Booker Prize Shortlist Reads by Kennard and Perry & A Prediction
I’ve now read all but one of the novels on the Booker Prize shortlist (is it any surprise that it’s the longest one, The Disappearers by Marlon James, that I’ve been too daunted to attempt?). Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are both poets, which tends to indicate that particular care will be taken over the prose. Apart from that and having unnamed first-person narrators, I see no similarities between the two books, which are wildly different in tone. I have a preference, and I bet it’s not what you expect. Both: Public library
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
This was uproarious entertainment from the meta first line onward: “If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable.” An out-of-work actor in his late thirties who survives from one murder mystery dinner theatre gig to the next sees an ad for an unusual job. All he has to do is sit silently at the back of a university lecture hall each week, wearing a black leather bag with eyeholes. The professor is repeating a famous psychology experiment about attitudes changing through repeated exposure. For the narrator, being black bag is about freedom from his identity and inhibitions; maybe, also, finding solidarity. For his friend Claudio, who streams footage of himself gaming for a living, it’s a potential investment opportunity. For Justine, a married academic the narrator meets on campus, it’s a chance for kinky anonymous sex. I laughed out loud at the narrator’s habits of imagining his life in a 19th-century Swedish village and voicing his parents’ dog’s thoughts, and at so many random lines:
Is it not the case that for most of my life I have felt like I have just put a large crisp in my mouth during what turns out to be a quiet and pivotal scene in a play?
In the kingdom of dumb f*cks the guy with the English major is king.
Think of the moment, following the 2008 subprime crisis, when cupcakes proliferated like a cancer.
Ridiculous the plot may be, but it’s as hilarious as the novel is at the sentence level. For all that, it is still a cogent critique of modern masculinity, hypercapitalism and artificial intelligence (the scene where he and Justine go to see an AI-produced film, The Orb of Homuncules, is side-splitting). My criticism would be, as I’ve heard from various others, that the novel is overlong and slightly aimless in the second half; it could easily lose the 80 pages covering Claudio’s temporary absence. Still, when’s the last time a Booker nominee was this much pure fun? 
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
An unnamed curator arrives at a historic palace to stage its rooms with scenes of historical accuracy, tenderly rendered in the sort of detail only the most attentive visitors will register. Among other things, she’s an aficionado of high-quality, lifelike (expensive) fake food. She throws herself into the work as a way of distracting herself from the emptiness of her personal life since her partner left. We figure this out by reading between the lines, because she’s quite cagey: “At this point, certain things had happened in my life. I was ready to immerse myself.” She also finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the archivist, referred to by they/them pronouns. Her sections are in one- to two-page fragments, titled in a way that can obfuscate or signal an interpretation, such as “Peeking through a Crack in the Curtain and Seeing Another Curtain.” My favourite passage came from “All Work Is Holy”:
The rule is this: it must appear as if the person or people have just left the room. The viewer must feel as if the air is alive with their energy, that they only just missed them, that they will be back in any moment. If this isn’t the case, the scene is no more than an arrangement of objects. The scene is dead.
Indeed, the French phrase for “still life” is nature morte or dead nature. To try to bring history back to life, Perry devotes all but the first 55 and last 26 pages to a recreation of an unwilling medieval king’s court. He’s only on the throne because his two brothers died. There are rumours of infidelity concerning both him and his wife, and talk of removing him for incompetence. Soon they will all pass from life into legend.
I loved the late scene when the curator is introducing the exhibit to visitors and hears their ideas about how we know what happened in history – this is like a transcript of absolutely the best uni lecture or event Q&A ever. What gets preserved and passed down, and why? To what extent is there meaning in physical artefacts? These questions are compelling, yet I only really engaged with the contemporary storyline, while the historical pastiche felt like sub-Hilary Mantel, occasionally evocative but often edging towards pretension. 
I’d already read:
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison: A “dull, watery postapocalyptic slog [that] sheds no real light on the past, present, or future”. 
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: About “a likeable Everyman with the same …secrets and struggles we all have.” It’s “the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages.” 
John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year. “Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness.” 
Here’s my thinking…
Masculinity is a/the theme in four of this year’s shortlisted novels (from the Kennard: “men are mostly frightened and crazy and very easily misled”) – and in last year’s winner, Flesh by David Szalay, too.
I’ve felt sure that The Disappearers or John of John would win: previous winners whose works normalize homosexuality. I would want the latter to win for its beauty and emotional power, but I think the former more likely as the judges (including Raymond Antrobus, who is British Jamaican) may have an eye on the whiteness of recent winners.
Elizabeth Strout may be doomed to be a Booker bridesmaid. I don’t think this is her best book, but I wouldn’t mind if it won.
I would actually be delighted if the Prize went to the wildcard, Black Bag. But I can’t see that happening. The same goes for the Harrison (please oh please).
Let’s say, though, that the judges want something completely different. Then perhaps May We Feed the King is it. Mary Beard (chair) and Patricia Lockwood, in particular, came across as huge fans during the shortlist announcement event.
I’m torn, so I’ll just go with the novel I loved the most: John of John by Douglas Stuart.
What’s your prediction for the winner?
Hard-Hitting Nonfiction I Read for #NovNov24: Hammad, Horvilleur, Houston & Solnit
I often play it safe with my nonfiction reading, choosing books about known and loved topics or ones that I expect to comfort me or reinforce my own opinions rather than challenge me. I wasn’t sure if I could bear to read about Israel/Palestine, or sexual violence towards women, but these four works were all worthwhile – even if they provoked many an involuntary gasp of horror (and mild expletives).
Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad (2024)
This is the text of the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture that Hammad delivered at Columbia University on September 28, 2023. She posits that, in a time of crisis, storytelling can be a way of finding things out. Characters’ epiphanies, from Oedipus onward, see them encountering an Other but learning something about themselves in the process. In turning her great-grandfather’s life into her first novel, The Parisian, Hammad knew she had to avoid the pitfalls of nostalgia and unreliable memory. Fiction is always subjective, a matter of perspectives, and history is too. Sometimes the turning points will only be understood retrospectively.
Edward Said (1935–2003) was a Palestinian American academic and theorist who helped found the field of postcolonial studies. Hammad writes that, for him, being Palestinian was “a condition of chronic exile.” She takes his humanist ideology as a model of how to “dismantle the consoling fictions of fixed identity, which make it easier to herd into groups.” About half of the lecture is devoted to the Israel/Palestine situation. She recalls meeting an Israeli army deserter a decade ago who told her how a naked Palestinian man holding the photograph of a child had approached his Gaza checkpoint; instead of shooting the man in the leg as ordered, he fled. It shouldn’t take such epiphanies to get Israelis to recognize Palestinians as human, but Hammad acknowledges the challenge in a “militarized society” of “state propaganda.”
This was, for me, more appealing than Hammad’s Enter Ghost. Though the essay might be better aloud as originally intended, I found it fluent and convincing. It was, however, destined to date quickly. Less than two weeks later, on October 7, there was a horrific Hamas attack on Israel (see Horvilleur, below). The print version of the lecture includes an afterword written in the wake of the destruction of Gaza. Hammad does not address October 7 directly, which seems fair (Hamas ≠ Palestine). Her language is emotive and forceful. She refers to “settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing” and rejects the argument that it is a question of self-defence for Israel – that would require “a fight between two equal sides,” which this absolutely is not. Rather, it is an example of genocide, supported by other powerful nations.
The present onslaught leaves no space for mourning
To remain human at this juncture is to remain in agony
It will be easy to say, in hindsight, what a terrible thing
The Israeli government would like to destroy Palestine, but they are mistaken if they think this is really possible … they can never complete the process, because they cannot kill us all.
(Read via Edelweiss) [84 pages] 
How Isn’t It Going? Conversations after October 7 by Delphine Horvilleur (2025)
[Translated from the French by Lisa Appignanesi]
Horvilleur is one of just five female rabbis in France and is the leader of the country’s Liberal Jewish Movement. Earlier this year, I reviewed her essay collection Living with Our Dead, about attitudes toward death as illustrated by her family history, Jewish traditions and teachings, and funerals she has conducted. It is important to note that she expresses sorrow for Palestinians’ situation and mentions that she has always favoured a two-state solution. Moreover, she echoes Hammad with her final line, which hopes for “a future for those who think of the other, for those who engage in dialogue one with another, and with the humanity within them.” However, this is a lament for the Jewish condition, and a warning of the continuing and insidious nature of antisemitism. Who am I to judge her lived experience and say, “she’s being paranoid” or “it’s not really like that”? My job as reader is simply to listen.
There is by turns a stream of consciousness or folktale quality to the narrative as Horvilleur enacts 11 dialogues – some real and others imagined – with her late grandparents, her children, or even abstractions (“Conversation with My Pain,” “Conversation with the Messiah”). She draws on history, scripture and her own life, wrestling with the kinds of thoughts that come to her during insomniac early mornings. It’s not all mourning; there is sometimes a wry sense of humour that feels very Jewish. While it was harder for me to relate to the point of view here, I admired the author for writing from her own ache and tracing the repeated themes of exile and persecution. It felt important to respect and engage. [125 pages] 
With thanks to Europa Editions for the advanced e-copy for review.
Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom by Pam Houston (2024)
If you’re going to read a polemic, make sure it’s as elegantly written and expertly argued as this one. Houston responds to the overturning of Roe v. Wade with 60 micro-essays – one for each full year of her life – about what it means to be in a female body in a country that seeks to control and systematically devalue women. Roe was in force for 49 years, corresponding almost exactly to her reproductive years. She had three abortions and believes “childlessness might turn out to be the single greatest gift of my life.” Facts could serve as explanations: her grandmother died giving birth to her mother; her mother always said having her ruined her life; she was raped by her father from early childhood until she left home as a young adult; she is gender-fluid; she loves her life of adventure travel, spontaneity and chosen solitude; she adores the natural world and sees how overpopulation threatens it. But none are presented as causes or excuses. Houston is committed to nuance, recognizing individuality of circumstance and the primacy of choice.
Many of the book’s vignettes are autobiographical, but others recount statistics, track American cultural and political shifts, and reprint excerpts from the 2022 joint dissent issued by the Supreme Court. The cycling of topics makes for an exquisite structure. Houston has done extensive research on abortion law and health care for women. A majority of Americans actually support abortion’s legality, and some states have fought back by protecting abortion rights through referenda. (I voted for Maryland’s. I’ve come a long way since my Evangelical, vociferously pro-life high school and college days.) I just love Houston’s work. There are far too many good lines here to quote. She is among my top recommendations of treasured authors you might not know. I’ve read her memoir Deep Creek and her short story collections Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and I’m already sad that I only have four more books to discover. (Read via Edelweiss) [170 pages]
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (2014)
Solnit did not coin the term “mansplaining,” but it was created not long after the title essay’s publication in 2008 and was definitely inspired by her depiction of a male know-it-all. She was at a party in Aspen in 2003 when a man decided to tell her all about an important new book he’d heard of about Eadweard Muybridge. A friend had to interrupt him and say, “That’s her book.” A funny story, yes, but illustrative of a certain male arrogance that encourages a woman’s “belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence” and imagines her “in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.”
This segues perfectly into “The Longest War,” about sexual violence against women, including rape and domestic violence. As in the Houston, there are some absolutely appalling statistics here. Yes, she acknowledges, it’s not all men, and men can be feminist allies, but there is a problem with masculinity when nearly all domestic violence and mass shootings are committed by men. There is a short essay on gay marriage and one (slightly out of place?) about Virginia Woolf’s mental health. The other five repeat some of the same messages about rape culture and believing women, so it is not a wholly classic collection for me, but the first two essays are stunners. (University library) [154 pages]
Have you read any of these authors? Or something else on these topics?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
