I am now at the halfway point of my longlist reading and these books were both stunners. Considering that the books I have read are all of a high standard, these two novels are proof at how high the bar is for the Booker prize.
I am not one to pay attention to other authors’ comments on books as I read them anyway, and I raise my eyebrows at the number of superlatives that are used. Maria Reva’s debut novel, Endling, for example, carries a quote from Percival Everett, who called it a fantastic novel and said that it was smarter than him. To hear Percival Evrett say this must mean Endling is a special book: he’s right. It is fantastic.
In Endling, Yeva (if one is looking for connections, this year’s longlist includes quite a few Eves) is on a mission: she wants to save as many species of snails as she possibly can. She travels across the Ukraine, in her trailer/laboratory collecting snails – her prize is a snail with a left leaning shell pattern, making it impossible to mate unless there’s another lefty snail. She manages to finance her explorations by participating in a scheme where she is paid for dating people, most of the time it is men.
Nastia and Sol are sisters. The former being an activist. Both take part in the same scheme which involves human trafficking. Nastia plans to overthrow the company by kidnapping, actually tricking, 12 bachelors and keeping them in Yeva’s trailer until the agency crumbles.
The day this happens is when the Russian armed forces invade Ukraine and all the characters must evacuate to Kyiv which leads to an awkward situation for all parties. To make matters urgent Yeva discovers another lefty snail and the trailer has to take a detour in order to mate Yeva’s snail!
There is also a metafictional aspect to book, where ‘the fourth wall is broken’ [ie a chaarcter addresses the audience directly]. These sections give the book an interesting dimension but to give any more details spoil the fun so you’ll just have to read it. And you should.
Endling is essentially a novel about the futility of war but it’s also about human trafficking, dating agencies, capitalism, humankind’s destruction of nature and the state of the contemporary novel. It seems like a lot but Endling’s genius lays in the fact that everything is so effortless. As it stands Endling is my pick for the winner,
Moving on, David Szalay’s third novel, All that Man is was shortlisted for The Booker in 2016 and I did not get on with it at all. It was too… man-centric for my tastes. However, I never have preconceptions about novels, so I went into Flesh with an open mind.
Flesh is about the life of one man: Istvan. The book opens in Hungary during the early 90’s where a teenage Istvan helps a 42-year-old woman with her shopping, which develops into a full-blown affair. This affair ends badly and is one of the many left turns which occur in Istvan’s life.
Each chapter jumps seven years or so, thus we follow Istvan sojourn into the army, his move to the UK as a security guard, his marriage, fatherhood and return to his homeland. All is told in an ultra-minimal way: short sentences and no flowery prose. Like Istvan’s life, it’s a gritty novel.
In its weird way, Flesh is quite a funny novel. At times I was reminded of Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, another novel which depicted the sordid aspects of life with a little wink. Throughout the novel Istvan undertakes decisions which tend to work against him – or at least when sex is involved. And do not expect Flesh to be straight narrative: there are surprises along the way, some of which will delight, others will shock.
Once again. Like most of the Booker novels this year, identity is the main theme. Istvan, through his jobs and life experiences is trying to forge an identity or at least figure out who he is. Does he manage? I’ll leave that up to the reader. Personally, I thought this was a great novel and I’m tempted to revisit Szalay’s All That Man again in the future.
In conclusion: two novels: both indicative of this year’s strong shortlist. Stay tuned for the next two, (Unfortunately one of them is the dreaded stinker but more on that next time….)