It was bound to happen. I found the Booker stinker.
Out of thirteen books, there’s always one (at least) that just doesn’t do anything for you. The one that doubles as an agonising read.
For me that was Claire Adams’ Love Forms. A pity too because there’s a ton of potential.
The main protagonist, Dawn Bishop, a white Trinidadian rich person has a one night stand when she was sixteen and due to careless on the guy’s part, she is pregnant. To keep face, her family force her to go to Venezuela to give the newborn up for adoption.
Now as fifty something year old Dawn, a divorced mother of two, living in the UK, still thinks about that day. In fact she is on a website where she can reconnect with her child.
Love Forms goes into a lot of topics: loss, Trinidadian culture vs English culture, social class, family relations and, I know I have repeated this in every review, finding one’s identity.
In theory this is great, but unfortunately this novel tackles its topic in a bland manner: I don’t even want to say vanilla because Love Forms transcends that. The writing is dull, the characters are dull, the approach to these important themes are executed so shallowly that I was amazed how this book was even made it to the printing stage. Reading Love Forms felt like watching snails and tortoises participate in a marathon. When I read a Booker novel I want something that will challenge me! The only challenge Love Forms presented to me was not to abandon the book halfway.
I fared better with Tash Aw’s The South. Aw has been featured in the Booker lists three times and is one of those authors I’ve been meaning to read for a while.
This is essentially a coming-of-age story or, to be more precise, a coming out story.
An Indonesian family who live in the North and go there for their summer vacations but due to the father’s inheritance of a farm down south they decide to move there for the summer recess. The only boy of the family, Jay is reluctant for the move.
When the family arrive, they meet the farm’s manager and his son Chuan. The former has been trying to create money making schemes for the dying farmland, but they have all failed. To add to his problems, Chuan is a troublemaker and adds extra stress to his father.
Jay starts to realise that he is developing feelings for Chuan and both boys indulge in experimentation, while Chuan feel a bond with Jay, he also likes to sleep with women, which creates some friction within Jay. There is a point though that the two characters realise they have a strong bond.
While Chaun and Jay’s relationship is strengthening, the farmland and Jay’s family are falling apart, there is a solution, but it does come at a cost.
The South is the first part of a planned quartet, but it can be read on its own, The book ends on more of a fade out than a cliffhanger, which gives the impression that the story’s complexities will be revealed. The book itself focuses on social class divide, Indonesia’s history and, through Jay and Chuan, sexuality. It’s a satisfying novel and I’m curious whether the remaining parts will be about this family or different characters. I am invested.
Now past the halfway mark, my Booker journey is soon ending. The next week’s column’s novels will be interesting. One I had mixed reactions to and the other is a mini masterpiece.
