THE BOOKER 6
Which of the short list for the 2017 Man Booker Prize have you read so far? Which will be next?
Come along on NZ Bookshop Day (28 October @ 2 PM) to discuss (or to listen to others discuss) the relative virtues of the finalists.
The winner will be announced on 17 October.
Paul Auster’s first book in seven years, 4 3 2 1, follows the life of Archibald Isaac Ferguson born March 3, 1947. It’s not one life though: this Jewish boy born in Newark has 4 lives. Auster tells the story in four strands - in sliding door style. In each part a fateful event at Archibald's father’s business (a burglary, a fire, a tragic accident and a buyout) leads to a change in circumstances for the family, and Archie’s life is determined by how his immediate family respond. Fate plays her part and Archie’s life is altered. The minutiae of Ferguson’s life are delightfully told and, despite the variations in his circumstances, his characteristics along with those of his immediate family keeps the four strands linked together. Auster keeps many things the same, the characteristics, likes and dislikes, interests and talents of the main characters are constant. Circumstance dictates the roles they take and the choices they make. This is excellent writing, taking you into the mind of one life in all its fragmented realities, and capturing a time and place - the American mid-twentieth-century - in all its tumultuous glory. {S}
Linda, 14, and her parents are the last remaining members of a dying commune in the American mid-west. When she becomes attached to the family who move into the cottage across the lake, she begins to sense what has been missing from her life, but when the father of that family arrives, the relationships she had built there are quickly destroyed.
Can love stand against the threat of war? When lovers must flee as refugees, where can they find a safe have for their relationship? Is it ever possible to outrun a feeling of displacement? What hope is there for those who have nowhere that they can belong? Can decency prevail against prejudice and xenophobia? Are we all "migrants through time"?
Fiona Mozley’s Elmet is an unsettling portrayal of family and loss, of violence and deep love. Daniel is looking for someone following the path north - following the railway tracks across the moor and through the townships of Yorkshire, taking in the layers of time, of history, in a subtle, almost unconscious manner. It’s as though Daniel carries with him not only his own past, but the stories of all those wandering and searching. Mozley’s narrator is a gentle loving boy, a young man who lives for his sister, Cathy and to please his Daddy. The family have returned to the land eking out a life, their home built by Daddy’s hands from the woods that surround them, with odd jobs, trades of goods and services and hunting for food. Cathy and Daniel live a solitary life, no longer attend school, yet have an understanding of their environment and a care for the wilderness that surrounds them. Yet all is far from serene. Daddy is known for his fighting prowess and a violence that brews within him. Simmering under the surface are hurts and unsettled scores, pride and suffering. The setting is beautifully described, almost dreamlike at times, yet the prose always fizzes with an underlying tension, a sense of something dreadful to come, and of secrets, of things unsaid. The violence is raw and brutal, it has a gothic element reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and the work is seething with history alongside its clearly contemporary setting. {S}
George Saunders is an astounding writer whose gift for story-telling makes Lincoln in the Bardo a pleasure to read and thoroughly absorbing. Using first-hand accounts and a cacophony of voices (from the spirit world) this is predominately a dialogue-driven novel. The year is 1862, the Civil War rages in America and Abraham Lincoln's son Willie dies of a fever. Lincoln is inconsolable and this is the story of his grief and his visits to the young boy's grave. Willie is in the Bardo and it is here that his father comes, stricken with grief. In this place, the cacophony of voices telling this story and their fascination with the living one who enters their world, are intriguing. Not only do these voices give an insight into the times, but their stories of woe are both tragic and entertaining. Saunders gets the pitch just right. A story of grief and familial love against a backdrop of tragedy and crisis, Lincoln in the Bardo is a gem for its stylistic endeavours and the interplay between lightness and dark. {S}
The first of Smith's projected seasonal quartet, set in post-Brexit Britain, addresses the subjective experience of time and the consequences this may have on personal and political relationships. Smith deftly weaves past and present, age and youth, desire and loss, hop and regret into something like the verbal equivalent of the torrent of modern life in all its contradictions, possibilities and limitations. Smith's use of language, both playful and precise, is hugely energetic and always a pleasure to read.
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