I’m on book four of the six shortlisted for the Booker Prize
I’m on book four of the six shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Currently reading Susan Choi’s Flashlight, having already finished David Szalay’s Flesh, Ben Markovits’ The Rest of our Lives and Katie Kitamura’s Audition.
In the interest of transparency, the way the books are listed in the sentence above is the order in which I like them. Other than Flashlight, about which I don’t yet have an opinion, my favourite so far is Flesh by David Szalay. The Rest of our Lives by Ben Markovits is second and Audition by Katie Kitamura comes in last.
Let me explain why, starting with the last on my list.
Audition was a profound disappointment perhaps because Intimacies, Ms Kitamura’s 2021 novel, was so good. Intimacies had a disappointing ending but until the moment Ms Kitamura wrapped the story, it was a layered and subtle read. A basic outline would say Intimacies was about an interpreter at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. In reality, it was about the myth of subjectivity and the reality of professional standards and expectations. For context, the ICC interpreter is translating the words of war criminals, people who are alleged to have done terrible things. Despite what she thinks or feels and despite her unease, she translates as best she can. The reader feels a sense of urgency as the story unfolds.
Audition too focusses on relationships, but this time between members of a family. It examines how a family unit behaves and the social expectations of family members. But Audition is not like Intimacies. Its prose is not neat. Instead, like its main protagonist – an actor – it is engaged in a performance, an extravagant act of being. I found the story unsatisfactory – too exaggerated for words.
The Rest of our Lives was like every other “great American novel” I’ve read. By which I mean stories crafted by writers like Jonathan Franzen, which double as family saga and critique of modern America.
Ben Markovits’s The Rest of our Lives is (physically) thin compared to the typically fat family epic written by Jonathan Franzen, but the plotline and characterisation is pretty similar – stereotypical American women and men who suffer inwardly.
This is not to deride Mr Markovits’s prose. There are many evocative lines. For instance: “Nobody tells us what an intense experience loneliness is…” and “This was strip-mall territory, where America makes it easy for you to park…”
But then there’s David Szalay’s Flesh. It tells of the life of István, a strange adolescent and man, who rises to great heights of wealth until…I’ll stop there. This is a page-turner with a plot that twists and turns, then startlingly snakes back to the past. It’s an astonishing story, easy to read in one night.
