Legal Research

Booker Gazing

By scott

The countdown is on. Later today the judges will declare this year’s Booker Prize Winner. William Hill have Tom McCarthy’s book the hot favourite at 8/11. Who will win? Well, I have read all six shortlisted books and here is my brief view.

Tom McCarthy - C

I’m actually very surprised that this is the favourite, as I found it the most disappointing book on the short-list (though, just to clarify, not the worst). This is not to say it is a bad book, because it isn’t, but by the same token it is amongst a number of books which featured on the long/short list that I probably would not be ina great hurry to recommend to others to read.

The thing was, when the long list was published this was the first book I bought. It was the one that sounded like it was the kind of book I wanted to read, - phrases like modernist, challenging, difficult etc were being bandied about - and during the first part of the novel ? which is divided into three parts ? I was hopeful. Then the hope died.

There is no denying that McCarthy is a writer with much skill and there is some excellent writing on show in the novel, but for me it tells the wrong story, the story I wanted telling is the one he tell sin the first of its three parts. Here we meet our protagonist Serge Carrefax, as a child, surrounded by his deaf mother, sister and father ? who runs a school for deaf children - who also an inventor fascinated with radio and communication, a fascination that Serge carries with him through the book (in addition to a fascination for drugs). This part of the book worked well for me and I wanted to spend more time with the characters at this point in time and explore the story and characters of this time and in the use of communication in this school.

I was much less interested in Serge going to War, which makes up the bulk of the novel, even though this is where the book is perhaps at its most coherent. It’s all perfectly fine ? and occasionally funny very ? but it is all very unchallenging and rather conventional. Someone told me there is a code to be deciphered, but nothing would make me want to bother to be frank. Maybe I need to re-read it, if it does in fact win, or maybe it is just as ordinary as I think it is.

Emma Donoghue ? Room

This is a bit like the Oscar thing of winning if you play a character who has a disability or is mentally ill etc ? the voters love it, especially if they is nothing wrong with the actor playing the role: what a transformation etc. By the same token that fact maybe what stops the book actually winning the prize.

Emma Donoghue took the case of Joseph Fritzel as the torch paper for her idea for this novel which tells the story of confinement from the perspective a girl who was snatched of the street and her 5 year old son that she gives birth to in captivity, and from whom she hides the existence of the ‘world outside’.

It is a remarkable piece of work ? which some minor grumbles aside relating to the total believability of Jack’s linguistic prowess ? is well deserving of its place on the short list. Donoghue convincingly presents a character who with true mothering instinct does all she can to give her son a normal life in the most un-normal of circumstances. It is hard not to be moved by it. I’m sure a cinematic vision of the work will be on your screens in the not too distant future.

Peter Carey ? Parrot and Olivier in America

This was probably my favourite book on the shortlist. Carey is an astonishingly good writer, but one who only ever wins the booker for books that I’m not too fussed about, so there goes his chance this year. Also, this book is probably not showy enough. It very loosely takes the life of Alexis de Tocqueville and plays around with it through the throwing together of French aristocrat, Olivier de Garmont with English servant, John Larrit (Parrot), who we meet before and after they after thrown together to go the America to write on the state of their penal system.

It’s essentially a road book ? with two opposites, who as is the convention for these things eventually come to like one another. Despite this convention, I found this book, funny, engaging, and despite perhaps more untied strands than perhaps there should be, a great read.

Howard Jacobsen ? The Finkler Question

It was great to see a book that was described as a comedy being included on the shortlist. It is a shame then, that this is not as funny as I’m sure its author thinks it is. That however was not my biggest problem with this book, which was that I just didn’t like either of the books central characters ? Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler - indeed both annoyed me intensely.

I didn’t care what happened to either of them and therefore failed to ever engage in this story which ? based on their friendship and Sam’s jewishness and Julian’s seeming increasing desire to want to be jewish - aims to explore the nature of Jewishness in modern British society. A disappointment

Damon Galgut ? Strange Room

None of the books on the shortlist is better written from a purist point of view. There is passage after passage in this book that could be clipped and quoted, and if you were just awarding the prize on the basis of art, it would be the clear winner. But I have always held that fine writing holds for nothing if it is not backed up by good story telling, and I’m not sure taken as a whole, this book is good story telling.

What we get is a three part book: - the Follower, the Lover, the Guardian - with each part describing a journey taken by the books central character - a South African man called Damon, who is sometime referred to in the third person, but mostly in the first by the author. Is it meant to be autobiographical? Do we care?

In a similar way to the Tom McCarthy book, this didn’t really flow for me. I didn’t feel the three parts connected, and therefore worked as a novel, and as a result I found all bar the final installment unsatisfying. I would have preferred a longer novel just worked around The Guardian, which is the episode which flows the best and has some real pace and emotion to it. Indeed this section is so good, I almost forgive the book its first two pedestrian sections

Andrea Levy ? The Long Song

The follow up to Small Island is another tale from the West Indies, this time the 1800’s and the days of slavery ? and through past the end of slavery. Told in flashback it tells the story of July, a slave girl living on a sugar plantation in Jamaica. It unsurprisingly pulls no punches describing what things were like during a time where us brits ? like many white folk elsewhere ? though of anyone of a different skin colour as lesser beings and no better than animals, and indeed treated them as such. July is certainly an engaging character, as in her own way is her mistress/owner Caroline Mortimer.

I enjoyed it, there is a cracking birth scene (or scenes) at the start, and lots of humour, but it lacked some of the magic that Small Island had.

My Booker Prize Winner Preference - in order

1.Peter Carey ? Parrot and Olivier in America
2.Emma Donoghue? Room
3.Andrea Levy ? The Long Song
3.Damon Galgut ? Strange Room
5.Tom MaCarthy ? C
6.Howard Jacobsen ? The Finkler Question

Who will ACTUALLY win?

Donoghue or MaCarthy (with Galgut as the outsider) ? so if one of the other 3 wins you’ll know what a great pundit I am.

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 12, 2010 (boomark / email).