Unexploded by Alison Macleod - 2013 Longlist

Eight months after Britain declares war on German, the people of Brighton anxiously prepare for a rumoured Nazi invasion. The town's piers are dismantled and barbed wire goes up on the beach. Soon vegetable seedlings will replace the flower displays in the parks and the lights of the fun fair will be dimmed. Already the racecourse has been transformed into an internment camp for whose people deemed to be 'suspicious'.  such as Otto Gottlieb, a German-Jewish artist whose work featured in the Nazi exhibition of "degenerate art".

In the Beaumont household, the preparations ignite underlying tensions. Geoffrey Beaumont is a banker charged with a secret mission to secure the future of the country's currency by removing it to an undisclosed location, leaving his wife Evelyn and eight year old son alone to face the invaders. The only preparations he makes on their behalf involve a stack of cash and an envelope containing two cyanide pills buried  in the garden, a contingency plan that in Evelyn's eyes, amounts to a betrayal. The resulting tension between them escalates when Evelyn takes more than a close interest in Otto Gottleib and questions the treatment of the internees at the camp.

It's easy to see why Unexploded was long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Macleod delivers a very persuadable sense of the period, rich in detail and atmosphere. Even though so much has been written about the lives of ordinary people at this point in Britain's history; the anxiety of an unknown enemy, the constant rumours, the day to day trials of food shortages, the narrative often has a fresh feel.  In one extended passage she describes how it would feel to be on the receiving end of a bomb attack.

You are lifted from your bed even before you hear the blast..... You wake, unable to understand why heaps of gravel and brick dust are being shovelled over you at speed. You stumble outside for air, but even here the day is thick with dust, soot and - you can't make sense of it - a blizzard of feathers.

The immediacy of the present-tense approach coupled with her use of imagery made this one of the most memorable passages in the book for me.

I also enjoyed her characterisation of the Beaumont's son Phillip. As an only child his loneliness leads him to become friends with boys who would not be out of place in Lord of the Flies, to hide in corners listening illicitly to the radio, and to betrayal. Where the adults are simply frightened by the prospect of Hitler's arrival, Philip's reaction is more complex. It starts as a game, an amusing diversion, but then things happen that although he doesn't comprehend fully, he still recognises as disturbing and wrong.

His story is suggestive of a theme in the novel about the way the war acts as a catalyst, igniting elements that have until now lain idle such as the incompatibility between Evelyn and her husband and the anti-Semitic attitudes held by sections of the British population. In essence this is a novel that shows a society at a turning point:

Change was creeping under the door and through the windows of their home, persistent as gas … It was gathering over the house in spite of the purity of the day's rinsed blue sky. It was spiralling down the flue. At night as they slept, it would settle over their hearts.

A good story; well-written prose; lots of simmering tension, strong characterisation and meticulous attention to detail: it would be hard to find much about this book not to enjoy.

EndNotes

Unexploded was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2013.

Alison MacLeod is a professor of contemporary fiction at the University of Chichester in the UK. Raised in Canada she has lived in England since the 1980s. This is her  third novel.

This review is crossposted from BookerTalk.com

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, by Eve Harris - 2013 Longlist

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, by Eve Harris. Published by Black Cat Press 2014.

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman came out in Great Britain last year and was longlisted for last year's Booker Prize. Don't worry though- this is no stuffy "literary" book, although it is well-written, delightful and addictive reading.

Set in the present-day London neighborhood of Golders Green amid its Orthodox Jewish community, the story centers on a 19-year-old young woman named Chani who is about to get married to Baruch, a 20-year-old she barely knows.  As the book opens she's preparing for the nuptials- getting dressed, getting nervous, and he's doing the same. The opening pages capture their anxiety as they shoulder tradition, the expectations of their families and their own innocence, and author Eve Harris conjures this mood so beautifully that these first few pages are what stay most in my mind.

From here Harris shifts perspective to the Rebbetzin, whose husband is the lead rabbi of this particular community. By extension she herself is an important community leader; women come to her for advice and it falls to her to take young Chani to the mikvah, or ritual bath, before her wedding day because Chani's mother is busy with her large brood (Chani is one of eleven children). But the Rebbetzin is deeply conflicted, having grown up secular and then come to Orthodoxy as a young woman when her then-boyfriend committed to a traditional Jewish life. The Rebbetzin has played her role well, admirably even, but now, in midlife and after suffering a traumatic miscarriage, she isn't so sure anymore. Harris takes us through her life's story and into her future.

We get to know Chani and Baruch's families, and see how they interact. Baruch spies Chani at a party and asks to meet her; his mother, a wealthy social-climber, isn't happy that a poor girl has attracted her precious son's attention and schemes to undermine the blossoming relationship. Chani, for her part, isn't sure she even likes Baruch but she knows she has to get married and he seems nice enough so she goes along with it. Ironically it's Baruch's mother's resistance that gets Chani to dig in her heels.

I'm telling you a lot about what happens, so I'll stop. The book isn't perfect; some of the conversations struck me as unrealistic but overall I think The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a charming and absorbing novel with great characters and a winning couple at its center. I don't think it comes down as very negative about Orthodox life though there are characters who find frustration as their lot. There are also those who will find a way to make it work. The key to happiness, Harris seems to say, is rational balance and finding a partner with whom you can build happiness and satisfaction. Conflict only brings alienation. The book is very heavy on the details of Orthodox ritual and is clear and accessible enough to be a good read for someone interested in learning about that. If you're new to the subject I hope you won't be put off and miss out on this great read.

Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - Almost English - Charlotte Mendelson

No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Sorry judges but seriously how did this novel make it onto the 2013 longlist? I would hope that there was some heated debate about including it, otherwise Robert Macfarlane (Cambridge AND Oxford), Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Oxford), Natalie Haynes (The Independent and The Guardian), Martha Kearney (BBC) and Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Times) have a bit of explaining to do. Such noble qualifications and history amongst you and I know reading 151 novels to cut it down to 13 would be a monumental task but surely you couldn’t have all fallen asleep when reading this?

Have I said this already? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. The Man Booker website review says: “In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally-delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.” That précis actually reads better than the book itself.

Basically we have the ingredients for a Man Booker novel, living in a foreign land, ostracised from your homeland but not accepted in the new but what a mishmash of points to be made: teenage angst, puberty, sexuality, hidden family secrets, embarrassing family members, mysterious lecherous older men, public school mores, broken relationships, illness, affairs, lost fortunes, not fitting in at school, at home, no history, depression, drugs – I could go on and on and on and on.

The 2011 Longlist featured a novel “A Cupboard Full of Coats” by Yvette Edwards which featured Jinx of who I said “a more selfish, passionately self-absorbed character I don’t think I’ve ever met”, well this year I may have stumbled across another – Laura, the mother of Marina, who has more meltdowns, tears, selfish moments than her teenage lost insecure emotional daughter but only marginally so.

Kisses can grow. They spread over your skin like lichen while, inside, you change too. You can’t stop thinking: what did it mean?

Our novel switches throughout each chapter from Laura being our protagonist to Marina taking the stage (and I’m sure the chapter breaks are only there so you can have a rest, even though they are marked with dates they seem totally irrelevant). If that’s not frustrating enough both characters are equally unappealing. The “overbearing, secret” Hungarian in-laws are sketched characters with no depth (suppose they need to be as they’re so secretive) so you feel no passion at all for them and to simply start blurting out history at the end of the novel gave me no satisfaction as I couldn’t care less what had happened to these self-absorbed characters. How on earth have they lived together for 17 odd years and not discussed anything beyond undergarments and food?

There are not many novels that I utterly dislike on these literary longlists but this one surely qualifies. I’d made it 100 pages in and thought, “this has got to improve to make the longlist” once I was 200 pages down I wasn’t going to let it get the better of me, 300 pages in and I needed a break, finally the lot was conquered and I’ve wasted a week’s reading, a week I’ll never get back. Normally I’m a little less harsh on these novels (the last three that I’ve reviewed that I didn’t like were from first time authors so I went a little lighter), here there is no excuse. I don’t blame the writer, nor the publisher as I’m sure there is an audience for this type of novel out there (somewhere) but Man Booker judges hang your heads in shame, this is NOT adding to diversity, yes you may be “independent of fashion” but surely one other of the 138 novels that didn’t make the list would have been more worthy.

If this makes the shortlist I’ll donate $100 to the Indigenous Literary Foundation to help a local aborigine community in their pursuit of reading, let’s just hope their library doesn’t include this novel.

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo

One enjoyable part about setting yourself the goal of reading all the Man Booker Prize longlist each year is the fact you come across new authors, new voices. You hear stories from diverse regions of the Commonwealth. Whereas some of the novels may not be as challenging or diverse as some of the selection from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, you still manage to find a few areas of literature that you haven’t explored before.

NoViolet Bulawayo is a Zimbabwean author who moved to Michigan when she was eighteen years of age and she is currently s Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in California. In 2011 she won the Caine Prize for African Writing and in 2009 she was shortlisted for the South African PEN Studzinsi Award.  A pretty impressive resume and this is her first novel, straight onto the Man Booker Prize Longlist!

Our novel is narrated by Darling, who we follow through the ardour of growing up in Zimbabwe and follow to schooling and work in America. With the usual themes of displacement, not having a homeland, being rejected by your adopted country etc. this could be classed as standard Booker Prize fare (look at “The Garden of Evening Mists” by Tan Twan Eng last year or “Pigeon English” by Stephen Kelman the year before or “Half Blood Blues” or right back to 1971 and V.S. Naipaul’s “In a Free State” the list of similar themes in endless). But the difference here is the story told in Zimbabwe where local currency is worthless, human life is worthless, a country in total decline where locals are taking back the land from the white people.

Jesus Christ died on this day, which is why I have to be out here washing with cold water like this. I don’t like cold water and I don’t even like washing my whole body unless I have somewhere meaningful to go. After I finish and dress, me and Mother of Bones will head off to church. She says it’s the least we can do because we are all dirty sinners and we are the ones for whom Jesus Christ gave his life, but what I know is that I myself wasn’t there when it all happened, so how can I be a sinner?

I don’t like going to church because I don’t really see why I have to sit in the hot sun on that mountain and listen to boring songs and meaningless prayers and strange verses when I could be doing important things with my friends. Plus, last time I went, that crazy Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro shook me and shook me until I vomited pink things. I thought I was going to die a real death. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro was trying to get the spirit inside me out; they say I’m possessed because they say my grandfather isn’t properly buried because the white people killed him during the war for feeding and hiding the terrorists who were trying to get our country back because the white people had stolen it.

Told in an innocent voice throughout, Darling and her friends play game like “Find bin Laden” (we’d call it hide and seek), steal guava’s from the trees in the built up neighbourhood they call Budapest, await the monthly relief trucks (the NGO) and wear recycled “Go Green” t-shirts. They dream of a better life in America, Europe…anywhere.

Let’s sing Lady Gaga, Sbho says.

No, let’s sing the national anthem like we used to at school assembly, I say.

Yes, let’s sing, and me, I’ll stand in front because I’ll be president, Bastard says. We line up nicely by Merjury’s shack and sing at the top of our voices, sing until the little kids come and gather around us, but they know they must not join.

Wayyyt, wayyyt, wih neeeeed tuh tayke a pictchur, whereh ease mah camera? Godknows cries, making like he is the NGO man, and we laugh and we laugh and we laugh. Gondknows runs and picks up one of those bricks with holes in them and holds it like it’s a camera and takes and takes and takes pictures. We smile and we strike poses and we look pretty and we shout, Change! Cheese! Change!

I think it is really important that diverse and important stories and voices like Darling’s are heard, the reality of the shanties in Zimbabwe are truly brought to life, where food is scant and simple pleasures of singing, playing with your friends, eating stolen guavas until you burst, raise their hopes. But we are also told the horrors of AIDS of pregnancy at age eleven of extreme hunger, civil war, destruction and a despot president.

Darling manages to escape the horror and make it to America (on a visitor’s visa) but from there she longs for home, even though her dreams of owning a Lamborghini were far-fetched and the reality of working the worst of jobs as you are an illegal immigrant bring a touch of further reality to our story. America is still the country of plentiful:

We ate like pigs, like wolves, like dignitaries; we ate like vultures, like stray dogs, like monsters; we ate like kings. We ate for all our past hunger, for our parents and brothers and sisters and relatives and friends who were still back there. We uttered their names between mouthfuls, conjured up their hungry faces and chapped lips – eating for those who could not be with us to eat for themselves. And when we were full we carried our dense bodies with the dignity of elephants – if only our country could see us in America, see us eat like kings in a land that was not ours.

This is a powerful story that gives you a decent reality check on what is transpiring in other parts of the world, an important story, a story that leaves you shocked and amazed at the resilience, a story that will linger long after you’ve read the final page. Not only an indictment on Zimbabwe but also the USA the innocent, naive voice of Darling tells us the horrors in a voice that only a child could own. The only criticism I do have is there are sections where it lacks a little cohesion, as though the chapters are short stories reliving a theme that were heard pages before. For example, the food example above was explored a lot earlier with the story of one kids eating enough pizza for lunch to feed a Zimbabwean family for a week. This is not to say that this is a novel that is not worth exploring, however it may be sufficient to see it miss the short list cut.

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - A Tale For The Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

As I write this review now it will be my recollections and feelings on Ozeki’s novel at the present moment. If I was to defer the writing and start my thoughts tomorrow, it would be a different review, or would it? Today’s thoughts, tomorrow’s thoughts…same thing!

If you’re not familiar with Zen Buddhist teachings you may think I’ve finally cracked, or even if you are you may think I’m being a little too glib. I had no other way of starting this review but in the present moment, so off I went.

Ruth Ozeki’s novel is not your everyday bedtime read. Basically we have Ruth (herself) finding a Japanese lunchbox washed up on the shore of her island. In the box we have the diary of a teenage Japanese girl, Nao, the letters of a Kamikaze pilot (written in French to hide their content from his superiors) and Japanese writings and an antique watch. The diary is hidden within the covers of Proust’s “A la recherche du temps perdu” and contains Nao’s story of her 104 year old great grandmother Jiko a Buddhist nun. “A Tale For The Time Being” contains excerpts from the diary, footnotes and appendices made by Ruth, interspersed with Ruth’s story of researching the diary, writing her own novel and living her daily life on a remote island, with smatterings of the translated letters, Zen teachings and more.

It was hard to get a sense from the diary of the texture of time passing. No writer, even the most proficient, could re-enact in words the flow of a life lived, and Nao was hardly that skilful.

Home-leaving is a Buddhist euphemism for leaving the secular world and entering the monastic path, which is pretty much the opposite of what Ruth was contemplating when she pondered her return to the city. Zen Master Dogen uses the phrase in “The Merits of Home-Leaving” which is the title of Chapter 86 of Shohogenzo. This is the chapter in which he praises his young monks for their commitment to a path of awakening and explicates the granular nature of time: the 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around.

Those two sections are taken from Ruth’s part of the novel, where she is learning the detail attached to Nao’s diary. But she is reading it in real time and at the same time building a relationship with that writer who actually entered our book before she entered our book!!!

If you’ve ever tried to keep a diary, then you’ll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you’re always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what’s happening now, which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction. It’s hopeless, really. Not that now is ever all that interesting. Now is usually just me, sitting in some dumpy maid café or on a stone bench at a temple on the way to school, moving a pen back and forth a hundred billion times across a page, trying to catch up with myself.

As you’ve probably figured out, this is very much a tale of time, it includes quantum physics parallel universes, reactions to 9/11, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (which may be the reason why the diary has washed ashore in Canada), as well as delving into the mind of a kamikaze pilot who knows his moment in time is coming to a close:

I have written to you of my decision to die. Here is what I did not tell you. In either side of me, my comrades sigh and groan, restless in their sleep, and outside the insects cry, but the ticking of the clock is the only sound I hear now. Second by second, minute by minute…tick, tick, tick…the small dry sounds fill every crevice of silence. I write this in the shadows. I write in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time, marching toward my death.

If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their tortuous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But no, there is no use, no way of stopping time, and so I lie here, paralyzed, listening to the last moments of my life tick by.

This is a complex novel that explores suicide, culturally and from a number of angles (including kamikaze pilots of course), Japanese modern culture, fetishes, environmental issues, radioactive particles, sub species, Latin, bullying, a sense of home, origami beetles made from "The Great Minds of Western Philosophy" and more. But quite simply it is an engrossing tale, a mystical balance between a number of eras, cultures and styles. If you want something a little different, a slight insight into Zen Buddhism, but at the same time an engrossing story then this is definitely one to pick up. Surely will become a favourite of many a book club as the subjects covered are broad and enlightening.

The only times I was slightly put off was the movement from first person, to third person, to second person (depending upon the author of the section you are reading) but this distraction was momentarily and hey there are 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day.

I’ve only read the three novels from the 2013 long list so far, but this one is the standout for myself to date. Another ten to go and I may well have changed my mind. I may even change it before you’ve stumbled across and read this blog post!!!

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin

Now before I get all the comments about “how can a bloke read and review that many books in a week” I better start this review with the disclaimer that the latest “novel” from Colm Toibin is exactly 104 pages long. They are small pages too – so a “novel” you can easily knock over in a single session.

The back cover of my edition has a review from Edmund White of the “Irish Times” that says “This is a short book, but it is as dense as a diamond”, I agree, it is a short book, and yes it could be called dense, it could also be called presumptuous.

In 1953 Nikos Kazantzakis had his novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” published, the novel being written from Christ’s perspective, a human, a man also subjected to self-doubt, fear and of course temptation. In 1955 he was apparently excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church for his writing. Imagine making Christ a mere mortal, even if it was for literary purposes.

So now we have Colm Toibin revisiting the story of Jesus’ mother, Mary. In this book she is a mere mortal, a mother struggling to come to terms with the reverence that is being bestowed upon her child:

He was the boy I had given birth to and he was more defenceless now than he had been then. And in those days after he was born, when I held him and watched him, my thoughts included the thought that I would have someone now to watch over me when I was dying, to look after my body when I had died. In those days if I had ever dreamed that I would see him bloody, and the crowd around filled with zeal that he should be bloodied more, I would have cried out as I cried out that day and the cry would have come from a part of me that is the core of me. The rest of me is merely flesh and blood and bone.

This story relies heavily on you already understanding Christian dogma, there is a basic assumption that the Bible’s teachings of walking on water, turning water into wine and healing sick etc. is base knowledge:

In the kitchen the next morning news came that Martha, Mary and Lazarus were going to come to Miriam’s house first, and then accompany us to the feast. Lazarus was still weak, we were told, and his sisters had become aware of how afraid people were of him. ‘He lives with the secret that none of us knows,’ Miriam said. ‘His spirit had time to take root in the other world, and people are afraid of what he could say, the knowledge he could impart. His sisters do not want to go alone with him to the wedding.’

The sorry, inner lament that is Mary’s story as she recalls the pain of a grieving mother is amazingly mapped throughout, paced immaculately (nice word for a review of this type) and nuanced with slow reflective passages.

And then time created the man who sat beside me at the wedding feast in Cana, the man not heeding me, hearing no one, a man filled with power, a power that seemed to have no memory of years before, when he needed my breast for milk, my hand to help steady him as he learned to walk, or my voice to soothe him to sleep.

Interestingly the name “Jesus” is not mentioned once throughout but I can imagine this book will still upset a number of fundamentalists, as it explores the inner machinations of Mary as she is telling her tale to the disciples who want to continue the good word. Personally I thought this no more “outrageous” than Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation and to be honest some of the last sections that call into question the historical accuracy of biblical tales could well be considered more heretic than Kazantzakis’ work. That is not, in any way, to say this is a lesser work, nor a story not worth exploring.

I have done my best to not refer to Colm Toibin’s latest work as a “novel” throughout this review as it is not, it is a short story – even if it is as “dense as a diamond”. As a result I don’t think this will be announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize (unless the judges think controversy is a good thing) as besides being too short a work it also relies very much on readers having an understanding of Christian teachings – if you did not know about Lazarus coming back from the dead and living with his sisters what sort of fantasy would you be reading?

There is no doubt that this is a fine work but not a gong winner for mine.

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - The Spinning Heart - Donal Ryan

It might just be a skewed thought in my head, but the traditionally the Booker Prize is littered with “historical fiction”. So it was with surprise that I made my way through “The Spinning Heart”, Donal Ryan’s debut novel which is set in Ireland not long after the recent economic crisis. A contemporary novel? Say what?

In this short novel we have twenty one voices (all written in the first person) explaining the impact of the economic crisis on their lives. We have a depressive, a Pixies fan who can’t go out on a date as he has no money, a schizophrenic (he’s actually two voices) one of whom wants to be a solipsist, a face tattooed unemployable larrikin, an apprentice who had his career cut short, a crèche manager, a child who observes her family breaking apart and most importantly Bobby the foreman on the working estate that went under who is the common thread throughout.

Our troubles begin in chapter one (Bobby) where Pokey Burke goes broke after growing too big for his own good and investing in building an island in the Arab States. He leaves all his workers with no pensions, no pay and a whole lot of woe:

Triona said don’t mind them love, don’t think about them, the Burkes were always users and crooks dressed up like the salt of the earth. Everyone’s seen their real faces now. The whole village knows what they’ve done. You’re a worker and everyone knows it. People look up to you. They’ll be fighting each other to take you on once things pick up. Everyone around here knows you’re the only one can keep the reins on them madmen. Who else could knock a day’s work out of fat Rory Slattery? And stop Seanie Shaper from trying to get off with himself? I laughed then, through my invisible tears. I couldn’t stand myself. I couldn’t stand her smiling through her fear and having to coax me out of my misery like a big, sulky child. I wish to God I could talk to her the way she wants me to, besides forever making her guess what I’m thinking. Why can’t I find the words?
Right so, right so, right so. Imagine being such a coward and not even knowing it. Imagine being so suddenly useless.

Even though we hear the effects of the unemployment, the hopelessness, a future that is nothing but a void, the plans to go to London to help with the Olympics building or the fleeing to Australia, the underlying cry for help, that is Ireland on its knees, is a pitiful whimper. We also have the town rumour mill, the illegitimate children, the romances and hopes of the villagers, the alcoholism, and the raw hatred that is simmering below the surface.

So I’m going to Australia in the context of a severe recession, and therefore I am not a yahoo or a waster, but a tragic figure, a modern incarnation of the poor tenant farmer, laid low by famine, cast from his smallholding by the Gombeen Man, forced to choose between the coffin ship and the grave. Matty Cummins and the boys were blackguards; I am a victim. They all left good jobs to go and act the jackass below in Australia; I haven’t worked since I finished my apprenticeship. He has to go to the far side of the planet to get work, image, the mother does be saying to her ICA crowd. How is it at all we left them run the country to rack and ruin? How’s it we swallowed all them lies? You can be certain sure there’s no sons of bankers or developers or government ministers has to go off over there to get work. After all the trouble we had to get him though his exams and all.

Our story is told through the many voices, each with a unique style and plea, the writing sometimes riddled with slang, other times lamenting or cursing their poor luck. Through the many voices, single mothers, illegal immigrant workers, people who live on the unfinished estate and more a clear picture of the role Bobby plays in keeping them all looking forward becomes clearer as each page is turned. But as we learn in the opening paragraph Bobby is harbouring a deep seeded hatred of his own father:

My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down. He smiles at me; that terrible smile. He knows I’m coming to check he is dead. He knows I know he knows. He laughs his crooked laugh. I ask is he okay for everything and he only laughs. We look at each other for a while and when I can no longer stand the stench of him, I go away. Good luck, I say, I’ll see you tomorrow. You will, he says back. I know I will.

This is a wonderful novel, exploring the issues of our times but really simply delving into the standard themes of human angst, the eternal existentialist questions. With minimal conversations, a novel constructed more through observation and inner thoughts, Donal Ryan has painted a vivid picture of Ireland in decay, a generation of ordinary people struggling to make sense of their existence. Another bleak tale (there are so many in recent years) that is a deserved inclusion on the long list. It is hard to judge whether a shortlist spot is in the offing being the first I’ve read from this year, but I can categorically state that it is better than a few that have made the shortlists in the three years. A debut novel that I can thoroughly recommend.

Cross posted at my blog.

Booker 2013 long list - any predictions?

The longlist for the 2013 Man Booker Prize will be announced next Tuesday (July 23). It's the first of the four stages in the annual award which will culminate in the announcement of the winner on October 15.

Five judges have worked their way through a reading list of more than 130 novels since the end of last year. They'll have whittled down that list to around 12 titles all written by authors who are citizens of the Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe. Only titles published between October 1, 2012 and September 30, 2013 are eligible.

What will they have selected? Does anyone have a prediction what we might see in the list on Tuesday? There's a long list of contenders published in the oddly-named Mookseandgripes forum

I have a feeling that we could see Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi make an appearance with Americanah which was published in April.

Anyone want to join me in speculating......

By the way, did know that this year mark's the 45th anniversary of the prize?