing. I'm still smarting that Coetzee and McGuire didn't make it but I suppose I now have reason to read three books I'd hoped to avoid. I can only be pleasantly surprised. I'll report back soon with my usual form guide. Until then... did someone say Nobel?
If you haven't seen it yet, the six books vying for Booker glory this year are:
Paul Beatty (US) - The Sellout (Oneworld)
Deborah Levy (UK) - Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) - His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
I'm in two minds about it all. Might 2017 be the year that Booker broke free of its establishment chains and embraced the exciting underdogs? Or was my first impression when reading the long list right - it is a year that will fade into obscurity? For that matter where's the subcontinent? Where's Africa? Where the bloody hell is Australia?
Of course, I've only read one of the shortlisted books: The Sellout. Beatty has been basking in critical sunshine since its release, already having picked up a fair swag of rave reviews and a trusty old 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. I was only lukewarm on it - the idea of an African American guy trying to reintroduce segregation in his local neighbourhood is pretty funny, and the bits about his batshit crazy father are laugh-out-loud hilarious. However, the novel outstays its welcome, drawing the joke out that little bit too far to pack a knockout punch. Indeed, it was a Dishonourable Mention in my 2015 Most Overrated Books.
I've just started Graeme Macrae Burnet's novel and so far it's pretty cool. Notably, it continues the recent Booker trend of picking outsiders from genre fiction to sit alongside the more nose-in-the-air, port-swilling literary types. Deborah Levy is a bit of a Booker favourite, with her novel Swimming Home getting much love when it was shortlisted back in 2012. Reviews for Hot Milk have been generally positive (though not the slobbering adulation of the other) and I'm wondering whether Levy might be in line for one of those consolation Bookers a la Ian McEwan who won for Amsterdam when they regretted not having given it to him for his masterpiece, Enduring Love. That's not to say Hot Milk may not be deserving in its own right. I just haven't read it yet. Of the others, Szalay and Thien are unknown quantities and, tempting as it is to make wild and loose predictive pontifications (that's why you come here, right?), I might hold off until I've had the chance to give them a proper go.
That leaves Ottessa Moshfegh, the one contender that really interests me. Team Booker mistakenly bill it as her first novel but she did publish a decent length novella (of the kind for which both McEwan and Barnes won Bookers) called McGlue a couple of years back. The book was gritty, unrelenting and bleak yet still possessed of a strangely humorous undercurrent. If it's any indication of what to expect from Eileen, I suspect we have us a pretty strong dark horse.
It remains to be seen whether this really will be the blah-Booker or something completely refreshing. I'm still smarting that Coetzee and McGuire didn't make it but I suppose I now have reason to read three books I'd hoped to avoid. I can only be pleasantly surprised. I'll report back soon with my usual form guide. Until then... did someone say Nobel?
The Miles Franklin Award 2016: AS Patrić's Black Rock White City
on Friday, August 26, 2016
Huzzah! The curse is lifted.
For years I have damned nominees in all manner of literary prizes to the inglorious abyss. Booker. Nobel. Pulitzer. Boroondara Local Library. In all those and more my "prediction" has turned out to be the kiss of death.
But all that ended tonight. I am no longer the kiss of death. I am not even a good bet. I am a fucking oracle. (Or a fluke, but I prefer words with three syllables.) Yes, AS Patrić just won the Miles Franklin, Australia's most prestigious literary award, for my B4BW Book of 2015, Black Rock White City. Just as I predicted. Before it was even published, no less (I read it in manuscript form when it was still called Life On Crumbs). #humblebrag #notevenslightlyhumble
Now I need not fawn again over how bloody great the novel is. If you want sup on some superlative soup then just check out my original review or my Book of the Year citation. I do, however, want to say that is a massive win for quality Australian literature. Great Australian novels are still being written. And noticed.
So congratulations to Alec and his publisher Transit Lounge for the most deserving Miles Franklin of recent times. Rare is the writer who combines such commitment to the craft of writing, generosity of spirit and goodness of heart with the knack for telling a ripper story. Thanks for giving us Black Rock White City. And, on a personal note, thanks for giving me the faith to once again make wildly loose predictions with a newfound sense of purpose and certainty. I may not always be right, but I will never again be in doubt.
For years I have damned nominees in all manner of literary prizes to the inglorious abyss. Booker. Nobel. Pulitzer. Boroondara Local Library. In all those and more my "prediction" has turned out to be the kiss of death.
But all that ended tonight. I am no longer the kiss of death. I am not even a good bet. I am a fucking oracle. (Or a fluke, but I prefer words with three syllables.) Yes, AS Patrić just won the Miles Franklin, Australia's most prestigious literary award, for my B4BW Book of 2015, Black Rock White City. Just as I predicted. Before it was even published, no less (I read it in manuscript form when it was still called Life On Crumbs). #humblebrag #notevenslightlyhumble
Now I need not fawn again over how bloody great the novel is. If you want sup on some superlative soup then just check out my original review or my Book of the Year citation. I do, however, want to say that is a massive win for quality Australian literature. Great Australian novels are still being written. And noticed.
So congratulations to Alec and his publisher Transit Lounge for the most deserving Miles Franklin of recent times. Rare is the writer who combines such commitment to the craft of writing, generosity of spirit and goodness of heart with the knack for telling a ripper story. Thanks for giving us Black Rock White City. And, on a personal note, thanks for giving me the faith to once again make wildly loose predictions with a newfound sense of purpose and certainty. I may not always be right, but I will never again be in doubt.
The Booker Prize 2016: The Blah Booker... (The Longlist)
on Saturday, July 30, 2016
Trust the first whiff of LitPrize Silly Season to lure me out from my cyber-cave. Yep, my hyperventilating over the senselessly subjective jockeying for literary immortality (yeah, who could possibly forget such classics as Paul Scott's Staying On or anything by Verner Von Heidenstam?) ought now be considered one of life's certainties along with death, taxes and the crushing disappointment of adulthood. It has, of course, been a cold winter so my arthritic bones have taken a little longer to click into gear than they have in the past (apparently, hitting 40 does that to you), but here I am!
And here is the 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist.
Paul Beatty (US) - The Sellout (Oneworld)
J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) - The Schooldays of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
A.L. Kennedy (UK) - Serious Sweet (Jonathan Cape)
Deborah Levy (UK) - Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) - His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ian McGuire (UK) - The North Water (Scribner UK)
David Means (US) - Hystopia (Faber & Faber)
Wyl Menmuir (UK) - The Many (Salt)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) - Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
Virginia Reeves (US) - Work Like Any Other (Scribner UK)
Elizabeth Strout (US) - My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
Meh.
Many of us had hoped that, once the fear of the American invasion subsided, the competition would be the great apocalyptic battleground of the English Language NovelTM. Or at least the Gladiator Arena. Turns out it's become little more than a kitchen table thumb wrestle. I usually try to talk it up but even the starry-eyed optimist in me can't get overly excited about this year's crop. First up, the absences. I thought Julian Barnes's latest was quite beautiful and worthy of a longlisting, if not something more. Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon must be smarting - I'd put a buck or two on them considering themselves the rightly winners of the first trans-Pacific Booker. Don Delillo probably couldn't care less which, I suppose is a good thing, because that seemed to be his attitude to the second half of his latest novel, Zero K. And then there's Ian McEwan. In steady decline, he might have been hoping that the forthcoming Nutshell would scoop him from the literary doldrums. His omission from Team Booker's love-in does not bode well.
As for the books that did get a nod, I've read only two. Ian McGuire's The North Water was a mostly riveting collision of Conrad, Melville and McCarthy set on a high seas whaler. It's got one of the best McCarthyesque villains of recent times and, for the most part, it rockets along with admirable vigour. Oddly, though, it peters out and leaves the reader - pardon the pun - cold in its lack of resolve. Paul Beatty's book has been the darling of the American literary world for the better part of a year. It's brash, funny and irreverent. Given the recent spilling over of racial tension in that country, it is also very timely. Anyone who imagines a batshit crazy African American guy's attempt to reintroduce segregation into his neighbourhood and then so deftly does so with tongue-firmly in cheek is deserving of attention. There are parts of The Sellout that are jaw-droppingly great. Anything with the unnamed narrator's father had me on the floor laughing. And some of the satirical barbs were inspired genius. But, much like McGuire's book, I was left a little disappointed by the work as a whole. Maybe it was the hype. Or maybe it's just not quite as good as people say.
As for the rest of the field, I'm very keen to see J.M. Coetzee get another nod. The sequel to his uneven but quite interesting The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus looks to be more Kafkaesque in its execution which can only be a good thing. The first half of Childhood was brilliant in its ability to unsettle and disorient the reader before devolving into ploddy straight narrative. If Schooldays maintains the weird without following its predecessor into the narrative quagmire I suspect we're in for quite a treat. I have high hopes for Deborah Levy, too. She is consistently excellent and has been on the Booker radar before. Ditto A.L. Kennedy who very rarely fails to impress. Of the lesser known names, Ottessa Moshfegh stands out in particular. Though the judges seem to think Eileen is her debut, I was greatly impressed by her actual first novel McGlue with its muscular, rowdy and unflinching energy. I'm also quite the fan of any small press book that bucks the typical literary trends so Graeme MacRae Burnett's crime thriller has piqued my interest. As for the others, hmmmm... I'll give as many of them a go as I can but I somehow think that this ain't going to be remembered as Booker's finest years.
So, back into my cave for now. I'll catch you in a couple of weeks for the announcement of the Miles Franklin Award. It's a great field and, of course, I'm backing AS Patrić, but almost any of the contenders are worthy of the award. At least it's a great year for Australian Literary Prizes. At least we've got that!
And here is the 2016 Man Booker Prize Longlist.
Paul Beatty (US) - The Sellout (Oneworld)
J.M. Coetzee (South African-Australian) - The Schooldays of Jesus (Harvill Secker)
A.L. Kennedy (UK) - Serious Sweet (Jonathan Cape)
Deborah Levy (UK) - Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) - His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ian McGuire (UK) - The North Water (Scribner UK)
David Means (US) - Hystopia (Faber & Faber)
Wyl Menmuir (UK) - The Many (Salt)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) - Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
Virginia Reeves (US) - Work Like Any Other (Scribner UK)
Elizabeth Strout (US) - My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)
Meh.
Many of us had hoped that, once the fear of the American invasion subsided, the competition would be the great apocalyptic battleground of the English Language NovelTM. Or at least the Gladiator Arena. Turns out it's become little more than a kitchen table thumb wrestle. I usually try to talk it up but even the starry-eyed optimist in me can't get overly excited about this year's crop. First up, the absences. I thought Julian Barnes's latest was quite beautiful and worthy of a longlisting, if not something more. Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon must be smarting - I'd put a buck or two on them considering themselves the rightly winners of the first trans-Pacific Booker. Don Delillo probably couldn't care less which, I suppose is a good thing, because that seemed to be his attitude to the second half of his latest novel, Zero K. And then there's Ian McEwan. In steady decline, he might have been hoping that the forthcoming Nutshell would scoop him from the literary doldrums. His omission from Team Booker's love-in does not bode well.
As for the books that did get a nod, I've read only two. Ian McGuire's The North Water was a mostly riveting collision of Conrad, Melville and McCarthy set on a high seas whaler. It's got one of the best McCarthyesque villains of recent times and, for the most part, it rockets along with admirable vigour. Oddly, though, it peters out and leaves the reader - pardon the pun - cold in its lack of resolve. Paul Beatty's book has been the darling of the American literary world for the better part of a year. It's brash, funny and irreverent. Given the recent spilling over of racial tension in that country, it is also very timely. Anyone who imagines a batshit crazy African American guy's attempt to reintroduce segregation into his neighbourhood and then so deftly does so with tongue-firmly in cheek is deserving of attention. There are parts of The Sellout that are jaw-droppingly great. Anything with the unnamed narrator's father had me on the floor laughing. And some of the satirical barbs were inspired genius. But, much like McGuire's book, I was left a little disappointed by the work as a whole. Maybe it was the hype. Or maybe it's just not quite as good as people say.
As for the rest of the field, I'm very keen to see J.M. Coetzee get another nod. The sequel to his uneven but quite interesting The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus looks to be more Kafkaesque in its execution which can only be a good thing. The first half of Childhood was brilliant in its ability to unsettle and disorient the reader before devolving into ploddy straight narrative. If Schooldays maintains the weird without following its predecessor into the narrative quagmire I suspect we're in for quite a treat. I have high hopes for Deborah Levy, too. She is consistently excellent and has been on the Booker radar before. Ditto A.L. Kennedy who very rarely fails to impress. Of the lesser known names, Ottessa Moshfegh stands out in particular. Though the judges seem to think Eileen is her debut, I was greatly impressed by her actual first novel McGlue with its muscular, rowdy and unflinching energy. I'm also quite the fan of any small press book that bucks the typical literary trends so Graeme MacRae Burnett's crime thriller has piqued my interest. As for the others, hmmmm... I'll give as many of them a go as I can but I somehow think that this ain't going to be remembered as Booker's finest years.
So, back into my cave for now. I'll catch you in a couple of weeks for the announcement of the Miles Franklin Award. It's a great field and, of course, I'm backing AS Patrić, but almost any of the contenders are worthy of the award. At least it's a great year for Australian Literary Prizes. At least we've got that!
A Senior Gong (for) Marley: Marlon James Takes the Booker. Good Luck Casual Readers!
on Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Having spent the whole morning refreshing my web browser on the Booker Prize home page, it finally paid off with a change of screen to tell me that Marlon James had won this year's prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. As expected, I didn't pick it. Not even close. It was the one book in the entire shortlist that I found hardest to wade through, not because it was boring or bad by any stretch of the imagination, but because I didn't ever really connect with it. That said, I knew I was reading something quite brilliant. I just wonder how casual readers who use the Booker as their barometer for what to read over the Christmas break will fare with the Jamaican Patois. Nevertheless, a very impressive win for a very impressive book.
Betting on The Booker Prize 2015: The Bookworm versus The Bookmakers
on Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Ok LitNerds... Once again I'm rolling up my sleeves and preparing to take on the betting giants in a battle to the bank. Of course, I have no intention of actually putting any money on this here endeavour. I'm not stupid enough to fall for that again (PS you still owe me JM Coetzee, Lloyd Jones and Kazuo Ishiguro). But that won't stop me giving my considered opinion on where you should put your hard-earned dinaros*.
Right, so let's look what's on offer**.
THE CLEAR FAVOURITE
Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life.
What the bookmakers say: 6/4 (which, last time I went to school, was 3/2)
What the critics say: "... it’s the great 90s novel a quarter of a century too late; it’s a devastating read that will leave your heart, like the Grinch’s, a few sizes larger." Alex Preston in The Guardian.
What I said: "... as a novel of the legacy of damage and the boundaries of love and friendship this novel is almost without equal."
Will it win? Possibly but I doubt it. It's a great book but it's most likely too big, too heavy and too American to take home the gong. That said, it'd be pretty wonderful if Yanagihara was the first non-Commonwealth writer to bag a Booker. I'd prefer her any day over, say, Jonathan Franzen or some other similar hype factory.
THE LATE STARTER
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways
What the bookmakers say: 5/2
What the critics say: "He exposes the gaps and hidden spaces of our contemporary global society and shows how it feels to live in the gaps. You could do a great deal worse than pay attention to this splendid novel." Richard Brown in The Conversation.
What I said: "... a tour de force of naked compassion and honesty let down only by an epilogue that hints at happy endings."
Will it win? Some mystery Booker savant came out this week to say it will and, apparently, he's never wrong. A sudden flurry of betting ensued, cutting Sahota's odds dramatically. Again a fantastic book and, I dare say, the kind of book that would appeal to Team Booker but I think there are stronger contenders in the field.
THE ONE THAT'S SO DARN DIFFICULT TO READ THAT WE JUST HAVE TO ASSUME IT'S GREAT
Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings
What the bookmakers say: 7/2
What the critics say: "Spoof, nightmare, blood bath, poem, “A Brief History of Seven Killings” eventually takes on a mesmerizing power." Zachary Lazar in The New York Times
What I said: "... a magnificent achievement.... And yet, for some strange reason, I just could not connect with it."
Will it win? Unquestionably the sort of book that rolls down a hill collecting accolades but I think it might scare too many middle-of-the-road readers to stand a real chance here. Let's face it, Booker is where Literati and LitLite meet to briefly clink glasses before going their separate ways.
THE ÜBER-COOL OUSIDER
Tom McCarthy's Satin Island
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "It provokes and beguiles and, at the point of revelation, it withholds. On finishing it you will have the powerful urge to throw it across the room then the powerful urge to pick it up to read again. And that’s what’s so brilliant." Duncan White in The Telegraph
What I said: "Tom McCarthy is shaping up to be this generation's JG Ballard."
Will it win? No but I'd love it to. McCarthy will always be the quirky bridesmaid. Sure, the pop literary set want to claim him as one of their own but they're a little too scared to actually stamp his naturalisation papers. Dare I say, it's probably better that way.
THE OOPS WE MEANT TO NOMINATE MARILYNNE ROBINSON BUT PUT OUT THE PRESS RELEASE AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE NOMINEE
Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "... in the telescope of Tyler’s narrative, we can see the interplay of accident and willfulness, love and envy that created these complicated people who pretend they have no secrets." Ron Charles in The Washington Post.
What I said: "Twenty books is a pretty impressive innings. Alas, she is not finishing on a high."
Will it win? Dear God I hope not. Yes she's fantastic but it would be akin to awarding the prize to a great author like John Banville for a subpar novel like The Sea... Oh...
THE THIRD OUTSIDER THAT'S REALLY A FRONTRUNNER
Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "The Fishermen is a strikingly accomplished debut, hailing Chigozie Obioma as a bold new voice in Nigerian fiction." Lucy Scholes in The Independent
What I said: "... a bold and original debut, drawing beautifully upon an entire body of mythology to tell a very contemporary, universal story."
Will it win? My prediction for a surprise win. It has everything a Booker winner should have and is accessible to high-end LitNerds and casual readers alike. A great book that is highly deserving of any prize that should come its way.
So, in summary, I would love, love, LOVE Tom McCarthy to win it but I don't think he will. As usual, I'm going to go against the odds and pick Obioma. No doubt I'll be wrong but, if I'm right and you win big money, email me and I'll let you know where to send the drink you so desperately want to shout. And, to save you the embarrassing to-and-fro: Mojitos and Pilsner.
* I take no responsibility for your inevitable loss of said dinaros.
** Note all odds are from Ladbrokes and are current as at 5.30pm on Tuesday 13 October in Melbourne, Australia.
Right, so let's look what's on offer**.
THE CLEAR FAVOURITE
Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life.
What the bookmakers say: 6/4 (which, last time I went to school, was 3/2)
What the critics say: "... it’s the great 90s novel a quarter of a century too late; it’s a devastating read that will leave your heart, like the Grinch’s, a few sizes larger." Alex Preston in The Guardian.
What I said: "... as a novel of the legacy of damage and the boundaries of love and friendship this novel is almost without equal."
Will it win? Possibly but I doubt it. It's a great book but it's most likely too big, too heavy and too American to take home the gong. That said, it'd be pretty wonderful if Yanagihara was the first non-Commonwealth writer to bag a Booker. I'd prefer her any day over, say, Jonathan Franzen or some other similar hype factory.
THE LATE STARTER
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways
What the bookmakers say: 5/2
What the critics say: "He exposes the gaps and hidden spaces of our contemporary global society and shows how it feels to live in the gaps. You could do a great deal worse than pay attention to this splendid novel." Richard Brown in The Conversation.
What I said: "... a tour de force of naked compassion and honesty let down only by an epilogue that hints at happy endings."
Will it win? Some mystery Booker savant came out this week to say it will and, apparently, he's never wrong. A sudden flurry of betting ensued, cutting Sahota's odds dramatically. Again a fantastic book and, I dare say, the kind of book that would appeal to Team Booker but I think there are stronger contenders in the field.
THE ONE THAT'S SO DARN DIFFICULT TO READ THAT WE JUST HAVE TO ASSUME IT'S GREAT
Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings
What the bookmakers say: 7/2
What the critics say: "Spoof, nightmare, blood bath, poem, “A Brief History of Seven Killings” eventually takes on a mesmerizing power." Zachary Lazar in The New York Times
What I said: "... a magnificent achievement.... And yet, for some strange reason, I just could not connect with it."
Will it win? Unquestionably the sort of book that rolls down a hill collecting accolades but I think it might scare too many middle-of-the-road readers to stand a real chance here. Let's face it, Booker is where Literati and LitLite meet to briefly clink glasses before going their separate ways.
THE ÜBER-COOL OUSIDER
Tom McCarthy's Satin Island
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "It provokes and beguiles and, at the point of revelation, it withholds. On finishing it you will have the powerful urge to throw it across the room then the powerful urge to pick it up to read again. And that’s what’s so brilliant." Duncan White in The Telegraph
What I said: "Tom McCarthy is shaping up to be this generation's JG Ballard."
Will it win? No but I'd love it to. McCarthy will always be the quirky bridesmaid. Sure, the pop literary set want to claim him as one of their own but they're a little too scared to actually stamp his naturalisation papers. Dare I say, it's probably better that way.
THE OOPS WE MEANT TO NOMINATE MARILYNNE ROBINSON BUT PUT OUT THE PRESS RELEASE AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE NOMINEE
Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "... in the telescope of Tyler’s narrative, we can see the interplay of accident and willfulness, love and envy that created these complicated people who pretend they have no secrets." Ron Charles in The Washington Post.
What I said: "Twenty books is a pretty impressive innings. Alas, she is not finishing on a high."
Will it win? Dear God I hope not. Yes she's fantastic but it would be akin to awarding the prize to a great author like John Banville for a subpar novel like The Sea... Oh...
THE THIRD OUTSIDER THAT'S REALLY A FRONTRUNNER
Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen
What the bookmakers say: 10/1
What the critics say: "The Fishermen is a strikingly accomplished debut, hailing Chigozie Obioma as a bold new voice in Nigerian fiction." Lucy Scholes in The Independent
What I said: "... a bold and original debut, drawing beautifully upon an entire body of mythology to tell a very contemporary, universal story."
Will it win? My prediction for a surprise win. It has everything a Booker winner should have and is accessible to high-end LitNerds and casual readers alike. A great book that is highly deserving of any prize that should come its way.
So, in summary, I would love, love, LOVE Tom McCarthy to win it but I don't think he will. As usual, I'm going to go against the odds and pick Obioma. No doubt I'll be wrong but, if I'm right and you win big money, email me and I'll let you know where to send the drink you so desperately want to shout. And, to save you the embarrassing to-and-fro: Mojitos and Pilsner.
* I take no responsibility for your inevitable loss of said dinaros.
** Note all odds are from Ladbrokes and are current as at 5.30pm on Tuesday 13 October in Melbourne, Australia.
Microviews Vol. 56: The Booker Prize Shortlist 2015
Well here it is: you last minute cheater's guide to this year's Man Booker Prize Shortlist. Enjoy!
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Like most upper middle class white kids, I spent the better part of my university days listening to Bob Marley and convincing myself that every little thing was going to be alright. I never gave much thought to the man himself. He was, to borrow a phrase, a cliché gueverra, someone who inhabited my musical universe and a fair few t-shirts, but did not really exist in the real world. In fact, I knew only three things about him: he smoked way more weed than all my friends combined, he shagged more women than I could ever hope to even meet and he died from toe cancer (if that's even a thing). What I didn't know until much later was that he was actively involved in Jamaican politics and, in 1973, was the target of an assassination attempt. It is this tumultuous period - and the attack on Marley - that provides the springboard for Marlon James's challenging novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. In the tradition of William Faulkner, the story is told from a variety of perspectives, mostly the gangsters and thugs involved in the attack but also a CIA operative, some music reporters and friends and lovers of "the Singer" as he is known in the book. James pulls no punches in relating the violence and corruption of 1970s Jamaica. One thing is clear from the outset: life ain't worth shit. Tarantino would be proud. People are killed frequently and in spectacular fashion. At the centre of the shitstorm is Josey Wales, about as good a bad guy as The Judge in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. And what a nasty motherfucker he is: killing, maiming and torturing without so much as a thought, let alone a care. In a way, the book is just as much Wales's story as it is Marley's. Indeed, Marley makes only infrequent appearances and, more often than not, does not come out of it looking particularly good. If James is to be believed (and the depth and breadth of his research surely suggests that he should) Marley was a pretty nasty character himself. I suppose I'd be a vindictive arsehole too if someone tried to kill me but, even so, it is confronting to see a hero of peace watching on as his enemies are tortured or killed. And it is not just the substance of the novel that makes it a tough read. James goes the Irvine Welsh route, utilising dense Jamaican Patios that, I imagine, might scare some readers away. Six hundred and ninety pages of difficult-to-read lingo is quite the ask no matter how cool the tale being told might be. Greatly ambitious, epic in scope (the novel stretches far beyond Marley's death into the infiltration of Jamaican expats in the New York drug scene of the 80s), A Brief History of Seven Killings is a magnificent achievement. It shines a light on the dark political rumblings of a country in crisis, where outside forces try to impose their will (cough cough CIA cough cough) while the worms of corruption eat it from within. And yet, for some strange reason, I just could not connect with it. Reading the book seemed a chore. I wish I could pinpoint where the schism lay. Perhaps it was the unrelenting intensity - I needed some moments of levity if only to catch my breath. It might have been the hype - I've come to it late and am almost drowning in the adoring fanboy froth that surrounds it. Or maybe it felt a little too drawn out. In that way it reminded me of my difficult relationship with the works of David Foster Wallace. Whatever the reason, I was never truly swept up in it which is a shame really. I can't help but feel I was handed an entire world and turned my back. A Redemption Song this was not.
3.5 Out of 5 Exploding Hash Cookies
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Four books into his career and Tom McCarthy is shaping up to be this generation's JG Ballard. I don't make the comparison lightly. When it comes to the combination of vision, inventiveness, social criticism and experimental gusto only McCarthy comes close to the late, great master. Or maybe he's just Thomas Pynchon in disguise. Stranger things have happened. Whatever, Satin Island continues McCarthy's fascination with the "essence of now" (my term, not his, pardon the quotation marks), this time putting it front and centre. The narrator, U., is an anthropologist engaged by The Company where he has been tasked with writing a study that will distill modern life to its very essence. It's never quite clear what The Company does (only that it has recently won a major account, the Koob-Sassen Project) nor why it has him embark on this peculiar task. Nevertheless, with all the dogged perseverance of his hero Claude Levi-Strauss, U. begins to compile dossiers from snippets of modern existence, looking for links, themes, arcs and, ultimately, meaning. There are meditations on airports, cargo cults of Vanuatu, a parachuting accident that is most likely a murder, email scams... you name it. U.'s task becomes more obsessive as the novel progresses, its manic escalation sweeping the reader up in a world that is expanding and contracting at the same time. It also gets quite funny; so much so that I suspect McCarthy is having a bit of a laugh at our expense. It doesn't matter. He clearly wants us to laugh along with him. And we do. Until we cry.
4 Out Of 5 Broken Hyperlinks
A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara
Seldom does an author arrive on the scene so fully formed, so thoroughly accomplished, that you're forced to reconsider your views on reincarnation. Such was the case with Hanya Yanigahara and her debut, The People of the Trees. One of my favourites of 2013, it continues to haunt me and I still rate it as one of the most morally challenging novels that I've ever read. That it was her first book beggars belief. Of course from such great heights often come equally great falls - there is the dreaded curse of the sophomore novel - and so it was with considerable trepidation that I picked up the dauntingly massive, A Little Life. Four young men meet in college and become fast friends. Each one is a prodigy of sorts - arty, talented, ambitious and fiercely intelligent - but it is Jude St Francis who is the star around which the others revolve. Jude never speaks about his past. There is a darkness about him that cannot be penetrated, something from his childhood that is so deeply traumatic that it shrouds his very existence in a cloak of unimaginable suffering. Yanagihara allows us to see through the cracks early - Jude cuts himself. Often. He has a constant supply of razors and gauze. The others rally around him as you would a wounded puppy, albeit one prone to lashing out and biting you. Even on the most superficial level Jude needs help. His legs are crippled. He walks with splints when he can walk at all. Otherwise he is wheelchair-bound. On the flip side, Jude is a stellar student. He excels at law school and is a mathematical genius. There is no question that he is bound for some kind of glory. Once school is over Jude, like the others, makes his way to New York City and we watch him take root in a town that is almost made for him - outwardly it sparkles but its underbelly is rotting and mouldy. Yanagihara spends few words on Jude's career. We know that he succeeds, that he is headhunted by a large commercial firm, that he rises up the ranks to become one of its most ruthless and feared attorneys. But it is his personal life that Yanagihara explores in the greatest depth and holy shit is it disturbing. If The People of the Trees examined the way in which a person can misuse his power to destroy the lives of others then A Little Life is almost its companion opposite. It is the story from the perspective of the destroyed. Jude is the single most broken man I've ever encountered in literature. There is almost a perverse spectacle in the litany of sufferings he endures. He is Job minus the faith. Abandoned on the steps of a monastery as a baby, he is raised by the monks who routinely pass him around as their sexual plaything. He finds solace in one particular monk but, unsurprisingly, that monster turns out to be the worst. He kidnaps Jude, takes him from state to state and pimps him out to pedophiles around the country to make ends meet. It is awful to witness as a reader and Yanagihara is not afraid to describe it in fine detail. There are moments of reprieve - Jude's college days, his adoption but a particularly wonderful university lecturer and his wife (probably the only driftwood of pure goodness in the novel), his finding love with his best friend - but he is too damaged to truly appreciate it. He continues to punish himself with cutting, with suicide attempts, with undignified encounters (one particular affair with an abusive older partner had me in tears). Jude is an exercise is self-loathing, a repository for all the world's suffering. In that way Yanagihara achieves what William H. Gass attempted in his most recent novel, Middle C. A Little Life is a harrowing read. The unrelenting bleakness of Jude's plight is breathtaking. And it goes on for almost eight hundred pages. As a reader, you are likely to despair the experience of witnessing it. But as a novel of the legacy of damage and the boundaries of love and friendship this novel is almost without equal. Hanya Yanagihara is the real deal. And she's willing to plumb the depths of humanity to prove it. Now can someone please pass me a stiff drink or twenty?
5 Out of 5 Blunted Blades
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
I'll keep this one short. Anne Tyler is an American national treasure. She has written many amazing novels. She has a knack for breezy dialogue that few others possess and her ability to find meaning in the life of ordinary people - her penchant for perfect empathy - is extraordinary. A Spool of Blue Thread is her last novel. She announced her retirement soon before its publication. Twenty books is a pretty impressive innings. Alas, she is not finishing on a high. A Spool of Blue Thread also happens to be one of her weaker books. I don't know what's with the current fashion of telling tales in reverse chronological order but for some reason Tyler seems to have seen the train and decided to hop aboard. And so we get the story of the Whitshank family across three (well, sort of four) generations, starting with the sad twilight years of Abby and Red. More to the point, we get the story of their house on Boulton Road, one built and, but for the brief stay of a snooty family who commissioned it, lived in by Red's parents, Junior and Linnie May. The book kicks off with the family converging on the house to care for Red as Abby disappears into a demented haze. It's sad, it's touching, it's remarkably unremarkable. As you might expect there's a bunch of unresolved tensions suddenly brought to the fore - mostly surrounding the difficult wastrel Denny and the adopted fave Stem. Fisticuffs seem in the offing. Fisticuffs ensue. And so it goes. The book is divided into four parts, each set in a different era. Any warmth you might have for certain characters is sure to be tested when you meet their earlier (or later) incarnations. I don't think it was Tyler's intention, but I couldn't help but feel that the Whitshanks were a pretty annoying family. Especially Linnie Mae. Seriously, she drove me mad. What saves them from being insufferable, however, is Tyler's unquestionable skill as a novelist. It is a joy to read her, even when you don't like the substance of what she is writing. I'm sad to see Tyler go. I'd hope that she had one more book in her - something to remind us how truly wonderful she is without having to reread The Accidental Tourist or A Patchwork Planet.
2.5 Out of 5 Porch Swings
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Critics have been quick to slap lazy comparisons on Obioma's quite stunning debut. There's the biblical: Cain and Abel. Yep, it's a story about brothers. It's tragic, cataclysmic even. Next there are the classics: any number of Greek tragedies. Death foretold and played out. Some can't resist the easy African comparison: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Okay, so it's a Nigerian tale in which Obioma addresses the collision of modernity and traditional African life. Achebe's book even makes an appearance or two. But, c'mon... There are still others. Equally applicable but altogether inadequate. If I were to throw my hat into the ring, I might choose The Virgin Suicides; The Fishermen has the same blend of mystery and inevitability, you know where it's going, your heart aches in advance but you can't turn away. To reduce The Fisherman to what it's (kind of) like, however, is to do it a serious injustice. This is a bold and original debut, drawing beautifully upon an entire body of mythology to tell a very contemporary, universal story. The Fishermen of the title are four young brothers growing up in the rural Nigerian town of Akure in the politically turbulent 1990s. Their father has big dreams for them - they will be doctors, lawyers and such - and won't abide their parochial old world leanings. When they are spotted fishing by the town's tattletale, he is bitterly disappointed but is able to spin their dream of being actual fishermen into something more metaphorical. Poverty drives him out of town to find work, leaving the boys to skip school and resume their childish ways. They are, after all, only boys. One day, while returning home, they are confronted by the village madman who warns them of a dire prophecy: the oldest brother will be killed by one of the others. So begins a horrible downward spiral; paranoia compounds normal sibling tensions until the prophecy comes true. Those left behind have only one dream: revenge. Told by Ben, the youngest of the brothers, The Fisherman maintains a childlike wonder throughout. Like make of the best child narrators in literary history, his voice is knowingly assured but perhaps a small step away from full understanding. We, as readers, are left to fill in the blanks, to wade through the mythological imagery and find the real meaning in what he tells us. Ben forces us to bear witness to the collapse of a family that holds within it the hopes and dreams of a new Africa. I called it when this review was first posted back in June: The Fisherman has to be a clear frontrunner for this year's Booker.
4.5 Out Of 5 Marks of Cain
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
At times, there is a fine line between migrant and refugee. While our collective sympathy is easily mobilised by images of those who flee their homelands, trudging across borders, sleeping in forests, boarding rickety boats or facing down hostile fascists in the countries where they seek refuge, we often fail to appreciate the desperation and degradation that besets many of those who leave in less sensational circumstances. Sure, they come in with visas but they too are, in essence, refugees, having fled economic adversity, sectarian or caste subjugation or any number of other hardships. They become the underclass, the invisible minions. They are routinely exploited, abused and overlooked. In his powerful second novel, The Year of the Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota picks off the scab of wilful blindness to reveal a heartbreaking side of contemporary British society through the lives of four young Indians just trying to find their feet. The first three are new arrivals. Randeep has come in on a dodgy marriage visa. The "marriage" is a financial arrangement and will be nullified after a year when Randeep can get a visa in his own right. Avtar has a student visa but quickly dumps his study for manual labour wherever it can be found. When he still can't make ends meet, he turns to loan sharks and then to the organ black market. Perhaps the saddest story belongs to Tarlochan, a low-caste Chamaar who has barely escaped India with his life after surviving riots that saw his parents set on fire in front of him. In some ways he does the best of the three, but you get the feeling it's only because he literally has nothing. And even in England he faces the same caste discrimination he thought he'd left behind. Then there's Narinder, a British-born sikh girl who is Randeep's visa wife but who must wrestle familial expectations and her own crisis of belief if she is to find her way. Throughout there's an air of constant dread that she'll fall victim to a so-called honour killing by her violent, possessive brother. Sahota draws each of his characters with great depth of heart, deftly avoiding melodrama or salaciousness despite the quite shocking narrative turns. There is a wisdom to his message that belies his age and experience. He wades though the shit but still lets the odd ray of light slip through. The Year of the Runaways is a testament to human will, to optimism in the face of extreme adversity. To that end it reminded me of George Orwell or Upton Sinclair. It is a tour de force of naked compassion and honesty let down only by an epilogue that hints at happy endings.
4 Out Of 5 Knotted Saris
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Like most upper middle class white kids, I spent the better part of my university days listening to Bob Marley and convincing myself that every little thing was going to be alright. I never gave much thought to the man himself. He was, to borrow a phrase, a cliché gueverra, someone who inhabited my musical universe and a fair few t-shirts, but did not really exist in the real world. In fact, I knew only three things about him: he smoked way more weed than all my friends combined, he shagged more women than I could ever hope to even meet and he died from toe cancer (if that's even a thing). What I didn't know until much later was that he was actively involved in Jamaican politics and, in 1973, was the target of an assassination attempt. It is this tumultuous period - and the attack on Marley - that provides the springboard for Marlon James's challenging novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. In the tradition of William Faulkner, the story is told from a variety of perspectives, mostly the gangsters and thugs involved in the attack but also a CIA operative, some music reporters and friends and lovers of "the Singer" as he is known in the book. James pulls no punches in relating the violence and corruption of 1970s Jamaica. One thing is clear from the outset: life ain't worth shit. Tarantino would be proud. People are killed frequently and in spectacular fashion. At the centre of the shitstorm is Josey Wales, about as good a bad guy as The Judge in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. And what a nasty motherfucker he is: killing, maiming and torturing without so much as a thought, let alone a care. In a way, the book is just as much Wales's story as it is Marley's. Indeed, Marley makes only infrequent appearances and, more often than not, does not come out of it looking particularly good. If James is to be believed (and the depth and breadth of his research surely suggests that he should) Marley was a pretty nasty character himself. I suppose I'd be a vindictive arsehole too if someone tried to kill me but, even so, it is confronting to see a hero of peace watching on as his enemies are tortured or killed. And it is not just the substance of the novel that makes it a tough read. James goes the Irvine Welsh route, utilising dense Jamaican Patios that, I imagine, might scare some readers away. Six hundred and ninety pages of difficult-to-read lingo is quite the ask no matter how cool the tale being told might be. Greatly ambitious, epic in scope (the novel stretches far beyond Marley's death into the infiltration of Jamaican expats in the New York drug scene of the 80s), A Brief History of Seven Killings is a magnificent achievement. It shines a light on the dark political rumblings of a country in crisis, where outside forces try to impose their will (cough cough CIA cough cough) while the worms of corruption eat it from within. And yet, for some strange reason, I just could not connect with it. Reading the book seemed a chore. I wish I could pinpoint where the schism lay. Perhaps it was the unrelenting intensity - I needed some moments of levity if only to catch my breath. It might have been the hype - I've come to it late and am almost drowning in the adoring fanboy froth that surrounds it. Or maybe it felt a little too drawn out. In that way it reminded me of my difficult relationship with the works of David Foster Wallace. Whatever the reason, I was never truly swept up in it which is a shame really. I can't help but feel I was handed an entire world and turned my back. A Redemption Song this was not.
3.5 Out of 5 Exploding Hash Cookies
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Four books into his career and Tom McCarthy is shaping up to be this generation's JG Ballard. I don't make the comparison lightly. When it comes to the combination of vision, inventiveness, social criticism and experimental gusto only McCarthy comes close to the late, great master. Or maybe he's just Thomas Pynchon in disguise. Stranger things have happened. Whatever, Satin Island continues McCarthy's fascination with the "essence of now" (my term, not his, pardon the quotation marks), this time putting it front and centre. The narrator, U., is an anthropologist engaged by The Company where he has been tasked with writing a study that will distill modern life to its very essence. It's never quite clear what The Company does (only that it has recently won a major account, the Koob-Sassen Project) nor why it has him embark on this peculiar task. Nevertheless, with all the dogged perseverance of his hero Claude Levi-Strauss, U. begins to compile dossiers from snippets of modern existence, looking for links, themes, arcs and, ultimately, meaning. There are meditations on airports, cargo cults of Vanuatu, a parachuting accident that is most likely a murder, email scams... you name it. U.'s task becomes more obsessive as the novel progresses, its manic escalation sweeping the reader up in a world that is expanding and contracting at the same time. It also gets quite funny; so much so that I suspect McCarthy is having a bit of a laugh at our expense. It doesn't matter. He clearly wants us to laugh along with him. And we do. Until we cry.
4 Out Of 5 Broken Hyperlinks
A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara
Seldom does an author arrive on the scene so fully formed, so thoroughly accomplished, that you're forced to reconsider your views on reincarnation. Such was the case with Hanya Yanigahara and her debut, The People of the Trees. One of my favourites of 2013, it continues to haunt me and I still rate it as one of the most morally challenging novels that I've ever read. That it was her first book beggars belief. Of course from such great heights often come equally great falls - there is the dreaded curse of the sophomore novel - and so it was with considerable trepidation that I picked up the dauntingly massive, A Little Life. Four young men meet in college and become fast friends. Each one is a prodigy of sorts - arty, talented, ambitious and fiercely intelligent - but it is Jude St Francis who is the star around which the others revolve. Jude never speaks about his past. There is a darkness about him that cannot be penetrated, something from his childhood that is so deeply traumatic that it shrouds his very existence in a cloak of unimaginable suffering. Yanagihara allows us to see through the cracks early - Jude cuts himself. Often. He has a constant supply of razors and gauze. The others rally around him as you would a wounded puppy, albeit one prone to lashing out and biting you. Even on the most superficial level Jude needs help. His legs are crippled. He walks with splints when he can walk at all. Otherwise he is wheelchair-bound. On the flip side, Jude is a stellar student. He excels at law school and is a mathematical genius. There is no question that he is bound for some kind of glory. Once school is over Jude, like the others, makes his way to New York City and we watch him take root in a town that is almost made for him - outwardly it sparkles but its underbelly is rotting and mouldy. Yanagihara spends few words on Jude's career. We know that he succeeds, that he is headhunted by a large commercial firm, that he rises up the ranks to become one of its most ruthless and feared attorneys. But it is his personal life that Yanagihara explores in the greatest depth and holy shit is it disturbing. If The People of the Trees examined the way in which a person can misuse his power to destroy the lives of others then A Little Life is almost its companion opposite. It is the story from the perspective of the destroyed. Jude is the single most broken man I've ever encountered in literature. There is almost a perverse spectacle in the litany of sufferings he endures. He is Job minus the faith. Abandoned on the steps of a monastery as a baby, he is raised by the monks who routinely pass him around as their sexual plaything. He finds solace in one particular monk but, unsurprisingly, that monster turns out to be the worst. He kidnaps Jude, takes him from state to state and pimps him out to pedophiles around the country to make ends meet. It is awful to witness as a reader and Yanagihara is not afraid to describe it in fine detail. There are moments of reprieve - Jude's college days, his adoption but a particularly wonderful university lecturer and his wife (probably the only driftwood of pure goodness in the novel), his finding love with his best friend - but he is too damaged to truly appreciate it. He continues to punish himself with cutting, with suicide attempts, with undignified encounters (one particular affair with an abusive older partner had me in tears). Jude is an exercise is self-loathing, a repository for all the world's suffering. In that way Yanagihara achieves what William H. Gass attempted in his most recent novel, Middle C. A Little Life is a harrowing read. The unrelenting bleakness of Jude's plight is breathtaking. And it goes on for almost eight hundred pages. As a reader, you are likely to despair the experience of witnessing it. But as a novel of the legacy of damage and the boundaries of love and friendship this novel is almost without equal. Hanya Yanagihara is the real deal. And she's willing to plumb the depths of humanity to prove it. Now can someone please pass me a stiff drink or twenty?
5 Out of 5 Blunted Blades
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
I'll keep this one short. Anne Tyler is an American national treasure. She has written many amazing novels. She has a knack for breezy dialogue that few others possess and her ability to find meaning in the life of ordinary people - her penchant for perfect empathy - is extraordinary. A Spool of Blue Thread is her last novel. She announced her retirement soon before its publication. Twenty books is a pretty impressive innings. Alas, she is not finishing on a high. A Spool of Blue Thread also happens to be one of her weaker books. I don't know what's with the current fashion of telling tales in reverse chronological order but for some reason Tyler seems to have seen the train and decided to hop aboard. And so we get the story of the Whitshank family across three (well, sort of four) generations, starting with the sad twilight years of Abby and Red. More to the point, we get the story of their house on Boulton Road, one built and, but for the brief stay of a snooty family who commissioned it, lived in by Red's parents, Junior and Linnie May. The book kicks off with the family converging on the house to care for Red as Abby disappears into a demented haze. It's sad, it's touching, it's remarkably unremarkable. As you might expect there's a bunch of unresolved tensions suddenly brought to the fore - mostly surrounding the difficult wastrel Denny and the adopted fave Stem. Fisticuffs seem in the offing. Fisticuffs ensue. And so it goes. The book is divided into four parts, each set in a different era. Any warmth you might have for certain characters is sure to be tested when you meet their earlier (or later) incarnations. I don't think it was Tyler's intention, but I couldn't help but feel that the Whitshanks were a pretty annoying family. Especially Linnie Mae. Seriously, she drove me mad. What saves them from being insufferable, however, is Tyler's unquestionable skill as a novelist. It is a joy to read her, even when you don't like the substance of what she is writing. I'm sad to see Tyler go. I'd hope that she had one more book in her - something to remind us how truly wonderful she is without having to reread The Accidental Tourist or A Patchwork Planet.
2.5 Out of 5 Porch Swings
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Critics have been quick to slap lazy comparisons on Obioma's quite stunning debut. There's the biblical: Cain and Abel. Yep, it's a story about brothers. It's tragic, cataclysmic even. Next there are the classics: any number of Greek tragedies. Death foretold and played out. Some can't resist the easy African comparison: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Okay, so it's a Nigerian tale in which Obioma addresses the collision of modernity and traditional African life. Achebe's book even makes an appearance or two. But, c'mon... There are still others. Equally applicable but altogether inadequate. If I were to throw my hat into the ring, I might choose The Virgin Suicides; The Fishermen has the same blend of mystery and inevitability, you know where it's going, your heart aches in advance but you can't turn away. To reduce The Fisherman to what it's (kind of) like, however, is to do it a serious injustice. This is a bold and original debut, drawing beautifully upon an entire body of mythology to tell a very contemporary, universal story. The Fishermen of the title are four young brothers growing up in the rural Nigerian town of Akure in the politically turbulent 1990s. Their father has big dreams for them - they will be doctors, lawyers and such - and won't abide their parochial old world leanings. When they are spotted fishing by the town's tattletale, he is bitterly disappointed but is able to spin their dream of being actual fishermen into something more metaphorical. Poverty drives him out of town to find work, leaving the boys to skip school and resume their childish ways. They are, after all, only boys. One day, while returning home, they are confronted by the village madman who warns them of a dire prophecy: the oldest brother will be killed by one of the others. So begins a horrible downward spiral; paranoia compounds normal sibling tensions until the prophecy comes true. Those left behind have only one dream: revenge. Told by Ben, the youngest of the brothers, The Fisherman maintains a childlike wonder throughout. Like make of the best child narrators in literary history, his voice is knowingly assured but perhaps a small step away from full understanding. We, as readers, are left to fill in the blanks, to wade through the mythological imagery and find the real meaning in what he tells us. Ben forces us to bear witness to the collapse of a family that holds within it the hopes and dreams of a new Africa. I called it when this review was first posted back in June: The Fisherman has to be a clear frontrunner for this year's Booker.
4.5 Out Of 5 Marks of Cain
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
At times, there is a fine line between migrant and refugee. While our collective sympathy is easily mobilised by images of those who flee their homelands, trudging across borders, sleeping in forests, boarding rickety boats or facing down hostile fascists in the countries where they seek refuge, we often fail to appreciate the desperation and degradation that besets many of those who leave in less sensational circumstances. Sure, they come in with visas but they too are, in essence, refugees, having fled economic adversity, sectarian or caste subjugation or any number of other hardships. They become the underclass, the invisible minions. They are routinely exploited, abused and overlooked. In his powerful second novel, The Year of the Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota picks off the scab of wilful blindness to reveal a heartbreaking side of contemporary British society through the lives of four young Indians just trying to find their feet. The first three are new arrivals. Randeep has come in on a dodgy marriage visa. The "marriage" is a financial arrangement and will be nullified after a year when Randeep can get a visa in his own right. Avtar has a student visa but quickly dumps his study for manual labour wherever it can be found. When he still can't make ends meet, he turns to loan sharks and then to the organ black market. Perhaps the saddest story belongs to Tarlochan, a low-caste Chamaar who has barely escaped India with his life after surviving riots that saw his parents set on fire in front of him. In some ways he does the best of the three, but you get the feeling it's only because he literally has nothing. And even in England he faces the same caste discrimination he thought he'd left behind. Then there's Narinder, a British-born sikh girl who is Randeep's visa wife but who must wrestle familial expectations and her own crisis of belief if she is to find her way. Throughout there's an air of constant dread that she'll fall victim to a so-called honour killing by her violent, possessive brother. Sahota draws each of his characters with great depth of heart, deftly avoiding melodrama or salaciousness despite the quite shocking narrative turns. There is a wisdom to his message that belies his age and experience. He wades though the shit but still lets the odd ray of light slip through. The Year of the Runaways is a testament to human will, to optimism in the face of extreme adversity. To that end it reminded me of George Orwell or Upton Sinclair. It is a tour de force of naked compassion and honesty let down only by an epilogue that hints at happy endings.
4 Out Of 5 Knotted Saris
Nobel Prize 2015: Alexievich's Brave New Literary World
on Thursday, October 8, 2015
As we all scramble to read up on Svetlana Aleksijevitj (or, as we now seem to be spelling it, Alexievich), it's worth considering the wider implications of her win. Her's has not been a name that has come up too often in the past. Personally, I'd never even heard of her three days ago. Still she stood above many of the perennial faves - Murakami (never gonna win), Roth (nope), Adunis (long-time bridesmaid), Dylan (you're totally pranking me, right?) - on the bookmakers' tables.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe my reading is so insular that I've become unaware of an entire literary world beyond my own bookshelf. The one thing I never considered, the one that had me pretty much dismissing Alexievich out of hand (once I knew who she was), is that journalism might be considered "literature" for the purposes of the prize. In the past, it has almost always gone to a novelist or poet. Sure, they might engage in criticism or journalism in their spare time, but it is never the essence of their literary output. I stand to be corrected (and I'm guessing I will be), but the last non-fiction laureate was Winston Churchill. And who the hell actually considers him a REAL Nobel literary laureate anyway? Now with Alexievich's win, the field has been cracked wide open.
The Nobel Committee, in their now typically pithy citation, pointed to "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." Fancy. Not that it helps us know anything about what she does. Their bibliographical note is a little more enlightening:
"For many years, she collected materials for her first book U vojny ne ženskoe lico (1985; War’s Unwomanly Face, 1988), which is based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in the Second World War. This work is the first in Alexievich’s grand cycle of books, “Voices of Utopia”, where life in the Soviet Union is depicted from the perspective of the individual.
By means of her extraordinary method – a carefully composed collage of human voices – Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era. The consequences of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl 1986 is the topic of Černobyl’skaja molitva (1997; Voices from Chernobyl – Chronicle of the Future, 1999). Cinkovye mal’čiki (1990; Zinky Boys – Soviet voices from a forgotten war, 1992) is a portrayal of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan 1979–89, and her work Vremja second chènd (2013; “Second-hand Time: The Demise of the Red (Wo)man”) is the latest in “Voices of Utopia”. Another early book that also belongs in this lifelong project is Poslednie svideteli (1985; “Last witnesses”)."
Seems there is a lot of interesting material for me to trawl through over the coming weeks if I can tear myself away from the world of fiction. Thankfully, her oeuvre seems right up my alley. Either way, I'm putting 2015 down as a watershed year for the prize. At last it is recognising a form that speaks not from behind a creative veil but, rather, straight from the shit-stained troughs of our fucked up world. And that, dear LitNerds, is a big win.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe my reading is so insular that I've become unaware of an entire literary world beyond my own bookshelf. The one thing I never considered, the one that had me pretty much dismissing Alexievich out of hand (once I knew who she was), is that journalism might be considered "literature" for the purposes of the prize. In the past, it has almost always gone to a novelist or poet. Sure, they might engage in criticism or journalism in their spare time, but it is never the essence of their literary output. I stand to be corrected (and I'm guessing I will be), but the last non-fiction laureate was Winston Churchill. And who the hell actually considers him a REAL Nobel literary laureate anyway? Now with Alexievich's win, the field has been cracked wide open.
The Nobel Committee, in their now typically pithy citation, pointed to "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." Fancy. Not that it helps us know anything about what she does. Their bibliographical note is a little more enlightening:
"For many years, she collected materials for her first book U vojny ne ženskoe lico (1985; War’s Unwomanly Face, 1988), which is based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in the Second World War. This work is the first in Alexievich’s grand cycle of books, “Voices of Utopia”, where life in the Soviet Union is depicted from the perspective of the individual.
By means of her extraordinary method – a carefully composed collage of human voices – Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era. The consequences of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl 1986 is the topic of Černobyl’skaja molitva (1997; Voices from Chernobyl – Chronicle of the Future, 1999). Cinkovye mal’čiki (1990; Zinky Boys – Soviet voices from a forgotten war, 1992) is a portrayal of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan 1979–89, and her work Vremja second chènd (2013; “Second-hand Time: The Demise of the Red (Wo)man”) is the latest in “Voices of Utopia”. Another early book that also belongs in this lifelong project is Poslednie svideteli (1985; “Last witnesses”)."
Seems there is a lot of interesting material for me to trawl through over the coming weeks if I can tear myself away from the world of fiction. Thankfully, her oeuvre seems right up my alley. Either way, I'm putting 2015 down as a watershed year for the prize. At last it is recognising a form that speaks not from behind a creative veil but, rather, straight from the shit-stained troughs of our fucked up world. And that, dear LitNerds, is a big win.
Nobel Prize 2015: Svetlana Aleksijevitj
The bookie's had it. Go figure. Now I'm going to have to break my Fiction Only rule.
An intriguing win. Off to order some books I go...
An intriguing win. Off to order some books I go...
From Out of Nowhere: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015
on Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Svetlana Aleksijevitj. Heard of her? You know, the Belarusian investigative journalist? Still nothing? Didn't think so. Well right now she's sitting comfortably atop most bookies' tables as the clear favourite for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
Of course, there is a certain logic to it. Everything about the prize seems counterintuitive. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day if only they gave a crap about literature. Suffice to say the whole thing is shrouded in secrecy and, more often than not, we only become fans of the winner post facto. Seriously, how many of us knew Patrick Modiano before last year? Thankfully, that turned out to be a popular choice because when we all got around to reading him (which for the more obsessed among us was about 4 minutes after he was awarded the prize, slowed only by the need for a knee-jerk blog post about it all) he turned out to be pretty darn excellent. Admittedly, I speak for some sort of English language hegemonic league of arrogance but every now and then I like to pin a badge on myself and say I've read the winner before they were famous (so to speak).
A quick scan of bookies' list finds a few other relative unknowns (at least in the English-speaking world) such as Maryse Condé, Bei Dao and Ko Un alongside perennial favourites Haruki Murakami, Adunis, Philip Roth and, yes (*sigh*) Bob Dylan. I'll never understand how anyone could ever put serious money on that guy and, even if he were to win, I can't imagine that he could pull himself together enough to ascend a podium and string anything resembling a coherent sentence together. Have you seen him play live in the past twenty years? Sad, sad man. But I digress...
Onto what is bound to be my annual wildly inaccurate prediction:
Buoyed by the reception of their last semi-obscure pick, the Literary Round Table of Nobel will venture a little further afield and push their luck just so none of us get too confident in their ability to pick worthy winners. Near misses will be my two faves (László Krasznahorkai and Ismail Kadare) who fall just outside the semi-obscure category - not to mention the inconvenient fact that they would actually deserve it - as well as worthy contenders such as Ngūgī Wa Thiong'o or Joyce Carol Oates. Chances are they'll try to be a touch political but not too tokenistic. So someone who has a connection to geographical displacement or cultural alienation. And it's likely to be a woman. Hopefully of the Alice Munro or Doris Lessing kind and not another Elfriede Jelinek (no, I won't miss the chance to knock that every year. And not even Tomas Tranströmer can stop me. Well... he's dead... but two annual jokes now made!).
Ok so this year's Nobel Prize in Literature will go to a reasonably obscure middle eastern (or thereabouts) woman living in exile. That's my pick. Now you can confidently bet against it.
Unless they shift Belarus across a few countries...
Last Minute Edit: One and a half hours until the announcement and I'm jumping up with two serious picks: Sonallah Ibrahim or Tahar Ben Jelloun. Only because I want to be able to say I told you so. And if it's not, I'll look no more clueless than usual. Win/Win.
Of course, there is a certain logic to it. Everything about the prize seems counterintuitive. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day if only they gave a crap about literature. Suffice to say the whole thing is shrouded in secrecy and, more often than not, we only become fans of the winner post facto. Seriously, how many of us knew Patrick Modiano before last year? Thankfully, that turned out to be a popular choice because when we all got around to reading him (which for the more obsessed among us was about 4 minutes after he was awarded the prize, slowed only by the need for a knee-jerk blog post about it all) he turned out to be pretty darn excellent. Admittedly, I speak for some sort of English language hegemonic league of arrogance but every now and then I like to pin a badge on myself and say I've read the winner before they were famous (so to speak).
A quick scan of bookies' list finds a few other relative unknowns (at least in the English-speaking world) such as Maryse Condé, Bei Dao and Ko Un alongside perennial favourites Haruki Murakami, Adunis, Philip Roth and, yes (*sigh*) Bob Dylan. I'll never understand how anyone could ever put serious money on that guy and, even if he were to win, I can't imagine that he could pull himself together enough to ascend a podium and string anything resembling a coherent sentence together. Have you seen him play live in the past twenty years? Sad, sad man. But I digress...
Onto what is bound to be my annual wildly inaccurate prediction:
Buoyed by the reception of their last semi-obscure pick, the Literary Round Table of Nobel will venture a little further afield and push their luck just so none of us get too confident in their ability to pick worthy winners. Near misses will be my two faves (László Krasznahorkai and Ismail Kadare) who fall just outside the semi-obscure category - not to mention the inconvenient fact that they would actually deserve it - as well as worthy contenders such as Ngūgī Wa Thiong'o or Joyce Carol Oates. Chances are they'll try to be a touch political but not too tokenistic. So someone who has a connection to geographical displacement or cultural alienation. And it's likely to be a woman. Hopefully of the Alice Munro or Doris Lessing kind and not another Elfriede Jelinek (no, I won't miss the chance to knock that every year. And not even Tomas Tranströmer can stop me. Well... he's dead... but two annual jokes now made!).
Ok so this year's Nobel Prize in Literature will go to a reasonably obscure middle eastern (or thereabouts) woman living in exile. That's my pick. Now you can confidently bet against it.
Unless they shift Belarus across a few countries...
Last Minute Edit: One and a half hours until the announcement and I'm jumping up with two serious picks: Sonallah Ibrahim or Tahar Ben Jelloun. Only because I want to be able to say I told you so. And if it's not, I'll look no more clueless than usual. Win/Win.
Booker Prize 2015: The Stricken Field
on Sunday, September 27, 2015
Have you ever wondered which books the various publishers hoped would be in line for Booker glory? I'm not sure when Bookworld went all Hollywood on us, but a quick browse through my local bookstore this afternoon revealed a stricken field of heavy hitters in the New Releases section, names that have shown up on Booker shortlists of yore but were conspicuously absent this year (in retrospect). The only real surprise for me when the long list was announced was Jonathan Franzen's new brick, Purity. No doubt someone at FSG saw a sure-fire home run for America's first Booker. Alas, poor Johnny turned out to be an also ran. Never fear, he was in good company. Books released in the past week or so that I assume were scheduled to coincide with Booker season include:
Salman Rushdie - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Pat Barker - Noonday
Andrew Miller - The Crossing
Rupert Thomson - Katherine Carlyle
William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay
John Banville - The Blue Guitar
Sebastian Faulks - Where My Heart Used to Beat
Maragret Attwood - The Heart Goes Last
Jeanette Winterson - The Gap of Time
Interesting omissions, n'est-ce pas? Now I'm left to wonder who will be wearing what on the red carpet and whether Will Self can play the role of literary Joan Rivers for TMZ... I clearly have too much time on my hands.
Salman Rushdie - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Pat Barker - Noonday
Andrew Miller - The Crossing
Rupert Thomson - Katherine Carlyle
William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay
John Banville - The Blue Guitar
Sebastian Faulks - Where My Heart Used to Beat
Maragret Attwood - The Heart Goes Last
Jeanette Winterson - The Gap of Time
Interesting omissions, n'est-ce pas? Now I'm left to wonder who will be wearing what on the red carpet and whether Will Self can play the role of literary Joan Rivers for TMZ... I clearly have too much time on my hands.
Booker Prize 2015: Best. Shortlist. Ever. (Well, not ever, but almost)
on Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Fifteen minutes down and I'm ready to call it: This is the best Booker Prize shortlist in years. Smart, literary and accessible, it promises hours of satisfying reading for those of us who stubbornly push our way through every nominated word in every nominated sentence in every nominated book every fucking year. And, while I'm a pretty smug bastard, I'm not only saying it because I pretty much picked it.
If you haven't seen the announcement yet, the six novels vying for Booker glory are:
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Leaving aside the Gold Watch nomination for Tyler, and Sahota's book that I know nothing about (but, judging by the other nominees is probably excellent), we have been gifted with four very worthy books, any of which will not bring shame or disappointment to the Booker name. It might even settle the great Booker/Folio shitfight.
As I said when the long list was announced, smart money would be on either Marlon James or Chigozie Obioma. I've only read the latter and I knew from the outset that it was bound to end up here. Meanwhile, I've heard nothing but the most frenzied of raves for James's story of Jamaica's most tumultuous period (which happened to include the attempted assassination of Bob Marley). Satin Island is brilliant - one of my favourite books this year - but it might be a bit intellectually offbeat for such a mainstream literary prize. And while I haven't read the Yanagihara yet, her last book, The People of the Trees, is one of the few truly revelatory novels of the past five years and, if the hype is to be believed, this is just as good.
I'm a little disappointed that Bill Clegg's long listed novel Did You Ever Have a Family didn't make it. I'm halfway through and it is a deeply moving novel about loss; a chain of voices reminiscent of the late great Andre Brink combined with Iain Pears and the mid-to-late 20th century American storytelling tradition of Wallace Stegner, William Faulkner and Richard Yates. The parochial Australasian in me is similarly disappointed that Anna Smaill didn't get through with her well-received novel, The Chimes but hey, we bagged it last year. And, for what it's worth, I'd have liked to see Marilynne Robinson's Lila there instead of Tyler's book. I'm never one for gold watches (I'm looking at you Ian McEwan).
The Booker Prize will be announced on October 15. I'm still calling it for Obioma. But we all know how that's likely to turn out.
If you haven't seen the announcement yet, the six novels vying for Booker glory are:
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Leaving aside the Gold Watch nomination for Tyler, and Sahota's book that I know nothing about (but, judging by the other nominees is probably excellent), we have been gifted with four very worthy books, any of which will not bring shame or disappointment to the Booker name. It might even settle the great Booker/Folio shitfight.
As I said when the long list was announced, smart money would be on either Marlon James or Chigozie Obioma. I've only read the latter and I knew from the outset that it was bound to end up here. Meanwhile, I've heard nothing but the most frenzied of raves for James's story of Jamaica's most tumultuous period (which happened to include the attempted assassination of Bob Marley). Satin Island is brilliant - one of my favourite books this year - but it might be a bit intellectually offbeat for such a mainstream literary prize. And while I haven't read the Yanagihara yet, her last book, The People of the Trees, is one of the few truly revelatory novels of the past five years and, if the hype is to be believed, this is just as good.
I'm a little disappointed that Bill Clegg's long listed novel Did You Ever Have a Family didn't make it. I'm halfway through and it is a deeply moving novel about loss; a chain of voices reminiscent of the late great Andre Brink combined with Iain Pears and the mid-to-late 20th century American storytelling tradition of Wallace Stegner, William Faulkner and Richard Yates. The parochial Australasian in me is similarly disappointed that Anna Smaill didn't get through with her well-received novel, The Chimes but hey, we bagged it last year. And, for what it's worth, I'd have liked to see Marilynne Robinson's Lila there instead of Tyler's book. I'm never one for gold watches (I'm looking at you Ian McEwan).
The Booker Prize will be announced on October 15. I'm still calling it for Obioma. But we all know how that's likely to turn out.
Booker Prize 2015: A Likeable Longlist
on Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Cue the confetti cannons. Silly season has begun.
The good folk at Team Booker have just announced this year's longlist and, I'm glad to say, it is quite the impressive collection. In case you haven't seen it, the books in the running for the Man Booker Prize 2015 are:
Bill Clegg (US) - Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape)
Anne Enright (Ireland) - The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)
Marlon James (Jamaica) - A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications)
Laila Lalami (US) - The Moor's Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing)
Tom McCarthy (UK) - Satin Island (Jonathan Cape)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) - The Fishermen (ONE, Pushkin Press)
Andrew O’Hagan (UK) - The Illuminations (Faber & Faber)
Marilynne Robinson (US) - Lila (Virago)
Anuradha Roy (India) - Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Sunjeev Sahota (UK) - The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) - The Chimes (Sceptre)
Anne Tyler (US) - A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus)
Hanya Yanagihara (US) - A Little Life (Picador)
As predicted, Obioma made it and you'd have to think is in with a good chance. Ditto Marlon James. Both books have been real favourites among reviewers and readers alike. I've only read the Obioma but the James has been sitting on my shelf for months and I'm keen to finally have reason to get stuck into it. I'm also pleased to see Tom McCarthy get another look-in. His consistent output of innovative yet accessible literature is worthy of continuing recognition and, while I don't really see him winning the prize, he most certainly deserves to make it to the final six. The one that I'm really excited about, though, is Hanya Yanagihara. Her first novel, The People Of The Trees was a magnificent, complex, revelatory work and there's some good buzz about this new one. I haven't had the guts to delve in yet - it's 800-odd pages - but I have a long haul flight in the near future and it will most certainly be my companion for those nine hours. Last time I read a long book in a single sitting it was Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries and we all know how that turned out.
The list is not without its duds. The Andrew O'Hagan was underwhelming - I just don't get the fuss the critics made about it. Sure, the guy deserves a Booker somewhere down the track but if he didn't win it for Be Near Me or Our Fathers he sure shouldn't be winning it for this. At least it was better than Maf The Dog, but so is my average shopping list. Also, though i have yet to read it, most people I know who have had a go at Anne Tyler's 'retirement novel' have thought it considerably beneath her. A win might be a gold watch for an amazing career, but it would do the prize no great credit.
For the Aussies who were hoping for back to back Bookers... Peter Carey? That was our best chance? Come on. Amnesia was, if you'll excuse the pun, entirely forgettable. New Zealand didn't fare a great deal better with only one nomination but I was happy to see that it was for The Chimes, a book that I've had my eye on for a while by an author who, a mutual friend tells me, is a really talented, humble and lovely person.
So there you have it: the most promising list of seemingly deserving contenders we've seen in years. More thoughts to come but, until then, happy reading!
The good folk at Team Booker have just announced this year's longlist and, I'm glad to say, it is quite the impressive collection. In case you haven't seen it, the books in the running for the Man Booker Prize 2015 are:
Bill Clegg (US) - Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape)
Anne Enright (Ireland) - The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)
Marlon James (Jamaica) - A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications)
Laila Lalami (US) - The Moor's Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing)
Tom McCarthy (UK) - Satin Island (Jonathan Cape)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) - The Fishermen (ONE, Pushkin Press)
Andrew O’Hagan (UK) - The Illuminations (Faber & Faber)
Marilynne Robinson (US) - Lila (Virago)
Anuradha Roy (India) - Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Sunjeev Sahota (UK) - The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) - The Chimes (Sceptre)
Anne Tyler (US) - A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus)
Hanya Yanagihara (US) - A Little Life (Picador)
As predicted, Obioma made it and you'd have to think is in with a good chance. Ditto Marlon James. Both books have been real favourites among reviewers and readers alike. I've only read the Obioma but the James has been sitting on my shelf for months and I'm keen to finally have reason to get stuck into it. I'm also pleased to see Tom McCarthy get another look-in. His consistent output of innovative yet accessible literature is worthy of continuing recognition and, while I don't really see him winning the prize, he most certainly deserves to make it to the final six. The one that I'm really excited about, though, is Hanya Yanagihara. Her first novel, The People Of The Trees was a magnificent, complex, revelatory work and there's some good buzz about this new one. I haven't had the guts to delve in yet - it's 800-odd pages - but I have a long haul flight in the near future and it will most certainly be my companion for those nine hours. Last time I read a long book in a single sitting it was Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries and we all know how that turned out.
The list is not without its duds. The Andrew O'Hagan was underwhelming - I just don't get the fuss the critics made about it. Sure, the guy deserves a Booker somewhere down the track but if he didn't win it for Be Near Me or Our Fathers he sure shouldn't be winning it for this. At least it was better than Maf The Dog, but so is my average shopping list. Also, though i have yet to read it, most people I know who have had a go at Anne Tyler's 'retirement novel' have thought it considerably beneath her. A win might be a gold watch for an amazing career, but it would do the prize no great credit.
For the Aussies who were hoping for back to back Bookers... Peter Carey? That was our best chance? Come on. Amnesia was, if you'll excuse the pun, entirely forgettable. New Zealand didn't fare a great deal better with only one nomination but I was happy to see that it was for The Chimes, a book that I've had my eye on for a while by an author who, a mutual friend tells me, is a really talented, humble and lovely person.
So there you have it: the most promising list of seemingly deserving contenders we've seen in years. More thoughts to come but, until then, happy reading!
Death. Taxes. Krasznahorkai: The Man Booker International Prize Gets It Right
on Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Listen carefully. Hear that faint whirring? Yes, that one. It is the sound of Benjamin Franklin spinning furiously in his grave. No doubt you are familiar with Ol' Ben's great saying about the only two certainties in life: death and taxes. Had he been alive today he might have added a few more: Meryl Streep Oscar nominations. Stephen King novels. Conspiracy theories. My complete inability to correctly pick the winner of a major literary prize. But wait! Could it be that the very essence of certainty has been turned on its head? Could we just have been tossed headlong into a stormy sea of doubt? Could the Man Booker International Prize have changed life as we know it? Cue existential crisis.
Today, one of my all time favourite writers, Laszlo Krasznahorkai - a man who is as dense and difficult to read as his name is to say three times fast - was named the 2015 recipient of what I have often said is the most pointless prize going these days. Time to reconsider, methinks. Sure, I like to moan about it as the Diet Dr. Pepper of literary prizes. And, yes, it comes with all the fanfare of a royal procession through Glasgow. But I can't help but feel it is the only one that consistently gets it right. Thus far it has been awarded to well-deserving writers who, for some godforsaken reason, the folk at Nobel overlook in favour of... well... Tomas Transtromer. Just look at the honour roll: Ismail Kadare. Chinua Achebe. Alice Munro. Philip Roth. Lydia Davis. And now, icing on the cake, the truly awesome Krasznahorkai.
To be honest, I'd totally forgotten about the shortlist. Back in March I picked him to win, assumed the worst and moved on with life. Now I get to see what I only thought a dream actually come true: "I just love the idea of sycophantic Booker types trying to make sense of Krasznahorkai's nightmare vision or even wading through the thick primal sludge of his prose. Oh the joy!". Come tomorrow, there will be a lot of very confused Booker loyalists sitting on the train scratching their heads. Soon thereafter the trains will be filled with goopy brain matter from said heads exploding. Moral of the story: Walk to work tomorrow.
For those who have yet to experience the near religious enlightenment that comes with picking up one of his books I recommend starting with Satantango. The Devil turns up in a remote village and systematically tears it to pieces. Happy dance (I just added that so you didn't think it too bleak). It's a damned hard read (see what I did there?) and, of course, deeply disturbing but it is about as good a debut as any author has ever written. Follow that up with the most dense, difficult nightmare of a book I've read, The Melancholy of Existence, and you are sure to reach a higher literary plain. You'll also never visit a circus again.
Hopefully I haven't turned you off reading him. The guy is actually quite delightful. I had the absolute pleasure/privilege of seeing him in conversation with Colm Toibin in New York last year and he was funny, charming and really quite cool. Indeed, he seemed the very picture of the thoughtful, classical European novelist. He also read a new short story which was one of the best things I've heard in a long time.
All in all, Krasznahorkai continues to produce perfectly crafted, challenging and unique works that might alienate the lazy reader but will reward those who persist in a way many other writers simply cannot. More works are currently being translated and will published by New Directions in the not-too-distant future. With this win lifting his profile in the English-speaking world you have a few months at best to catch up.
Now if only this could mean Ben was wrong about the other certainties. I need a holiday. And to plan for my 300th birthday.
Today, one of my all time favourite writers, Laszlo Krasznahorkai - a man who is as dense and difficult to read as his name is to say three times fast - was named the 2015 recipient of what I have often said is the most pointless prize going these days. Time to reconsider, methinks. Sure, I like to moan about it as the Diet Dr. Pepper of literary prizes. And, yes, it comes with all the fanfare of a royal procession through Glasgow. But I can't help but feel it is the only one that consistently gets it right. Thus far it has been awarded to well-deserving writers who, for some godforsaken reason, the folk at Nobel overlook in favour of... well... Tomas Transtromer. Just look at the honour roll: Ismail Kadare. Chinua Achebe. Alice Munro. Philip Roth. Lydia Davis. And now, icing on the cake, the truly awesome Krasznahorkai.
To be honest, I'd totally forgotten about the shortlist. Back in March I picked him to win, assumed the worst and moved on with life. Now I get to see what I only thought a dream actually come true: "I just love the idea of sycophantic Booker types trying to make sense of Krasznahorkai's nightmare vision or even wading through the thick primal sludge of his prose. Oh the joy!". Come tomorrow, there will be a lot of very confused Booker loyalists sitting on the train scratching their heads. Soon thereafter the trains will be filled with goopy brain matter from said heads exploding. Moral of the story: Walk to work tomorrow.
For those who have yet to experience the near religious enlightenment that comes with picking up one of his books I recommend starting with Satantango. The Devil turns up in a remote village and systematically tears it to pieces. Happy dance (I just added that so you didn't think it too bleak). It's a damned hard read (see what I did there?) and, of course, deeply disturbing but it is about as good a debut as any author has ever written. Follow that up with the most dense, difficult nightmare of a book I've read, The Melancholy of Existence, and you are sure to reach a higher literary plain. You'll also never visit a circus again.
Hopefully I haven't turned you off reading him. The guy is actually quite delightful. I had the absolute pleasure/privilege of seeing him in conversation with Colm Toibin in New York last year and he was funny, charming and really quite cool. Indeed, he seemed the very picture of the thoughtful, classical European novelist. He also read a new short story which was one of the best things I've heard in a long time.
All in all, Krasznahorkai continues to produce perfectly crafted, challenging and unique works that might alienate the lazy reader but will reward those who persist in a way many other writers simply cannot. More works are currently being translated and will published by New Directions in the not-too-distant future. With this win lifting his profile in the English-speaking world you have a few months at best to catch up.
Now if only this could mean Ben was wrong about the other certainties. I need a holiday. And to plan for my 300th birthday.
The Pulitzer Puddlemuck
on Tuesday, April 21, 2015
No seriously... Is there some kind of cosmic literary prank being pulled here?
Hot on the heels of my Folio flip out, Team Pulitzer drop their announcement and, surprise surprise, give the fiction prize to another of the most overrated books of 2014. Yep, in case you haven't heard, this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Anthony Doerr for his WW2 brick of a novel, All The Light We Cannot See. Of course, this isn't the first major plaudit for the book - it sat atop a fair few end of year Best Ofs, most... um... notably the New York Times Notable Books.
As for me, well, I didn't get around to reading it until January so it never made any of my lists. But had I had the chance, no doubt I would have stuck it alongside Akhil Sharma, Haruki Murakami and Ali Smith as one of the most overrated novels of the year. Sure, it's lovely and readable. The chapters fly by in short, sharp succession. The dual plot lines are engaging enough. However, when all was said and done, it struck me as a pretty decent book to read on the plane or beach, not a work of deep substance.
Now, as for the win, I haven't read the other three finalists. There is every possibility that the Doerr is better than Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami or Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates. And this is hardly the calamity of 2012 when no award was given for fiction because the judges didn't feel anything was particularly worthy (despite having had three pretty excellent books on the shortlist). Still, I am really beginning to doubt my ability to gauge the literary landscape.
Oh well. At least I have still have this little corner of the interwebs to pontificate, whinge, call shenanigans and sing some apparently completely off kilter praises.
Hot on the heels of my Folio flip out, Team Pulitzer drop their announcement and, surprise surprise, give the fiction prize to another of the most overrated books of 2014. Yep, in case you haven't heard, this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Anthony Doerr for his WW2 brick of a novel, All The Light We Cannot See. Of course, this isn't the first major plaudit for the book - it sat atop a fair few end of year Best Ofs, most... um... notably the New York Times Notable Books.
As for me, well, I didn't get around to reading it until January so it never made any of my lists. But had I had the chance, no doubt I would have stuck it alongside Akhil Sharma, Haruki Murakami and Ali Smith as one of the most overrated novels of the year. Sure, it's lovely and readable. The chapters fly by in short, sharp succession. The dual plot lines are engaging enough. However, when all was said and done, it struck me as a pretty decent book to read on the plane or beach, not a work of deep substance.
Now, as for the win, I haven't read the other three finalists. There is every possibility that the Doerr is better than Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami or Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates. And this is hardly the calamity of 2012 when no award was given for fiction because the judges didn't feel anything was particularly worthy (despite having had three pretty excellent books on the shortlist). Still, I am really beginning to doubt my ability to gauge the literary landscape.
Oh well. At least I have still have this little corner of the interwebs to pontificate, whinge, call shenanigans and sing some apparently completely off kilter praises.
The End of The Folio Affair
on Saturday, April 18, 2015
Big breath. Big breath.
I realise that I'm a little late to the party here but I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and, hard as it is for me to admit it, I'm just going to have to accept that The Folio Prize and I are never going to be friends. The excitement I felt, the anticipation of the David and Goliath battle with The Booker Prize, the deliriously happy marriage I rushed into. All over.
And... exhale.
You probably already know that the prize was recently awarded to Akhil Sharma for his twelve-year-in-the-making Family Life. William Fiennes, chair of judges, could not have been more laudatory if he tried:
"From a shortlist of which we are enormously proud, Akhil Sharma’s lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures, emerged as our winner. Family Life is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth. More than a decade in the writing, this is a work of art that expands with each re-reading and a novel that will endure."
I, on the other hand, bestowed a somewhat different honour upon it last year, when it came in alongside Murakami's latest offering as the equally most overrated book of 2014. You may perhaps recall my little spray:
"I was at a loss to understand the plaudits poured upon Akhil Sharma's slim offering, Family Life. It supposedly took him ten or twelve or twenty (or some other multiple of a ferret's average life span) years to complete and drew heavily from his personal experience of grief and dislocation. Stripped of its forest of laurels it is a fair to middling shrub of a novel about the immigrant experience. I can't help but feel that Sharma has a lot of friends in high places, none of whom could muster the guts to tell him that those umpteen years might have been better spent working on something else."
So what gives, Folio? Last year you gave it to George Saunders for Tenth of December and I bitched and moaned. That too had made my end of year list in 2013, also being named the most overrated book of the year. Am I that far off track? Have I become the accidental predictor of all future Folio Prizes? If so, might I suggest putting some early moolah on Ishiguro? Or maybe third time will be a charm. Just kidding, I'm sure I'll be wildly off mark again.
I realise that I'm a little late to the party here but I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and, hard as it is for me to admit it, I'm just going to have to accept that The Folio Prize and I are never going to be friends. The excitement I felt, the anticipation of the David and Goliath battle with The Booker Prize, the deliriously happy marriage I rushed into. All over.
And... exhale.
You probably already know that the prize was recently awarded to Akhil Sharma for his twelve-year-in-the-making Family Life. William Fiennes, chair of judges, could not have been more laudatory if he tried:
"From a shortlist of which we are enormously proud, Akhil Sharma’s lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures, emerged as our winner. Family Life is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth. More than a decade in the writing, this is a work of art that expands with each re-reading and a novel that will endure."
I, on the other hand, bestowed a somewhat different honour upon it last year, when it came in alongside Murakami's latest offering as the equally most overrated book of 2014. You may perhaps recall my little spray:
"I was at a loss to understand the plaudits poured upon Akhil Sharma's slim offering, Family Life. It supposedly took him ten or twelve or twenty (or some other multiple of a ferret's average life span) years to complete and drew heavily from his personal experience of grief and dislocation. Stripped of its forest of laurels it is a fair to middling shrub of a novel about the immigrant experience. I can't help but feel that Sharma has a lot of friends in high places, none of whom could muster the guts to tell him that those umpteen years might have been better spent working on something else."
So what gives, Folio? Last year you gave it to George Saunders for Tenth of December and I bitched and moaned. That too had made my end of year list in 2013, also being named the most overrated book of the year. Am I that far off track? Have I become the accidental predictor of all future Folio Prizes? If so, might I suggest putting some early moolah on Ishiguro? Or maybe third time will be a charm. Just kidding, I'm sure I'll be wildly off mark again.
Little Prize Lost: The Man Booker International Prize 2015
on Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Much has changed in LitPrize world since the folk at Man Booker opened its doors to any novel written in the English language. Most notably, the Folio Prize beat Booker to the punch by a couple of years and, in doing so, made the latter look like the new kid on the block (not to mention a bit of an embarrassing follower). Legions of Booker loyalists, myself included, have also cooled a bit on what was once an annual hysterical lather trying to figure out which novel would kneel before the Queen for an honorary knighthood and which others would have their heads lopped off. Perhaps the most peculiar change, though, is to the status of Booker's little cousin - The Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. Handed out every second year, it was originally concocted to recognise the kind of writer who was not eligible for the regular Booker (i.e. the non-colonised) but whose body of work (as opposed to any individual novel) deserved a right royal huzzah. That's not to say the Queen's subjects were not in the running - both Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) and Alice Munro (Canada) have won it - but of the five laureates thus far, three fell outside the traditional Booker jurisdiction.
I've often wondered why or how the prize ever got off the ground. It seemed redundant from the get go. Of the many rationales I've enteratined, only one rings really true. Team Booker made the thing up just so that they could give it to the two perpetual Nobel bridesmaids, Ismail Kadare and Philip Roth. Which kind of means they can close it down. Mission Accomplished. Oh well... Still they persist and now they've just announced the ten writers in the running for the 2015 prize. In case you missed it, they are:
César Aira (Argentina)
Hoda Barakat (Lebanon)
Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe)
Mia Couto (Mozambique)
Amitav Ghosh (India)
Fanny Howe (USA)
Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya)
László Krasznahorkai (Hungary)
Alain Mabanckou (Republic of Congo)
Marlene van Niekerk (South Africa)
No points for guessing where my heart lies on this one. I've been routing for Krasznahorkai for the Nobel for umpteen years (mainly because I've given up on Kadare) so it would be gratifying to see him pick up something in the English-speaking world, even if it is a prize as pointless and ill-conceived as this. I just love the idea of sycophantic Booker types trying to make sense of Krasznahorkai's nightmare vision or even wading through the thick primal sludge of his prose. Oh the joy! Of course we all know my form on picking these things. Might as well hand it to César Aira right now. Alas we'll have to wait until May 19. Watch this space.
I've often wondered why or how the prize ever got off the ground. It seemed redundant from the get go. Of the many rationales I've enteratined, only one rings really true. Team Booker made the thing up just so that they could give it to the two perpetual Nobel bridesmaids, Ismail Kadare and Philip Roth. Which kind of means they can close it down. Mission Accomplished. Oh well... Still they persist and now they've just announced the ten writers in the running for the 2015 prize. In case you missed it, they are:
César Aira (Argentina)
Hoda Barakat (Lebanon)
Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe)
Mia Couto (Mozambique)
Amitav Ghosh (India)
Fanny Howe (USA)
Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya)
László Krasznahorkai (Hungary)
Alain Mabanckou (Republic of Congo)
Marlene van Niekerk (South Africa)
No points for guessing where my heart lies on this one. I've been routing for Krasznahorkai for the Nobel for umpteen years (mainly because I've given up on Kadare) so it would be gratifying to see him pick up something in the English-speaking world, even if it is a prize as pointless and ill-conceived as this. I just love the idea of sycophantic Booker types trying to make sense of Krasznahorkai's nightmare vision or even wading through the thick primal sludge of his prose. Oh the joy! Of course we all know my form on picking these things. Might as well hand it to César Aira right now. Alas we'll have to wait until May 19. Watch this space.
The Calm After The Storm: Richard Flanagan Wins The 2014 Booker
on Thursday, October 16, 2014
A collective sigh of relief was heard across Bookeringham Palace yesterday as the invading hordes were chased away by a new Commonwealth literary legend. Ok, so he's not that new and, well, he's from that place what the convicts got shipped to but all hail Sir Richard of Tasmania, Lord of Literature.
It's a bit of a sad indictment on my reading habits this year but I've yet to read The Narrow Road To The Deep North. Indeed, I only managed two on the shortlist - Jacobson and Smith - neither of which I felt deserved to win. Granted it's a subjective game of relativity; I might have liked the other four even less. And, as much as it pains me to admit, it's not like I have any say in the outcome. But I'm glad Flanagan won not only because he's an Aussie (which hopefully means we can stop claiming DBC Pierre) or because giving it to a writer from the Commonwealth preserves the parochial charm of the Booker Prize but because, by all accounts, The Narrow Road To The Deep North is a deeply literary novel, a story of love, hardship and survival on the Thai Burma Railway dying WW2. In other words, Flanagan's win represents a return (albeit perhaps only briefly) to the essence of what has always made the Booker a great prize to follow. It also adds a slightly humorous dimension to his being passed over for this year's Miles Franklin. The Narrow Road To The Deep North is sitting on my bookshelf waiting for the next quiet patch in my life... which means I can look forward to reading it sometime in 2017.
It's a bit of a sad indictment on my reading habits this year but I've yet to read The Narrow Road To The Deep North. Indeed, I only managed two on the shortlist - Jacobson and Smith - neither of which I felt deserved to win. Granted it's a subjective game of relativity; I might have liked the other four even less. And, as much as it pains me to admit, it's not like I have any say in the outcome. But I'm glad Flanagan won not only because he's an Aussie (which hopefully means we can stop claiming DBC Pierre) or because giving it to a writer from the Commonwealth preserves the parochial charm of the Booker Prize but because, by all accounts, The Narrow Road To The Deep North is a deeply literary novel, a story of love, hardship and survival on the Thai Burma Railway dying WW2. In other words, Flanagan's win represents a return (albeit perhaps only briefly) to the essence of what has always made the Booker a great prize to follow. It also adds a slightly humorous dimension to his being passed over for this year's Miles Franklin. The Narrow Road To The Deep North is sitting on my bookshelf waiting for the next quiet patch in my life... which means I can look forward to reading it sometime in 2017.
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