#59 Reviewing the Booker Shortlist with KD Books

It's that time of year again! Sarah K welcomes back Kieran from KDBooks to talk all things Booker. They share their thoughts on each of the shortlisted Booker books, and discuss their thoughts on the winner. We hope you enjoy the episode!

This episode is fully transcribed. The episode transcript should be accessible from within your podcasting app or directly from Buzzsprout.

Kieran's links
Youtube channel [KDBooks]
Playlist of Kieran's reviews of the longlist
Instagram: @kdbooks

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Booker shortlist
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam 
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
The Promise by Damon Galgut

Other books mentioned
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Milkman by Anna Burns
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
Drive Your Plows Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk

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Transcript

00:00:16 SARAH 

Welcome to the Bookcast Club, a podcast for people that like to chat books. Today, it's me Sarah and I am joined by a very special guest Keiran from KD Books. 

Hi, Kieran!

00:00:26 KIERAN 

Hello how we doing?

00:00:27 SARAH

And I'm very well, how are you?

00:00:30 KIERAN

Loving life as always. Sad that another Booker season has ended.

00:00:37 SARAH 

Are you really?

00:00:38 KIERAN

Uh, kind of. It's been a rollercoaster, it's been emotional. It's been fun. But I read the entire longlist like really quickly. So I felt kind of… not done with the prize, but that it was all over a month ago.

00:01:00 SARAH 

Yeah, you got really onto it very quickly. I was very impressed actually.

00:01:02 KIERAN

They were very readable, which was good.

00:01:05 SARAH 

Yeah and they're all quite short as well. Apart from a few exceptions, or one exception actually.

00:01:11 KIERAN

Yes, Great Circle.

00:01:12 SARAH 

Great Circle.  Also, I don't know if you realize this, but the prize was announced a little later this year than it was last year. Only because we did an episode this time last year - we did an episode the night of the announcement, remember and I just forwarded it by 12 months and that was a few weeks ago and I was like oh, it's actually been longer, but I'm pretty sure the [longlist] announcement was around the same time.

00:01:34 KIERAN

The more you know.

00:01:35 SARAH 

Anyway, just a background for people who might be newer listeners to the podcast. Kieran is a wonderful guest that we've had on a couple of times before. He's a booktuber and a book reviewer and a Booker enthusiast, as you can hear. We did an episode together last year on the 2020 Booker shortlist, which is episode #34 if you'd like to listen and earlier this year, he also did a My Life In Books episode with me, which is episode #42.

And we're very excited to have him on the pod again today. We'll talk about the shortlist today. We already know the winner 'cause we're recording this the day after the winner was announced, but we'll talk about the shortlist with enthusiasm, anyway. I've read most of the longlist, not all, and to be honest I can't be bothered talking about it. I don't know how you feel.

00:02:21 KIERAN

I could muster it if I had to.

00:02:23 SARAH 

OK, we'll see. We'll see. What did you think of the shortlist in general this year?

00:02:30 KIERAN

Very different to last year's, so I think this year’s [was] very readable, all equally-weighted. I don't think there was anyone who was a clear outlier or like a clear underdog. I know that there was a deemed underdog which was Anuk Arudpragasm, but I think he could have won it. I thought even the divisive book, No One is Talking About This could have won it.

Any of them could have had it and I think it probably caused a bit more, if not confusion, [then] a lot more ambivalence towards who was the winner. I think that's where - not that I lost steam with the prize, but I was…. Like any of the six could have won. There was one that I wanted to win of course, but there wasn't one that I was completely going to be bitter against. I think all of them were fair winners.

00:03:36 SARAH 

Yes, I almost entirely agree they were pretty evenly weighted. One of them I hate and I would have been furious if it won. Aside from that, they're all OK.

Yeah, some of No One Is Talking About This annoyed me, but kind of in the way that, uh, Booker shortlisted book can do so I was fine.

00:03:54 KIERAN

It was divisive enough that I didn't like it as well, but those devices it was divisive enough that had it won I wouldn't….I would at least understand that there was definitely a for camp and against camp with Lockwoord’s spot. 

00:04:09 SARAH 

Totally, yeah, and it was a lot of people’s predictions to win, so I accept its position on the shortlist.

00:04:15 KIERAN

Alright, Booker and I quite like I a scandal when a book wins that's highly divisive, I think. I'd say it's a good book nevertheless, despite my personal enjoyment on it.

00:04:30 SARAH 

I agree.

00:04:30 KIERAN

And I think I wanted that maybe a little bit more than I would like to admit.

00:04:36 SARAH 

Yeah, I'm really hoping for another Milkman one year, I loved that whole conversation about Milkman, how angry people were, how much they hated it.

00:04:45 KIERAN

I was that person - I really liked it, but The Overstory should have won.

00:04:45 SARAH 

I loved it. I loved Milkman.

00:04:55 KIERAN

But then Richard Powers, or as I call him, now Dickie Pow-pow, he won the Pulitzer, and I thought that all was right in the world. I was like, OK, that's that's fair. I can go with this. But yeah, I think that's what I wanted, but I think with Booker for the two years I've been like following it on the Internet and completely reading all the longlist, everything has been a bit safe. There hasn't been a shakeup. 

00:05:23 SARAH 

Yeah, we'll get onto the winner later, because I think that's a particularly relevant comment in the context of the winner. The winner is The Promise by Damon Galgut, by the way. It’s been announced, it’s in the news, sorry if you didn't know and this is how you're finding out but, well done Damon. Congratulations. 

00:05:39 KIERAN

Congratulations, enjoy the 50 grand.

00:05:42 SARAH 

I know. What a prize. 

So shall we talk about the individual books on the shortlist? Have you got a particular order?

I've just got an order here.

00:05:52 KIERAN

Let’s go with your order!

00:05:53 SARAH 

OK. I tried to go positive and negative from what I can remember. I haven't watched too many of your reviews so I didn't want to arm myself too heavily with arguments against you or something I don't know.

00:06:03 KIERAN

I think that's fine, that's fine.

00:06:04 SARAH 

I've been saving them for later.

The first one is The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed, which is set in Cardiff.

00:06:13 KIERAN

Set in Cardiff Bay, Tiger Bay, as it’s also known. 

00:06:18 SARAH 

Oh, that came up on Only Connect tonight actually, funnily enough, anyway. Your review of this was great and people I'm going to link it in the show notes. People should watch it because you actually went around like on location of where this book was set so it's worth watching.

00:06:32 KIERAN

Yes, so I lived 5 minutes from the murder place. It's historical fiction that happened in real life about the last hanged man in the UK, which happened in Cardiff. And yes, about the Somali community in Tiger Bay. And I thought as I live all of a 30 minute drive away, knew the code to my old place so I can park there for free, I thought, well, let's take advantage of that.

So I walked up to my old gaff tap, did the code to the gate, still worked, parked up for free,went around Cardiff Bay and discussed the book what I liked about it and more so about how maybe story is more important than the fact.

00:07:30 SARAH 

So it's just to summarize the book for anyone who hasn't read it, which I presume is most people it is set in Cardiff in the fifties I think? Yeah. And it is about a man who is Somali who is falsely accused of murder. There's a woman is killed they think he's in on it. He gets jailed for it and then the trial happens. 

And what did you think of it in general?

00:07:58 KIERAN

I liked it. I enjoyed it's got a more experimental tone. Not experimental with a capital E, but Mohamed plays with form and structure, especially from outside the prison to inside and the courtroom scene I think is done with enough brevity to get across the point that no one really knows why they're saying he did it, but I'm just holding onto straws and how they kind of fit together, if you think about it, hard enough.

But I thought that was really good. It changes perspective a lot, not a lot in the latter half, you stay with Mahmood, but we moved to the victim's sister. We moved to his wife Laura, who's a Welsh woman to get her perspective.

And I thought some of it was a bit unnecessary. But Nadifa Mohamed said that the book was originally 600 pages. It had been cut down to, I think it's about 250 pages. So a lot has been cut but I think it could have gone through more cuts. Some of it felt not reductive, but didn't really add anything to the story.

00:09:29 SARAH 

Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that it had been cut down. That kind of explains it 'cause as I was reading it, I thought that second narrative, the sister of the victim, didn't really go anywhere. So I guess in the original story it probably there was probably more to that story and more reason for her to actually her narrative to actually be in there.

I enjoyed it as well, I thought it was good. It reads pretty quickly. It's well put together. I think the courtroom scene as well I think also kind of saved it 'cause it did start to get pretty slow when he was hanging out in jail waiting for his trial. And then the way that that all kind of unfolded at the end, it really picked up for me 'cause I was starting to get a little bored.

Yeah I enjoyed it. It's a little familiar in theme to like quite a few other books that I've read fiction and nonfiction, so if you've sort of been keeping up with especially a lot of nonfiction in the past few years, I don't know if you'll be like blown away by it or super taken aback by it. But a good read, let's say. 

Did you think it was predictable? Oh wait, sorry, first question, did you know about this guy before?

00:10:31 KIERAN

Yes, I studied it in school. And I lived in Cardiff, where they do the vigil. So I knew what I was going into, but I remember receiving the book and I didn't click the two together and it was until I found out who was murdered. And the situation something unlocked in my head. I was like oh wait, hang on I've it's been about 10 years but I know this story. So I did a bit of research online and I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, I do know this. I've just not…. I just didn't connect the two together.

It doesn't feel like nonfiction, so I wasn't going in expecting to be shocked by what happened. I think I was more looking at the book as a ‘how well is it telling the story’ rather than I want to know what the story is and what happens. Which I think is a good thing.

00:11:30 SARAH 

Yeah, I think so. I assume quite a lot of it is fictionalized? The relationship between him and Laura, for example, him and his kids, all that kind of stuff?

00:11:38 KIERAN

So the Somali community is really tight up in Cardiff and as Mohamed went down and met up with people. I think last week she visited again, she'd left her umbrella there and he kept onto it and handed it back to her and said, I hope you didn't go without that. Lovely community. So yeah - I think with his grandkids there's enough story about it and I, I think, for that community that injustice is still prevalent.

00:12:11 SARAH 

It said in the back of the book that she that Laura the wife only died like I think 10 years ago, not even.

00:12:16 KIERAN

Yeah, and Mohamed’s father knew Mattan [the main character]. 

00:12:22 SARAH 

Ah, I see.

00:12:24 KIERAN

So the only fictionalized part I'm aware of 'cause most of the information that she got about the trial you can get from Freedom of Information, Act in the UK, is public knowledge as she obtained the actual transcripts and everything.

It's just the person who's killed is Violet Volacki. And that's not her name, and it's not the family. The Volacki’s don't exist. I mentioned in my review, you should go and check it out! 

00:13:01 SARAH 

I have watched it but in my defense, it was quite a while ago that you published.

00:13:05 KIERAN

[laughs] Yeah, what was the [real name of] Volacki has really gone out of my head. I do apologize.

00:13:11 SARAH 

Watch Kieran's review. It's very good.

00:13:16 KIERAN

Mohamed was doing a Q&A and I did ask the question of why Volacki was fictional. And her justification was she wanted to be distanced from the crime in order to focus on everything else around it. Which I thought was good. 

00:13:33 SARAH 

Yeah, I think she does that successfully. Right, next one I've got is No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. Most divisive work on the longlist, I would say, by a long shot.

00:13:46 KIERAN

I went to an event I just wanna get your reaction to this and Patricia Lockwood says it's historical fiction.

00:13:52 SARAH 

Yeah, you told me. That that can f*ck right off. [Kieran laughs]

Obviously, it’s not. She doesn't know what history means like.

00:14:05 KIERAN

It does feel old before its time. Maybe that's what she's going about with historical fiction that it's already in the past. And then that moves so quickly I can - not that I'm on board with it.

But I can kind of fudge it in that direction.

I just don't think I enjoy books about the Internet. I think they all come across as if not gimmicky, then there's like a snarky element to it. Of the ones that I've read, I feel as though there's always this condescending, patronizing, like meme culture of I'm gonna mention this thing 'cause I can't say it's about the Internet. And I don't really think it adds anything to it, and I just don't think it works.

I know people love the Internet novel. I just don't think it's for me.

00:15:20 SARAH 

I agree, I find them really boring. I find the Internet a really boring topic and I only read like the first half of this, or not even 'cause I just found her musings about like Twitter to be like excruciatingly boring and to me, it’s just such a non-problem like I don't know if you're not enjoying it… all right.

I mean it's just such a minor problem I find in the sort of grand scheme of things. I find it really hard to get on board with someone who's sort of musing about the Internet in an in-depth way.

00:15:55 KIERAN

Yeah, I think what makes Lockwood’s novel for me not gel is that the second half deals with a very serious topic but still all the while this mocking self-aware…. Yeah, it's like very self-aware of itself, I will talk about this really bad thing, but let me talk about this really stupid thing that's not relevant because Internet. It's too much of like a hard handbrake turn. I don't think it detracts from it, I just don't think it ends it well. I probably would have preferred it if it was all just the Internet that's all you're taking it and then, or a book that's about the baby.

I don't think you can juggle the two, but people love it though, so.

00:17:06 SARAH 

People love it and I will say Jenny loves it. It's her favorite book of the year I believe so…takes all sorts.

And many, many people that we are friends with using the word friends very generously like it very much.

00:17:24 KIERAN

Yeah, I appreciate how divisive it is. If anything, I can kind of applaud Lockwood for literally having a book where no one’s there going “it was okay”. It’s either absolute hatred or “this is incredible”. I think you have to give credit where credit's due.

00:17:42 SARAH 

Yeah no, I accept I accept its position on the longlist and even the shortlist, very generously. But I really didn't like it.

Third one A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasm. Which is about… OK. Essentially it's about a young man going to a funeral. I would say that's the crux of the novel, and as he's going, he's thinking about all the events that kind of led up to the funeral, and he's basically thinking about everything and “a passage north” refers to his train journey to aforementioned funeral.

00:18:18 KIERAN

I think you've given my review. Next book? 

00:18:24 SARAH 

[laughs] Is that a review?

00:18:25 KIERAN

That was that was pretty much my review. That is, that is exactly what it is. And I have nothing more to say on the matter. 

00:18:37 SARAH 

OK well I'll hold this part up that's fine. I really liked this one. Alright Karen, try to withhold that disgusted face you're making.

00:18:49 KIERAN

You gotta be really into your philosophy.

00:18:52 SARAH 

I'm really into death, so that's why actually I'll tell you this little bonus fact if I weren't a scientist, I would be an undertaker. That's my other job.

00:19:00 KIERAN 

How fun.

00:19:01 SARAH 

So yeah, I'd even like to do it part time. That’s a conversation for another time, but I am really into death. And I’m interested in funerals, people thinking about death, people grieving. So it's like a topic of interests of mine.

00:19:15 KIERAN

I just think this is more like a treaties on that or philosophical ponderings on that. 

00:19:25 SARAH 

Yeah, as I said I enjoyed it. Love it, no, but I enjoyed it like a lot. I found it…I enjoyed reading it. I liked the way it was written. Thought the writing was great. And I enjoyed it. What can I say? I enjoyed it.

I don't know if I will remember it very much in a couple of months, but I enjoyed it. I'll just keep saying it.

What did you rate it, in your out of ten rating system? 

00:19:55 KIERAN

I gave it a two. 

00:19:57 SARAH 

OK, God, I would give it a seven I think. Did you not enjoy the bits where he was thinking about his relationship with - I can't remember the name of the other character…

00:20:07 KIERAN

You mean the sex scene in the middle?

00:20:09 SARAH 

[laughs] There were a lot of sex scenes, but I enjoyed the way that I just liked their whole relationship.

I enjoy reading about them.

00:20:14 KIERAN

I like how you said that you might not remember anything, but you've definitely remembered that, and I think that sums up the book.

I think I went into it expecting one thing and getting, “hi, here's my philosophy degree, but I've covered it as fiction to like to make it easier to sell to people”, which isn't a bad thing, I just, I never would have - if it was Anuk Arudpragasm’s “essays on philosophy” I wouldn't be reading it, so adding a really boring train journey into it is not going to make it better in my eyes.

00:21:01 SARAH 

Alright, what did you like on the shortlist?

00:21:04 KIERAN 

I liked Great Circle.

00:21:06 SARAH 

Oh yeah, me too. Alright, I like that one you didn't. I'm not going in to bat for it too heavily 'cause I just enjoyed it, you know?

That's it. All righty, fourth is Bewilderment by Richard Powers.

00:21:21 KIERAN

Dickie Pow-pow. 

00:21:22 SARAH 

Dickie Pow-pow. 

00:21:26 KIERAN

That ending was atrocious.

00:21:29 SARAH 

Yeah, I'll just summarize the book first if you don’t mind. He's running with the ending.

00:21:33 KIERAN

Can I try summarizing it? 

00:21:36 SARAH 

Of course, yeah please.

00:21:37 KIERAN

If you've read The Overstory, imagine a character who clearly got cut and Powers went “Maybe I can write another story”. And that is Bewilderment.

00:21:51 SARAH 

All right. Scientist, astrophysicists – 

00:21:54 KIERAN

[laughs] You've just gone “yeah, we'll we'll do it properly”.

00:21:56 SARAH 

[laughs] Yeah yeah. Sorry, you've just you've just cut that whole Passage North section. I'm not going to let you have Bewilderment too. 

00:22:05 KIERAN 

Did you like it?

00:22:07 SARAH 

Hang on, let me summarize the book!

00:22:09 KIERAN

OK, I'm sorry, sorry carry on, sorry, sorry.

00:22:11 SARAH 

For the listener. Astrophysicist working at the university. He has a boy who is, let's say neurodivergent like on the autism spectrum. His wife has just died. He's struggling to be a single dad. Very sad about the wife. Boy gets enrolled in experimental like treatments. Things happen. That's the summary of the book.

And no, I hated it.

00:22:34 KIERAN 

Oh OK.

00:22:35 SARAH 

I absolutely hated this. 

00:22:42 KIERAN

I think similar to what I said, I feel I do feel as though it fits into The Overstory the first quarter. He's talking about trees. He's talking about how mushrooms feed into trees and the roots underneath, or speak to each other, which literally happens with the scientist in The Overstory.

So it's very clearly I think he got cut. And now, Flowers For Algernon gets mentioned quite a lot, and in my Discord book club a few people were like we're going to read Flowers For Algernon, and at the end of it people came out being like, oh, he's literally just rewritten Flowers For Algernon, yeah?

00:23:24 SARAH 

He has. 

00:23:25 KIERAN

And I've not read Flowers For Algernon, so I can't comment.

00:23:28 SARAH 

OK, if you have read it, I actually only read it last year, so it was quite fresh in my mind and the parallels are quite strong. So, and it comes in pretty early because he actually first mentions that book because the characters read Flowers For Algernon together. And so it comes in pretty heavy and pretty hard.

So already you're like it's not even sort of you start to pick up bits and pieces you're like ah, I've read this before so that kind of ruined us.

The scientist character main character. I just had so many issues with this guy. He drove me nuts. He was like a scientist who knew a lot about everything apart from like clinical psychology and for some reason was like incapable of reading anything scientific about it. He seems like get all his information from Facebook and he says a lot of stuff about like autism diagnosis rates and that kind of thing, which inaccurate and just it wounded me up immensely.

00:24:22 KIERAN

I thought it was very… as a book I didn't just I didn't even enjoy reading it. I couldn't even say that I got through it at like a fairly decent pace. I was very boring like the things….A lot happens there. Feels like nothing's happening. And then Greta Thunberg turns up with a cameo sort of role.

00:24:48 SARAH 

What was that? So there's a character in the book who's basically yeah Greta Thunberg. I don't understand why she had to be in there. I think it was also too much in if he's trying to do the like environmental thing, there's the autism thing there's the grant writing thing, there's a grief about the wife thing, and it's quite a short book.

It was all just kind of happening at once, and none of it really happens in any kind of decent way, and I think it was particularly effective in the ending is the ending, which you sort of mentioned earlier, is pretty bad. Very sudden it all just kind of comes to a head but ends but not really well. I think he kind of gave up, he was like, well, that's all getting a bit hectic. Now let's just finish. So yeah, it was wild.

Oh, also this whole thing drove me nuts. So the kid is in this experimental thing or experimental treatment and then the media get ahold of his ID and his identification and start like following him around. If that happens when you are doing like a clinical trial or any kind of experiment, you are screwed like shut down, no ethics, we're not doing anything anymore.

You're in massive trouble that like you can't do that. It's like if you're a surgeon and you just sort of casually lop off someone limb for no real reason. It's absolutely not allowed.

00:26:08 KIERAN

Not going to happen.

00:26:09 SARAH 

No, absolutely not. Just drove me nuts.

00:26:15 KIERAN

I have nothing to say about it I've said everything. It was a big disappointment, but he was never going to top The Overstory. I really liked The Overstory.

00:26:30 SARAH 

I think I only read the first half of that, then I might have lost interest or something I think.

00:26:34 KIERAN

Oh it’s so good.

00:26:37 SARAH 

I'm very put off now, as you can imagine. Right fifth one, Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead.

00:26:44 KIERAN

I really enjoyed this one.

00:26:47 SARAH 

Me too.

00:26:48 KIERAN

Out of the shortlist, this is the one I would have wanted to have won.

00:26:52 SARAH 

Oh really, OK cool. Yeah, I wanted it to win. Didn't expect it to, but I would have really liked it.

So this we've talked about this heaps of times on the podcast because I've read this and loved it and talked about it many times. Sarah, read it and loved it, and we've talked about it many times, so I won't rehash the plot, but yeah, I really really liked it.

And you did so wonderful.

00:27:15 KIERAN

Yeah, I think we should just leave it on that no all right, yeah?

Check it out I would say for something that is 600 pages it reads very quick. It's great pace, good characters, it kind of. It's everything that you want in a book. 

00:27:33 SARAH 

Yeah, easy to get through good writing, good pacing, lots of really interesting themes, so great discussion. If you're reading with other people, there's lots in there. There's also unpack really clever book in my opinion.

00:27:45 KIERAN

I would agree.

00:27:46 SARAH 

Thank you Kieran. Have you seen a lot of people saying that they don't think this is a “Booker” book?

00:27:53 KIERAN

I have seen that. From the offset before I read it, I probably would have agreed. Had I read what it's about or what I expect from a book, a book, I would agree, but the more that I've thought about there and after reading it, it's not highbrow, it's not trying to be highbrow, and it's not trying to be like literary in your face.

But how she talks about narrative and what is truth and how stories can have like a butterfly effect to some degree, can change narratives of what we what we want out of truth and how truth can hinder how we can progress.

I really like it but it's not trying to be Burnt Sugar, I really liked Burnt Sugar last year, but that’s a very Booker book. This is not trying to be there, and I think I think you could easily dismiss it and go “oh, it's about a woman who goes on a plane, what more is there to it?”

But yeah, I thought really interesting and I like what each character kind of adds to the metaphors and themes and how equally they're all discussing very different points.

00:29:15 SARAH 

Yeah, I agree. I think particularly an interesting thing that kind of for me puts it in the category of being like a quote unquote Booker book is the way that she has those two narratives. There's sort of the present and the past storylines and how they are subtly different and what she's exploring in terms of like queer relationships and that kind of thing had like what's happening in the past and what's still present in the present day. 

Yeah, I just thought it was really, really well done and very interesting.

00:29:42 KIERAN

I could see people though as well with Booker, especially this year that I think the idea of what a Booker book is changing. I think it's becoming not more accessible, but I think it's moving away from highbrow.

00:30:02 SARAH 

Yeah, I think so too. Maybe in a few years you'll be like… what's the name of that price [Rathbones] Folio prize?

00:30:09 KIERAN

Oh yes.

00:30:10 SARAH 

You'll be the [Rathbones] Folio boy. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well.

00:30:14 KIERAN

Yeah. I’m trying to think of something that would rhyme. I don't think it's going to, but yeah, I think it’s moving away from this highbrow. But the judges change every year so there could be one year where it’s all that and that’s all they want to talk about. 

00:30:30 SARAH 

Yeah, that's true. I mean, we're sort of saying this is we're literally talking about the last, literally two years or three years, actually, let's say three years. The last three years. The books have definitely been getting more in the sort of accessible quote, unquote, easier to read side of things.

So yeah, we'll see.

It's only a short time in the timeframe of the whole prize. 

00:30:51 KIERAN

Yeah, because I don't think I'd put Girl, Woman Other in accessible.

00:30:55 SARAH 

Yeah, that's funny 'cause when I was reading it I didn’t think so either. But then so many people read and say that they loved it like people even friends I have who don't read very much and they adored it. 

00:31:06 KIERAN

I liked Girl Woman Other. 

00:31:08 SARAH 

Yeah I enjoyed it. Man, getting all the hot takes here.

And the last one, which is the winner: The Promise by Damon Galgut, which is set in South Africa.

It's about a single family as in one family and it is set over basically a couple of generations the narrative is jumping forward as each person in this family dies basically and jumping forward to like when their funeral is being held. It then jumps out to the next funeral.

And it is about…It's called the promise, and it’s about about a particular promise that someone in their family had made to the I guess the maid of the house and whether or not they're going to sort of uphold the promise. And it won. 

00:31:53 KIERAN

It did win and I thought it was OK.

00:31:57 SARAH 

Yeah, I thought it was OK. I liked reading it I guess. Like it was one of those books. I probably could have put it down at any moment and not picked it up again, but decided to finish it, you know?

00:32:10 KIERAN

Fun fact, it was the book that took me the longest to read.

00:32:15 SARAH 

Yeah, OK, I I completely see that. 

00:32:18 KIERAN

And took me 3 weeks to get through The Promise. It took me 5 days to get through Great Circle just for - to give you a heads up. I really did not like the prose.

Which I think everyone really enjoys, but there was something about the all the shifted perspectives and the breaking of the 4th wall and this very direct second person that I did not click with at all for maybe like a third of the book. 

00:32:58 SARAH 

I didn’t mind the prose. For me, it was too… There was so much happening off page that I just kind of got a bit annoyed with it like nothing really happened. There's so many references to all the things that are happening to all the characters, and because you're jumping forward in time, so much sort of everything interesting that happens, happens in between those time frames, so I just sort of felt like we were skirting around the edges of what was happening the entire time, with all the characters.

Plus there was the whole main narrative of this promise, which was also being, you know, you're also not talking about directly, so I just kind of got a bit like OK, when are we actually going to get to the crux of this? The answer to which is never.

00:33:38 KIERAN

Additionally, I don't think people I didn't mention it in my review, and the more I think about it. I kind of wish I did. I don't know if anyone else has spoken about it. It's a weird book like some of the circumstances that happened are just weird.

I get it's kind of… it's all offbeat. But it's not funny.

00:34:01 SARAH 

Yeah, he seems to think it's very funny, the author, did you notice that in his [acceptance speech]? I didn't think it was funny.

00:34:07 KIERAN

I never watched it, sadly.

00:34:09 SARAH 

OK, he talked about in his acceptance, speech or sort of maybe later in a press conference how he has a particular sense of humor that he has in the book quite a lot, but he's not sure if it would come across or not.

00:34:22 KIERAN

I don't think it did, it felt. It wasn't slapstick enough, it wasn't slapstick.

00:34:29 SARAH 

[laughs] Slapstick, what would you like for slapstick during a funeral? The body falls out there, putting it back in.

00:34:36 KIERAN

Well no, but it feels almost kind of reminiscent of Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders.

That that's kind of -  I call it like a Monty Python book. It's a bit all over the place, it's offbeat it's off-pace, there's too many things going on for you to kind of logically keep track of amongst this narrative of Lincoln and the death of his son and it kind of works.

I didn't laugh out loud reading Lincoln In The Bardo, but I was like OK, I can kind of see what you're doing here, but I don't think I got that with… Well, I don't know why I said I don't think, I know. I'm very aware of if I found it funny or not, I didn't find it funny.

I thought one of the characters was who was the – the name’s not ringing a bell at the moment. Who ends up having a black partner and she's like “actually things are changing for the better”, but before that it was “Oh, I can't believe things are changing for the worse”.

I quite I liked her character. I think there was a I know people who were who were like that and I kind of liked his poking fun with that type of person.

But yeah, the rest of it was kind of a bit yeah, but I will say the ending. I don't think he could have done it better. The last chapter I thought was pretty flawless.

00:36:03 SARAH 

I don't remember the ending. I only finished it four days ago.

00:36:09 KIERAN

So I've assumed you're gonna cut this bit out.

00:36:12 SARAH 

Yeah, sure.

00:36:14 KIERAN

Maybe there will be a jingle here and then we'll get your reaction.

[THEME MUSIC STARTS]

00:36:24 SARAH 

We will let you know about the ways that you can support the podcasts, a really effective and free way of showing your support is by racing and reviewing us on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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[THEME  MUSIC ENDS]

00:37:09 KIERAN

And this is where the jingle will end!

00:37:19 SARAH 

Yes, thank you Kieran for that reminder. I remember that now very vividly.

I thought the ending was pretty lame. 

00:37:29 KIERAN 

Oh! Even after my wonderful story? 

00:37:35 SARAH 

I just wanted more. There just wasn't… it was an interesting topic like what he was trying to do in this book. What he was tackling was interesting and like maybe this is me as someone who doesn't know that much about the history of he's kind of like racialized property laws in South Africa, sorry.

But I just really needed more to…I don't know, enjoy it, get get stuff out of it or something.

I just wanted more and this is also related to how indirect the kind of the whole narrative.

00:38:07 KIERAN

Was have you read any JM [inaudible]? 

[Very hard to transcribe this bit - essentially there’s discussion and confusion about who Kieran is talking about. Eventually Sarah figures out he’s talking about JM Coetzee and the conversation resumes]

00:38:47 KIERAN

I think if you like The Promise and what Galgut’s done in that book, check out Coetzee 'cause he is really good.

00:38:55 SARAH 

OK, yeah, someone actually just sent me one of his books weirdly.

00:38:57 KIERAN

Which one?

00:38:59 SARAH 

Well let me let me have look.

00:39:02 KIERAN 

Life and Times of Michael K? Age of Iron? Waiting for the Barbarians? 

00:39:05 SARAH 

Please hold I'll be with you in just a moment, caller.

00:39:06 KIERAN

Oh, I thought you'd be like, oh that's the one.

00:39:11 SARAH 

It's taking forever to load. It looked Australian on the cover.

00:39:18 KIERAN

Disgrace? That’s really good, Disgrace is really good.

00:39:21 SARAH

That’s it!

00:39:22 KIERAN

I think if you were to compare that to The Promise loads of similarity between those and Coetzee pulls it off more.

00:39:30 SARAH 

Oh nice. Yeah, I think I will I think I will read it. I know it won the Booker.

00:39:35 KIERAN

It won the Booker in 1999.

00:39:38 SARAH 

We quite like that prize.

00:39:40 KIERAN

Was the second time he won it.

00:39:43 SARAH 

Oh, nice so that's the bottom line I guess don't read The Promise read Disgrace instead.

00:39:50 KIERAN

I would go for that. Or Life And Times Of Michael K, which also won the Booker but talks about this divide in a very Kafka-esque way.

00:39:58 SARAH 

OK. Nice. something that I was thinking about as I was reading this, The Promise, is that I don't know who I would recommend this so I don't know what someone would say to me to make me think of this book. Yeah, there's nothing that would make me put this book into someone 's hands.

00:40:17 KIERAN

I would be putting Disgrace in people hands over. And I have it's the book I buy the most for people is Disgrace. I still don't own a copy 'cause I buy it and I hand it to people I go you know bring it back to me and they never read it so I think I've bought Disgrace easily, 15 times.

Just keep buying copies and send them out to people. Yeah, I think if someone say, I'm looking for a book about South Africa and racial tensions. I'd be going for Disgrace.

He's like one of my favorite books of all, so readers, we all, we all are… what do people say?

Books are journeys from the books you've read before, so when you really like something, if something’s not encroaching on it, but if something’s very similar.

Like, please be aware that Coetzee is going to - he's one of my favorite authors, so Galgut’s kind of on a losing battle anyway, unless he completely blows me out the water.

00:41:17 SARAH 

Oh, I see.

00:41:20 KIERAN

So but yeah, I think if would I recommend it I'd be giving them Disgrace.

00:41:29 SARAH 

That makes me sad that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because it – I don’t know. It's something I think about quite a lot. It's like one of the things that I think about in like in preparation for talking about a book, 'cause I yeah I tend to have pretty welll, not today apparently we're super in sync, but yeah, often I don't agree necessarily with what other people think about books. So instead I try and think about what would make me think that you might read it, but.

00:41:56 KIERAN

Think this is the thing has been prevalent as we mentioned at the beginning. The ambivalence of this prize. I think everyone is kind of on the boat of “yeah, they’re all pretty good”. 

00:42:08 SARAH 

Yeah, yeah, sorry if you’re a little disappointed if you listen to the episode last year and we were enraged. And this year we're like “meh”. 

00:42:16 KIERAN

I, I think most people are like that on the on the discord that I run most people were like yeah, if any of them won that would be fine. 

00:42:25 SARAH 

Yeah yeah, I sort of felt that way. Apart from my very niche hatred of Bewilderment, which I'm sort of by myself there, I do appreciate. So yeah, that was the Booker Prize 2021.

00:42:40 KIERAN

That was the Booker prize.

00:42:42 SARAH 

It's a quick final question, maybe even though I just wrapped it up. Whatever quick final question, anything from the longlist that you would have liked to see on the shortlist? 

00:42:50 KIERAN

Light Perpetual should have won. It was incredible. It was so good. I can't describe how good it was. Well, I can. And I'm going to.

00:43:06 SARAH 

OK, let's hear it.

00:43:08 KIERAN

I don't think the synopsis on the back describes what this book is in the best way. It's a very pragmatic viewpoint, so it's about five children. Who are bombed in World War 2. And Spufford’s premise is like OK, well, what if those children lived? What type of lives would they have had? There's literally what happened. The children aren't based on anyone. The bomb did happen and the circumstance that he describes of the bombing during World War Two is legitimate.

He's just created a fake borough of London to set it in because he didn't want to encroach on any form of reality in that case. And you just see these kids grow up, they fall in love, they hate their partners. They have really boring jobs, sort of end up being extremely racist and in Neo Nazi groups.

They see their kids grow up. Some of them wish they had kids. It has this very human element of it, but each chapter is jumping forward. Apart from the first one, which is 5 years, it jumps forward every 15 years, so there're gaps in the story.

Similar to what you said in The Promise where you don't really know what happened. But there's a moment where one of the characters he looks at a woman and goes wow, I'd love to be married to her. Fast forward 15 years and he's getting divorced by the woman. So you're like, OK, well what happened here where? Where's the story going?

And he's kind of filling in the gaps for you, and then you kind of have this very somber moment at the end, 'cause you have the kids who died who didn't know they were going to die and they have these people who've lived their lives who have to now face.

Like I am going to die at one stage, how do they come to terms with that based on a life that they never had?

I loved it. If you're interested in death and you'd like to be maybe like an undertaker about funerals, I think this would be the book for you.

00:45:32 SARAH 

Well yeah, now I'm more interested. The reason I didn't read it is because this the synopsis is like, oh, the World War Two and I really dislike World War Two novels, so I didn't read it. But it sounds like it's actually not really about [WW2].

If it's jumping forward.

00:45:47 KIERAN

Yeah, so in World War Two for all of 20 pages.

00:45:53 SARAH 

Oh, I can probably handle that.

00:45:55 KIERAN

And then you're out of the war and you make it all the way up to… 2009. I think it's the last year.

So just you race forward through it, but it's very well set. It's a little bit of a nostalgia trip you can kind of understand what he's doing in London. It's kind of a little bit bonkers at times. There's this guy who's fascinated with cannibalism and wants to know what it's like to eat someone charred ribs out of nowhere, and it's just this constant thing.

Yeah he does these turns and you think oh wait, why are we in this guy's head, he's like I could really eat someone right now, but then how his cannibalistic dreams end up. It's just really wonderful. You see people at the highest see people, their lowest. There's a guy called Vern who is this like eager, almost like pre yuppie. Sort of person who never really makes it. But even like in his like last days there was like a 70 year old man.

He's still like that person owes me £10. I remember from 25 years ago. I'm just like this absolute, just like he's not changed once. He's just this old.

Man who's just like still a yuppie like I can make millions if I wanted to and his children who have to like come to terms would be like dad like just like let the dream go like you're an old man he's like really like I can invest my money it's great it's just this wonderful story that's very deep, very philosophical. However, I could see some people getting very annoyed. It is quite Christian heavy. Which shouldn't be a surprise as Spufford is a devout Christian and his wife is a vicar, I believe. Very Christian, Christian values. The end is very Christian.

That's the only thing I could see people being like oh you look like  you're shoving this down my throat. I could see some people saying there, but at that protect that stuff doesn't particularly bother me.

00:48:03 SARAH 

OK, interesting.

00:48:05 KIERAN

I thought it was very beautiful, very well done and very touching. Very human.

00:48:13 SARAH 

Well, this certainly has been a journey listening to you describe this book.

00:48:16 KIERAN

It’s brilliant.

00:48:17 SARAH 

Yeah, interesting.

So to sum. Wee thought the shortlist was OK. Not thrilled about The Promise. Not furious.

00:48:31 KIERAN

Yeah, it's OK.

00:48:32 SARAH 

Read Disgrace and read Light Perpetual and we'll see you next year.

00:48:40 KIERAN

Well, we'll see you for the International [Booker]? Maybe? Maybe?

00:48:45 SARAH 

Why you saying it like that? 

00:48:46 KIERAN

I don’t know if you’re going to read it. 

00:48:49 SARAH 

Well, yeah, I didn't do it this year and then I kind of regretted it 'cause I really liked translated fiction.

00:48:53 KIERAN

I I would I would love to talk to you about Olga Tokarczuk’s 900 page novel that’s most definitely going to make it onto the longlist at least. So get your orders in people 25th November comes out 'cause no way I’m going to be able to read that in one month. It's meant to be her magnum opus.

00:49:20 SARAH 

OK, yeah, I think it'll definitely be longlist. How could it not? They love her.

00:49:25 SARAH 

Maybe it will be the International’s Ducks, Newburyport.

Thanks here for coming on and talking to me neutrally about the longlist. I really enjoyed it. Well, hopefully be back next year to talk tepidly about another longlist.

Follow Kieran, all of his links here on the show notes. Watch his Booker reviews if you're interested – well, regardless of whether you’re interested. Watch them, subscribe to his channel, follow him on Instagram.

All that kind of stuff. Thank you so much for listening.

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