A version of this piece has appeared in the Bangladesh Daily Star
In a previous post I commented on the relatively narrow range, in
geographic terms, of the Man Booker long list. Reading the shortlist I’m struck
by its artistic diversity. If you were a judge, how would you choose a winner
from among such different books? Here are some possible strategies.
Go for an epic.
Richard Flanagan and Neel Mukherjee both illuminate historic events with
intimate human drama. In Flanagan’s The
Narrow Road to the Deep North, Dorrigo Evans, who has risen from poverty to
become a distinguished surgeon, is invaded by memories of a life shaped by war
and his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese working on the infamous ‘Death
Railway’. Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others
concerns a household in 1960s West Bengal caught up in violent social change. The
three generations of the Ghosh family are brilliantly brought to life, with
their squabbles and rivalries, struggling to coexist in the four-storey family
home while endangered by external events beyond their control.
Look for
innovation. If you’re drawn to novels that extend the possibilities of the
form, there are a couple to choose from. Howard Jacobson’s J drops us into a future, in which the unspeakable event that
has changed everything comes slowly into focus through a collage of narratives.
Ali Smith offers two stories that can be read in either order, one set in
renaissance Italy, one in present day England. There’s a luminous sense of
place and the dialogue sings. Always fresh and playful, in How to be Both Smith brings a light touch to big questions of art
and mortality.
Demand the truth.
The two American books contrast interestingly here. In Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, the New
York dentist-narrator, complaining in a characteristic moment how hard it is to
get a table in a Manhattan restaurant, tells us that his girlfriend Connie
“once told a reservationist that she was dying of stomach cancer and had chosen
that restaurant as her last meal out”. A sentence like that has no purpose
except to make me laugh. And if it fails at that, it fails altogether, because
I don’t believe it. Karen Joy Fowler’s narrator in We are All Completely Beside Ourselves has her own kind of
wisecracking style. “My father,” she tells us, was “a college professor and a
pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a
cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes me want to bite someone.” That’s
funny. But it doesn’t live or die on its ability to amuse.
Choose an author
who gets out of the way of the story. Jacobson is never dull, often
brilliant and constantly challenging, but too sure of what he thinks and too
determined that we should think the same. Flanagan’s grasp is far less certain but his reach is considerable and the best of his storytelling can grab you by the throat.
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