Showing posts with label Booker Prize 2015. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Booker Prize 2015. Show all posts
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Man Booker Winner 2015: Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
I wrote some things about this year's Man Booker winner, and what it might suggest about judges' views on What Really Matters, over at Global Comment. See if you agree!
Monday, September 28, 2015
Man Booker Shortlist Review #4 (Longlist #8): Satin Island
I'm over at Global Comment today, reviewing Tom McCarthy's clever, infuriating Man Booker shortlisted Satin Island.
Other reviews from this year's Man Booker list are:
Shortlist
A Spool of Blue Thread
The Fishermen
The Year of the Runaways
Longlist
Lila
The Green Road
The Moor's Account
The Chimes
Other reviews from this year's Man Booker list are:
Shortlist
A Spool of Blue Thread
The Fishermen
The Year of the Runaways
Longlist
Lila
The Green Road
The Moor's Account
The Chimes
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Man Booker Shortlist Overview
My take on the Man Booker shortlist is up at Global Comment. Let me know your thoughts over there!
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Man Booker Longlist Reviews #6 and #7: The Moor's Account and The Year of the Runaways
As the Man Booker shortlist day grows close (it's being announced on Tuesday night, Melbourne time), I thought it would be a good idea to get at least basic reviews up on the two remaining books I have read from the longlist - Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account, and Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways. I'm doing them together not because they are in any way alike - they really aren't - but because they have this is common: I didn't read either one with any great enjoyment, and I confess to skipping chunks in order to get to the end. I give you this information so you can take my reviews with the appropriate king-sized grains of salt!
The Moor's Account, Laila Lalami's fictionalisation of a real Spanish conquistidor's failed 1527 attempt to claim what would later be known as Florida for the Spanish crown, is best described as ... worthy.
Retelling the story from the viewpoint of de Narvaez's Moorish slave, Mustafa al-Zamori (known to the Spaniards as Estebianco), Lalami is meticulous in her adherence to the historical narrative - it would be impossible not to respect the sheer volume of historical research that has gone into this book, and I can't fault it on the grounds of accuracy of landscapes, events, and political climate.
She's also, it seems to me, working hard to capture some of the flavour of the explorer's narratives that form the backbone of modern interpretations of the conquest period; al-Zamori's careful, emotionally fraught sequentialisation of the journey reads very much like Columbus's voyage logs. (My Masters thesis, which focused on Puritan narratives of Indian captivity, opened with a scene-setting chapter looking at how non-English invaders had represented native people in the Americas, so I know at least a little of what I speak.)
However - and this is where it all fell down, frankly - Lalami applies a thick patina of contemporary moralising and values to a story that had the potential to be much more interesting without them. Her Spaniards are caricatures, mustache-twirling evil villains, and her Africans and Americans are good, kindly, pure, etc. She throws in a few flaws for al-Zamori himself - hard not to, in a narrator - but even there, she leaves her reader in no doubt that the story of American conquest is one that should be read without nuance, and without mercy for the Europeans and their part. Any attempt to understand the world view of the Spaniards is transitory and half-hearted, and quickly abandoned.
I guess, at that end, this is why I didn't grip to this book - the profound ahistoricity of its approach to questions of ethics and morality irritated me, and made the considerable virtues of the accuracy in setting and events feel wasted. Don't mistake me - judging the past with a contemporary lens is a temptation almost too strong to resist, for historians as well as novellists. But it doesn't make for good history, or for a well-rounded novel.
The Year of the Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota's second novel, is a contemporary novel, so the prohibition against applying present-day value judgements does not apply. Yet, in different ways, it is also a very worthy novel - depressing, grim, and often more concerned with making its undoubtedly powerful political points than with crafting the story.
This is the story of three young men and one young woman - the men are Indian, in the UK on various forms of borderline visas or illegally, working and living together in conditions very akin to indentured servitude, while the woman, Narindar, is a British Sikh struggling with questions of personal versus communal morality. Sahota uses the five as vehicles to explore, sometimes adroitly and sometimes with a heavy hand, various ideas about caste, modernity, migration, asylum, obligation and ethics - all very interesting themes, yet, somehow, not as interestingly explored as they might have been.
For me, it is the middle section that really let the novel down; saggy rambling middle bridges are not my favourite, and boy howdy does this novel have one. Sahota gives us the backstory of the characters, at considerable length in at least two cases, and seems to me to get carried away with expounding these mini-stories at the expense of building a larger coherent narrative. I'm always a trifle dubious about head-hopping, and this is a good example of why.
Some of the stories are, individually, compelling and heart-breaking - notably Tochi's, the Untouchable man whose experience in India was so brutal - but where I felt that the novel lost traction is that it didn't make the leap to knitting the tales together in a coherent way. Rather, it presents these four individuals as a self-evident prima facie case for the larger political points Sahota is trying to make, and I don't feel it carried.
All of that said, Sahota is a terrific writer stylistically - his prose is silky and compelling, and his ideas, fully realised or not, are powerful. I think this one will go far, because it is that rare thing - a genuinely political novel speaking to present political-ethical concerns. It isn't entirely successful, but it's a valiant attempt.
__________________________________________
So that's me done for the Man Booker longlist - I've read 7 of the 13 in total, and started 2 others (A Brief History of Seven Killings and Satin Island). The four I haven't touched are Sleeping on Jupiter, A Little Life, Did You Ever Have a Family, and The Illuminations. I am reliably informed that A Little Life is going to shortlist (every reviewer who's read it has been blown away), so I'll most likely be picking that one up in the shortlist race.
Other than that, what else will shortlist? Well, and bearing in mind the ones I haven't read might be spectacular, I'd be picking these five to round out the Big Six:
Lila
The Fishermen
The Green Road
Satin Island
The Year of the Runaways
These aren't my favourites - indeed, I enjoyed both The Chimes and A Spool of Blue Thread much more than most of them - but they are my picks for Boookerish titles, based on what I have read or sampled. (Obviously with the caveat that any one or more than one of the four unread titles could gazump any of them).
I'll be doing a shortlist overview at Global Comment late this week, and after that, pressing on with the remaining shortlist books I haven't read. (I'm hoping it is four or preferably less - I'll be very annoyed if the shortlist is comprised entirely of the barely-started or unread titles!)
The Moor's Account, Laila Lalami's fictionalisation of a real Spanish conquistidor's failed 1527 attempt to claim what would later be known as Florida for the Spanish crown, is best described as ... worthy.
Retelling the story from the viewpoint of de Narvaez's Moorish slave, Mustafa al-Zamori (known to the Spaniards as Estebianco), Lalami is meticulous in her adherence to the historical narrative - it would be impossible not to respect the sheer volume of historical research that has gone into this book, and I can't fault it on the grounds of accuracy of landscapes, events, and political climate.
She's also, it seems to me, working hard to capture some of the flavour of the explorer's narratives that form the backbone of modern interpretations of the conquest period; al-Zamori's careful, emotionally fraught sequentialisation of the journey reads very much like Columbus's voyage logs. (My Masters thesis, which focused on Puritan narratives of Indian captivity, opened with a scene-setting chapter looking at how non-English invaders had represented native people in the Americas, so I know at least a little of what I speak.)
However - and this is where it all fell down, frankly - Lalami applies a thick patina of contemporary moralising and values to a story that had the potential to be much more interesting without them. Her Spaniards are caricatures, mustache-twirling evil villains, and her Africans and Americans are good, kindly, pure, etc. She throws in a few flaws for al-Zamori himself - hard not to, in a narrator - but even there, she leaves her reader in no doubt that the story of American conquest is one that should be read without nuance, and without mercy for the Europeans and their part. Any attempt to understand the world view of the Spaniards is transitory and half-hearted, and quickly abandoned.
I guess, at that end, this is why I didn't grip to this book - the profound ahistoricity of its approach to questions of ethics and morality irritated me, and made the considerable virtues of the accuracy in setting and events feel wasted. Don't mistake me - judging the past with a contemporary lens is a temptation almost too strong to resist, for historians as well as novellists. But it doesn't make for good history, or for a well-rounded novel.
The Year of the Runaways, Sunjeev Sahota's second novel, is a contemporary novel, so the prohibition against applying present-day value judgements does not apply. Yet, in different ways, it is also a very worthy novel - depressing, grim, and often more concerned with making its undoubtedly powerful political points than with crafting the story.
This is the story of three young men and one young woman - the men are Indian, in the UK on various forms of borderline visas or illegally, working and living together in conditions very akin to indentured servitude, while the woman, Narindar, is a British Sikh struggling with questions of personal versus communal morality. Sahota uses the five as vehicles to explore, sometimes adroitly and sometimes with a heavy hand, various ideas about caste, modernity, migration, asylum, obligation and ethics - all very interesting themes, yet, somehow, not as interestingly explored as they might have been.
For me, it is the middle section that really let the novel down; saggy rambling middle bridges are not my favourite, and boy howdy does this novel have one. Sahota gives us the backstory of the characters, at considerable length in at least two cases, and seems to me to get carried away with expounding these mini-stories at the expense of building a larger coherent narrative. I'm always a trifle dubious about head-hopping, and this is a good example of why.
Some of the stories are, individually, compelling and heart-breaking - notably Tochi's, the Untouchable man whose experience in India was so brutal - but where I felt that the novel lost traction is that it didn't make the leap to knitting the tales together in a coherent way. Rather, it presents these four individuals as a self-evident prima facie case for the larger political points Sahota is trying to make, and I don't feel it carried.
All of that said, Sahota is a terrific writer stylistically - his prose is silky and compelling, and his ideas, fully realised or not, are powerful. I think this one will go far, because it is that rare thing - a genuinely political novel speaking to present political-ethical concerns. It isn't entirely successful, but it's a valiant attempt.
__________________________________________
So that's me done for the Man Booker longlist - I've read 7 of the 13 in total, and started 2 others (A Brief History of Seven Killings and Satin Island). The four I haven't touched are Sleeping on Jupiter, A Little Life, Did You Ever Have a Family, and The Illuminations. I am reliably informed that A Little Life is going to shortlist (every reviewer who's read it has been blown away), so I'll most likely be picking that one up in the shortlist race.
Other than that, what else will shortlist? Well, and bearing in mind the ones I haven't read might be spectacular, I'd be picking these five to round out the Big Six:
Lila
The Fishermen
The Green Road
Satin Island
The Year of the Runaways
These aren't my favourites - indeed, I enjoyed both The Chimes and A Spool of Blue Thread much more than most of them - but they are my picks for Boookerish titles, based on what I have read or sampled. (Obviously with the caveat that any one or more than one of the four unread titles could gazump any of them).
I'll be doing a shortlist overview at Global Comment late this week, and after that, pressing on with the remaining shortlist books I haven't read. (I'm hoping it is four or preferably less - I'll be very annoyed if the shortlist is comprised entirely of the barely-started or unread titles!)
Friday, September 11, 2015
Man Booker Longlist Review #5: The Fishermen
I'm over at Global Comment today, discussing Chigozie Obioma's startling debut, The Fishermen. Check it out if you are interested!
Friday, September 4, 2015
Man Booker Longlist Review #4: The Green Road
Anne Enright's latest novel, The Green Road, is actually the sixth book on the Man Booker longlist that I have read, but the fourth to be reviewed.
Maybe this is because, unlike The Fishermen and The Year of the Runaways (reviews pending), I found this book not too difficult to either read or reach a conclusion about. That's not because it's lacking in complexity, but because the nature of its complexity is one that I can grip to more eaily than the mythic, scatological strangeness of The Fishermen or the mournful grimness of Runaways. Because, essentially, The Green Road is another story about family, and how it makes and breaks us - a slyer, more dysfunctional vision than Anne Tyler's gentle A Spool of Blue Thread, but nonetheless not a hopeless, helpless picture either.
The Green Road is the story of the Madigan family - to be more precise, it's the story of Rosaleen Considine Madigan and her four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. Rosaleen's husband, Pat, is present in the early part of the novel, but is never really a protagonist, and has died by about the quarter-way mark, thereafter only appearing as a symbolic figure in memory.
Rosaleen is a complicated, unlikeable, woman, with decided narcissistic tendencies and a parenting style that made me pale. Does she love her children? Yes. No. Some of them. Sometimes. Does she wound and damage them? Continually, and in ways that shape their adult lives. The book opens with her sustained hissy fit at Dan's announcement that he is going to train to be a priest - it literally is all about her, and her derailed expectations of favoured grandchildren from her favourite child, in her mind.
Dan's trajectory, which is taken up next in a beautifully described, achingly sad study of gay male New York culture in the 1980-90s era, both echoes and resiles against his mother's touch on his life, as Dan (who never did become a priest) finds his way painfully to his identity as a gay man. The context - of HIV diagnoses, illnesses and death - is never far from the forefront in this passage. Enright's unusual narrative decision to use not Dan himself, but one of his acquaintances, Greg, as the intimate third-person focus in this passage works extremely well.
Enright's consummate skill is on display as she head-hops from Dan's story back to Constance, the married-young, mother-of-three, carer-daughter left behind in Ireland. In many ways, Constance - in her late 30s / early 40s for most of the book's action - is the character that resonated most with me. Enright chooses a smaller, more intimate lens to unpick her story - one that's chillingly and ominously real for most people in their mid-life - as she follows Constance to a large public hospital to have testing done on a breast lump. Constance's fears and hopes are painfully present in this process, and at the very end of the book, Enright puts a nasty sting in the tail for poor put-upon Constance. (That's one of the reasons I describe this book as "sly" - it allows the reader to relax before sucker-punching you, more than once).
Emmet, the emotionally twisted, perennially enraged social justice warrior / aid worker, is probably the least accessible of the main characters, and I think this is by intent. I get a sense of faint amusement from the text, as if Enright is enjoying subverting what readers think they *should* feel - it feels weird that Emmet, who's actually dedicating his life to poverty relief and practical aid work in some of the poorest countries on earth, should be so much less sympathetic than hedontistic, selfish Dan, workaday Constance or even the feckless alcoholic Hanna. (He is not, however, less sympathetic than Rosaleen). His portion of the head-hop was the least engaging in many ways, and felt much more distant to me than did the other three.
Hanna, the family's baby, is an unmitigated mess, and in her the traces of maternal damage are easiest to see. Her untreated PPD and dangerous alcoholism both wracked me with sympathy and made my skin crawl for her care (or lack of) her infant son. Hanna's scars are out where everyone can see them, but that doesn't make her the only one carrying them.
At the end, though, this is only partially a story about individuals - it's really a story about a family, hairy and sometimes unpleasant and still bound, to their mother and each other, in ways none of them can really escape. It's staggeringly well-written - I would expect nothing less from Enright, one of the best Irish novellists of the last 50 years - and it's an insightful, lingering book, that stays with you in unexpected ways.
Is it a Booker winner? Maybe, maybe. It's certainly as good as any of the other six I've read, and better than at least two of them. I'll go out on a limb and say it will shortlist, but what happens past that is anyone's guess.
Maybe this is because, unlike The Fishermen and The Year of the Runaways (reviews pending), I found this book not too difficult to either read or reach a conclusion about. That's not because it's lacking in complexity, but because the nature of its complexity is one that I can grip to more eaily than the mythic, scatological strangeness of The Fishermen or the mournful grimness of Runaways. Because, essentially, The Green Road is another story about family, and how it makes and breaks us - a slyer, more dysfunctional vision than Anne Tyler's gentle A Spool of Blue Thread, but nonetheless not a hopeless, helpless picture either.
The Green Road is the story of the Madigan family - to be more precise, it's the story of Rosaleen Considine Madigan and her four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. Rosaleen's husband, Pat, is present in the early part of the novel, but is never really a protagonist, and has died by about the quarter-way mark, thereafter only appearing as a symbolic figure in memory.
Rosaleen is a complicated, unlikeable, woman, with decided narcissistic tendencies and a parenting style that made me pale. Does she love her children? Yes. No. Some of them. Sometimes. Does she wound and damage them? Continually, and in ways that shape their adult lives. The book opens with her sustained hissy fit at Dan's announcement that he is going to train to be a priest - it literally is all about her, and her derailed expectations of favoured grandchildren from her favourite child, in her mind.
Dan's trajectory, which is taken up next in a beautifully described, achingly sad study of gay male New York culture in the 1980-90s era, both echoes and resiles against his mother's touch on his life, as Dan (who never did become a priest) finds his way painfully to his identity as a gay man. The context - of HIV diagnoses, illnesses and death - is never far from the forefront in this passage. Enright's unusual narrative decision to use not Dan himself, but one of his acquaintances, Greg, as the intimate third-person focus in this passage works extremely well.
Enright's consummate skill is on display as she head-hops from Dan's story back to Constance, the married-young, mother-of-three, carer-daughter left behind in Ireland. In many ways, Constance - in her late 30s / early 40s for most of the book's action - is the character that resonated most with me. Enright chooses a smaller, more intimate lens to unpick her story - one that's chillingly and ominously real for most people in their mid-life - as she follows Constance to a large public hospital to have testing done on a breast lump. Constance's fears and hopes are painfully present in this process, and at the very end of the book, Enright puts a nasty sting in the tail for poor put-upon Constance. (That's one of the reasons I describe this book as "sly" - it allows the reader to relax before sucker-punching you, more than once).
Emmet, the emotionally twisted, perennially enraged social justice warrior / aid worker, is probably the least accessible of the main characters, and I think this is by intent. I get a sense of faint amusement from the text, as if Enright is enjoying subverting what readers think they *should* feel - it feels weird that Emmet, who's actually dedicating his life to poverty relief and practical aid work in some of the poorest countries on earth, should be so much less sympathetic than hedontistic, selfish Dan, workaday Constance or even the feckless alcoholic Hanna. (He is not, however, less sympathetic than Rosaleen). His portion of the head-hop was the least engaging in many ways, and felt much more distant to me than did the other three.
Hanna, the family's baby, is an unmitigated mess, and in her the traces of maternal damage are easiest to see. Her untreated PPD and dangerous alcoholism both wracked me with sympathy and made my skin crawl for her care (or lack of) her infant son. Hanna's scars are out where everyone can see them, but that doesn't make her the only one carrying them.
At the end, though, this is only partially a story about individuals - it's really a story about a family, hairy and sometimes unpleasant and still bound, to their mother and each other, in ways none of them can really escape. It's staggeringly well-written - I would expect nothing less from Enright, one of the best Irish novellists of the last 50 years - and it's an insightful, lingering book, that stays with you in unexpected ways.
Is it a Booker winner? Maybe, maybe. It's certainly as good as any of the other six I've read, and better than at least two of them. I'll go out on a limb and say it will shortlist, but what happens past that is anyone's guess.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Man Booker Longlist Review #2: Marilynne Robinson's Lila
My second Man Booker Longlist review is up at Global Comment today. It's of Marilynne Robinson's concluding novel in her Gilead cycle - Lila. Come over and tell me your thoughts!
Friday, August 7, 2015
Man Booker Longlist Review #1: Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread
My first review in the Man Booker 2015 Longlist challenge, of Anne Tyler's lovely A Spool of Blue Thread, is up today at Global Comment. Check it out if you are so minded!
The next one will be of Marilynne Robinson's Lila: look out for that one by mid next week.
The next one will be of Marilynne Robinson's Lila: look out for that one by mid next week.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Man Booker Longlist: My primer
As indicated, I have done a bit of an overview piece on the Man Booker longlist over at Global Comment. Have a read if you're interested!
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Man Booker 2015: Longlist Challenge is afoot!
The longlist for this year's Man Booker prize was announced yesterday. It's a 13-book list, about which I will write at greater length at Global Comment in the next few days. The titles 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)
I'm going to try to read as many as possible, and review them, before the 15 September shortlist announcement. I've already read Anne Tyler's book (review next week, but small spoiler - it's lovely). That leaves a round dozen to be getting on with, so it's a fair challenge!
As usual, I've divided the task in half, with the First Six being the books I would probably want to read anyway (so I'll start with them) and the Back Six being the ones with less immediate appeal that I might not get to. My First Six are:
Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen
Anuradha Roy's Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways
Marilyne Robinson's Lila
Tom McCarthy's Satin Island
The first four of these have been ordered from a bookshop using a handy voucher I had ready, so should arrive early next week. I'm kicking off, therefore, with Lila, which I have bought on Kindle and is therefore ready to start immediately.
As usual, my reviews will be divided between here and Global Comment, but I'll always link out to them wherever they are.
So with that ... let the games begin!
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)
I'm going to try to read as many as possible, and review them, before the 15 September shortlist announcement. I've already read Anne Tyler's book (review next week, but small spoiler - it's lovely). That leaves a round dozen to be getting on with, so it's a fair challenge!
As usual, I've divided the task in half, with the First Six being the books I would probably want to read anyway (so I'll start with them) and the Back Six being the ones with less immediate appeal that I might not get to. My First Six are:
Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings
Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen
Anuradha Roy's Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways
Marilyne Robinson's Lila
Tom McCarthy's Satin Island
The first four of these have been ordered from a bookshop using a handy voucher I had ready, so should arrive early next week. I'm kicking off, therefore, with Lila, which I have bought on Kindle and is therefore ready to start immediately.
As usual, my reviews will be divided between here and Global Comment, but I'll always link out to them wherever they are.
So with that ... let the games begin!
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