So
I've finally got around to finishing the shortlist for the 2014 ManBooker Prize, and offer below my own thoughts on the list.
We Are All
Completely Beside Ourselves – Karen Joy Fowler
8/10
Easily the shortest and
smallest book on the list, this is an almost pocket-sized punch of an
idea between two covers. The 'big reveal' is about halfway through
(though can be guessed earlier), so to discuss it rather gives away a
point on which the plot hinges, but let's just say: it's a
game-changer. At the centre of this one is an issue that gets quite
divisive, and your opinion quite possible depends on which polarised
end of that (unspecified by me) debate your sympathy falls on. But
the novel's well-written, full of heart, with an engaging, female
protagonist-narrator, a smattering of science and comes in at just
the right length.
J – Howard
Jacobson
6/10
The residents of
Jacobson's novel live in a fuzzy, blurry sort of world, in the
aftermath (two generations ago) of some cataclysmic social event that
may or may not have happened, and of which no one speaks except in
the vaguest of terms, always couched with caveats. Apologies are a
way of life, a golden rule in this society that either has offended
someone deeply, or hasn't at all but might. At first, that vagueness
was attractive, it allowed the unnamed event to stand for any awkward
past circumstance – increasingly, for any genocide or cultural
exploitation. But, after a while, it grated on me. Other reviewers
complain that there weren't enough details for them, and I get that,
but I also get that the lack of detail is deliberate and kind of
important; there's a quest for understanding here, and a deep-seated
paranoia that makes more sense in a context of a society that doesn't
really understand or trust itself. Overall, this one's kind of bleak,
without much to redeem or relieve that.
The Lives Of Others
– Neel Mukherjee
6/10
This all felt a bit
familiar. Like 2013's shortlisted The Lowland, this is about a
family in late 1960s Calcutta that is torn apart by a son who runs
away to join the Communist/Maoist Naxalite rebellion. There are other
similarities, but those would be spoilers. The big difference is that
The Lives of Others takes as its theme the conflict between
classes and castes in India, rather than the fallout of abandoning a
family as The Lowland does. To that end, Mukherjee gives us an
elongated slice of life in an upper-middle-class Indian family in
decline, something with the generational scope of an epic but the
intimate personal portraits of a life in miniature. Unfortunately,
this feels like it's twice as long as The Lowland, and really
needn't be. By the middle third, it had started to get interesting,
but by the final third I found myself sympathising with the dying
grandfather and grateful that he (and I) wouldn't be around much
longer to share his family's decline. There are quite a few
characters to keep track of, often the same ones at different ages
too, and by the end I didn't feel like the emotional involvement I
had with any of them justified the length of time it took to reach
the story's conclusion.
To Rise Again At A
Decent Hour – Joshua Ferris
7/10
Inevitably this one has
some overlap with J, but here the Holocaust is specifically
invoked by name. Invoked over and over again, in a story that's as
much about what can cause offence to the Jewish community (and who
counts as Jewish in the first place) as it is about a New York
dentist with problems adjusting to modern society. But it's a book
that takes it all with a lightness of touch that sits at odds with
the dark comedy (this dentist is pretty fatalistic) and the
existential void at the heart of the narrator's life. That's not to
say the Holocaust is made light of (in fact, the mere suggestion of
doing so is greeting with horror), but rather that the tone never
gets maudlin. There's an exploration of doubt and alienation from
(but wanting to join in with) the modern world that takes the odd
angle of an obscure lost tribe of Biblical times, in a way that feels
at once believable and yet slightly improbable. The narrator is
perhaps of that sort that appeals to middle-aged men looking for
their sense of purpose, but he is at least plausible, likeable in his
own way, and well-refined; his flaws make him, and they get in his
way but they are deeply human. So, in the end, maybe it's a white,
middle-aged man's book about not really 'getting' modern society (in,
of course, New York City), and maybe there are plenty of books
already like that, but this one is darkly funny and has a
deeply-flawed human at its centre.
How To Be Both –
Ali Smith
7/10
Bit of a double-hander,
this one, being divided into two distinct but complementary
narratives. There's the story of an Italian fresco-painter from the
1400s somehow transported into an unfamiliar modern-day
'purgatorium', and there's the story of George, a modern teenage girl
suffering a recent bereavement. Some versions of the published book
start with the fresco-painter, Franchesco del Cossa, and some start
with George – which Smith claims means there are two ways to read
the novel, and you're stuck with whichever you read first. The book
can, sort of, be both, but you only get one first time. Mine started
with del Cossa (who, thanks to historical ambiguity, gets to be both
male and female, in a way that George's name only hints at), which
seems to make more sense, but then I suppose it would, to me. The two
stories work independently, but it felt like reading George second
shed light on the occasional moments of overlap in del Cossa's story,
in a way that wouldn't have happened the other way around. Besides, I
suspected that del Cossa's bit would feel like an attempt at
presenting one of George's school projects if I'd read her part
first. Some reviews have suggested that both parts could be
standalone novels, and I think that might be true, although I'd be
far more interested in del Cossa's novel – with all its historical
fill-in-the-blanks biography and fluid style following the tradition
of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies (2009 and 2012
winners) – than George's, which comes across as rather more of a
contemporary teen girl coming-of-age story.
The Narrow Road To
The Deep North – Richard Flanagan
7/10
With a plot focused on
a Japanese POW camp on the notorious Death Railway in Burma, this one
was never going to be cheerful. Occasionally, it has a nod at the
idea of something uplifting, but always manages to temper that with
the far more realistic notion that freedom might not always be
freedom. Or rather, the thread running through this whole book is
that freedom might not be all it's cracked up to be, and that,
arguably, the survivors never truly escape the camp – those few
years act as a magnet for the rest of their lives and especially
when, in old age, they look back on their lives. Flanagan's quite
even-handed with the Japanese and Korean guards, allowing them more
humanity and depth than might be expected – how easy it would have
been to make them unthinking brutes and borderline psychopaths –
and giving them endings that reflect a nuanced portrayal of the
losers as well as the victors (hint: nobody really comes out of Burma
well). But it's not all gloom and incarceration; there's a few people
trapped in loveless marriages too. The mosaic of a plot darts around
here there and everywhere, but that generally works and gives an
impression of the older man reflecting on a life lived in the shadow
of that railway, despite everything that's happened before and after.
It's a novel with some depth, and some depths of human suffering, but
it's not exactly enjoyable.
So, which would I have
given the prize to? The rules simply state that the prize goes to
'the best novel in the opinion of the judges', ie. me. Initially I'd
say it's perhaps a four-way race between We Are All Completely
Beside Ourselves, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, How
to be Both and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. I guess
that's because J and The Lives of Others, though they
have their undoubted merits, weren't so much fun to read (or rather,
their redeeming features weren't enough to lift them above the slog
of reading them). J had compelling ideas, if clouded and
disguised, and The Lives of Others was an immersive saga, if
somehow lacking something intangible, but I had to make myself keep
going with both, and that does not a good novel-reading experience
make.
Compare the length of
The Lives of Others with the short punchiness of How to be
Both and We are all..., and for that matter the fogginess
(sometimes literally) of J, with the clarity and, I guess, the
zip of We are all.... Even the almost equally lengthy Narrow
Road had more emotional clout than The Lives of Others,
and that might simply have been down to structure; Flanagan hits you
early and often, whereas Mukherjee lets it build, from different
angles, for so long that I sort of stopped caring before the big
finale.
To Rise Again...
is fun and light and still tackles some big issues, but I can't help
thinking that what makes it so readable – for me, at least – is
probably also its weakness. One more novel about a rich white guy in
New York (yipee), and it's intellectual bits are all blunted off by
the lightly comic tone and setting. Is this 'serious' enough to win
the Man Booker? Is it 'the best' of these four? I'm not sure.
Narrow Road is
certainly serious enough, with enough emotional and intellectual
clout to justify its length, for me at least. Historical novels have
a good recent track record. So I guess I can see why Narrow Road
won. But. For me, I think I have to enjoy a novel a bit more than
this for it to be 'the best'.
I have to find it fun
(not all of the time, necessarily), and not just appreciate the
artistry, the story-telling and the plot structuring, the
characterisation (which actually isn't all that hot beyond the main
couple of characters). I want a bit of humour, somewhere – it
doesn't have to make me laugh, I'm fine with the dry stuff. I want to
feel some human warmth. I want a bit of variety of emotion – Narrow
Road is pretty unremitting; it's either the bleak
battle-for-survival in Burma or the bleak loneliness of post-war
Australia and Japan. I want some intellectual stimulation, I want
something thought-provoking, something I can talk to people about and
that will spark conversations beyond the finer points of the plot.
Which brings
me to We are all...
and How to be Both.
I felt both of these had all of those things. Perhaps coincidentally,
they were also the shortest two on the list, and I think that is to
their advantage. That's not because I can't hack a long book (maybe I
can't), but I do tend to feel a longer book requires more of an
investment from a reader, and so ought to reward that, ought to
justify and repay that extra investment and ought to make use of the
extra two or three hundred pages. I much prefer the book that can
tell a story swiftly and cleanly and blow my mind or break my heart
in a hit-and-run to the protracted and drawn-out sprawl of thousands
of pages that go nowhere, or get to the same place as the shorter
work in twice the time.
Interestingly,
and possibly also coincidentally, both are also the only two
shortlisted works by women. Make of that what you will.
Both
books tell good stories well, and both have compelling ideas. Both
cram in varieties of emotion (although the grief in George's half of
How to be Both can
get a bit wearing), and both have their moments of humour. They do
this with a lightness of touch that make J
seem heavy-handed, and To
Rise Again... seem
almost pure tone, devoid of ideas. I enjoyed them both as pieces of
art and as things to read more than the others on the list, and I
think on my list of things I want from a novel, these two are –
objectively – the best.
Ultimately,
I'd have to say that We
are all Completely Beside Ourselves
is probably my favourite. It edges out How
to be Both for the
clarity of its ideas, and maybe also the engaging narrator, who just
seems a bit more approachable to me than the two in How
to be Both. I admit,
there might also be something about How
to be Both that both
puts me off and reminds me of 2013's winner, The
Luminaries: this book
might be too clever for me. In opinion of this judge (as it were),
that doesn't quite make for 'the best' novel either.
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