Man Booker The Long Song

So....was this another winner by Andrea Leavy.....?

But I'm ahead of myself...I'm blaming it on the raging virus that I have at the moment, not on any failure in my writing skills. Naturally.

The story itself is predictable- how could a tale about a slave in Jamaica be anything else? Young July, taken from her mother by the plantation owner's sister and re-named Marguerite, is trained as a lady's maid. A tale of brutality. A tale of humanity. That of the slaves, of course, not that of the owners...and yet...and yet....I hate to admit this but time again I found myself feeling sorry for Miss Caroline. She really was a fish out of water.

Widowed young herself, Caroline finds herself in the care of her soon-to-be-widowed brother. Even before grief overcomes him he is not overly solicitous of his sister's needs and feelings and she is left to fall upon her own (scant) resources as she attempts to be mistress of Amity, the plantation upon which she and July both must live out their years.In the tumultuous years that follow, as slavery is finally outlawed and in the years that come after, July and Caroline rub along as best they can, despite July being forced to give up a son in order to stop Caroline 'selling him away.' July runs rings around her (stupid)mistress to the point where at times there was something of characature going on in the text. Some of these years were not bad to July, in as far as one can say that about being a slave, and she consolidates her position to the point where it becomes clearer and clearer that Caroline is Mistress of Amity in name only.

I was by turns perplexed, horrified, sorrowful and greatly amused. The complete self-centredness and lack of empathy displayed by the white characters was astounding, yet at the same time quite believable. Whatever my feelings for the characters during the book, by the end of it Caroline and the other plantation owners are found to be simply loathsome.

And what of July? It is clear from the beginning of the novel that July survives and is no longer a slave. But I found the end of The Long Song both too long and too short (I like to be difficult). The end of the book concentrates on what happened to her son. I found I wasn't interested in that- well, to be precise, I wanted to know more about what had happened to July in these latter years and less about her son.

Apart from the last few chapters, this book had me gripped. As I said at the start, there aren't many surprises to be had in a story about slavery, yet this had 'Aha!' moments scattered thtoughout. I was really interested in what befell July and at times almost found myself chiding her, questioning her responses and actions


Scores on the doors- 8.5 out of 10


EDIt: After some mulling over, I'm reducing this to a 6 out of 10. I know it made the shortlist, but I really don't think it should've.

Man Booker What purpose a book?

I've been thinking about why I read, and about why other people read. What really is the purpose? I started out with entertainment and enjoyment and then went onto:

instruction

education

inspiration

moralising

escapism

experimentation

story-telling

propaganda

recording history

boundary-pushing

conscience-raising

I'm sure I'll add a few more to this list.

But in the meantime, why do I read? Is it 'simply' for pleasure? If it is, is that enough? Should I not want to be educated? Should I not want my conscience poked and prodded?

I'm gonna give that some thought and get back to y'all.

Man Booker What purpose a book?

I've been thinking about why I read, and about why other people read. What really is the purpose? I started out with entertainment and enjoyment and then went onto:

instruction

education

inspiration

moralising

escapism

experimentation

story-telling

propaganda

recording history

boundary-pushing

conscience-raising

I'm sure I'll add a few more to this list.

But in the meantime, why do I read? Is it 'simply' for pleasure? If it is, is that enough? Should I not want to be educated? Should I not want my conscience poked and prodded?

I'm gonna give that some though and get back to y'all.

Man Booker Room

Ok, up next we have Room, by Emma Donoghue.

Loved this book.

I am really glad that I didn't read any of the reviews before I dived into this book. I find that some reviews just give far too much away- and I'm not talking about when 'spoilers' are highlighted, I mean simply in the body of the review itself. I probably go too far the other way and don't say enough. Ho hum.

So.....the narrator of the story is a 5 year old boy and for the first few pages I wasn't really sure what is going on- there is no back story, you are simply dropped into his day. As the beginning of the book unfolded I developed my own theory about what was going on, based partly on some 'clues' in the text. But all was not quite as I had thought. The 'clues' did indeed turn out to be hints to what was going on, but not quite the way I had expected. It was with growing horror and tension that I realised what the truth of the matter was. Now, was that sufficiently vague not to give the plot away and sufficiently pithy to hold your attention? I thought not, but I really don't want to give anything away about the plot.

About a third/ half way into the book the truth of the situation becomes apparent, yet despite this revelation the book remained a real page-turner. I think that says a lot about the strength of the writing and the believability of the characters. I stayed up into the wee small hours to finish this book.

I'm not going to say any more about the content as I don't want to give the game away.

Do I think it is a Booker winner? Who the heck knows? The fact that I loved it might be enough to blight it ;0).

Scores on the door: 10/10

Man Booker The Slap

I am half-heartedly predicting that The Slap ,Christos Tsiolkas, will win the Man Booker. Because I think it is a great novel? Because it broke boundaries, charted new territory? Nope. Because I really, really really didn't like it. And as Number Guy pointed out, I have a history of not liking prize-winning novels.

The plot is simple: people at barbecue. Child behaving like spoiled brat. (child is spoiled brat.)Someone slaps child. General outrage. Examining aftershock through the different characters present At The Time.

The first couple of sections were OK and I was somewhat interested in the characters. But lordy, according to Tsiolkas, your average Australian male can't keep his mind away from his groin for more than about, oh, 5 seconds. I got pretty fed up, pretty fast, with the sex obsession.

Another issue for me was the Australian vernacular. It just didn't sit with me, it felt forced and unrealistic. I asked my Australian friend if 'wog' was really such a common word to be heard in the Antipodes these days. She choked on her wine, fell off her seat and had to be rushed to casualty. Well, ok, I made up the casualty bit (what, you couldn't tell?) but she was somewhat taken aback. No, as far as she is concerned, the 'w' word doesn't get many outings. Phew.

I has sympathy for only two of the characters in the book. Aish, related through marriage to the man who slaps the child, and her Greek father-in-law. As a result of the pressures of the aftermath of The Slap, and the bias and bigotry of her mother-in-law, this relationship crumbles. In fact, not only were these the only two characters that I liked, the examination of their relationship was the only part of the book that felt real and held any kind of fascination.

I tried to slog through to the end, but I lost interest in the characters, and was losing the will to live, about 2/3 of the way through. it is Unfinished.

Scores on the door: 1/10

Man Booker Skippy Dies

Number three from the list: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

Thoughts so far: Skippy is Everyteen.

More on that when I've had more/less beer and read more of the book.

OK....so now I have read more, but no more beer was drunk. In fact, I have read it all and still no more beer was drunk.

Very short summary- teenage boys in Catholic boarding school. Teenage boy falls hopelessly in love with girl from Catholic girls' school. Some dark thread running through story. Teenage boy dies.


I really liked this book. If you'd asked me about 2/3 of the way through I would have said that I loved it.....but for me it ran out of steam about 3/4 of the way through and I found myself repeatedly checking the progress bar on the Kindle app...not such a good sign. In my (very humble) opinion as a book critic, what really shone out was the characterisation. Skippy might have been a teenage boy, well, he was, no might have been about it, but I identified with him with every fibre of my once-teenage being. It wasn't Skippy falling in love with a girl he had never met, it was me falling in love with B, or A or....well....not quite the whole alphabet....but the sheer hopelessness of teenage love and angst is still seared on my soul and Skippy brought it all back...those of you who look back on your teenage years through a goldne glow may not recognise Skippy. He may not be Everyteen to you....but he certainly represents Twelfthknitteen to me.

The storyline kept me on my toes during the first half of the book. I kept having 'Aha' moments when I thought I knew just what this 'dark thread' was, only to have my assumptions shoved to the side within a couple of pages. The way the story was structured more-or-less guaranteed that the element of suspense was over while the book still had a fair way to go. In short, if about a quarter of the book had been hacked out of the middle, I would have liked it a lot more. I did wonder if my feeling about the book were influenced by the fact that it felt a bit like A Spot of Bother , and I couldn't forgive it for not being that book. But that wasn't it. It just needed a bit of pruning.....(I feel all audacious now....bit it is my blog, so I can be audacious if I want to... can't I ?)

Scores on the door: 6 out of 10

Man Booker; The Betrayal

Having thoroughly enjoyed The Siege, in which Helen Dunmore tells the story of the siege of Leningrad through the eyes of one family, I was really looking forward to The Betrayal.

Like A thousand Autumns..., honesty, doing the right thing and being able to look yourself in the eye feature large in this book. In fact, it is the core of the story. Ten years after the siege Anna and her husband, Andrei, have built a life together with her much younger brother, Kolya. But it's a life amidst The Terror a life of looking over one's shoulder, guarded words and never-ending unease. A life of wondering when Stalin's hand will be felt upon one's shoulder. It is into this atmosphere that Kolkov's son is admitted to Andrei's hospital. In the rush to avoid the inevitable persecution which will be a result of failure, the child becomes irrelevant. He is to the doctors in the hospital simply the son of a rightly-feared man, simply Kolkov's son. But not to Andrei and another of his colleagues, who despite having the case thrust upon them, do their best to care for the child at the centre of all of this turmoil.

I enjoyed this book. I felt that Dunmore once again conveyed something of the atmosphere of living through The Terror. (I say 'something', because I'm fairly sure that any fiction about such events is only a mere shadow, no matter how adept the author.) With The Siege I was left wanting to know more, but felt that the book was in itself complete. This time I am left with a sense of dissatisfaction. The end indicates to me that there may well be a third book, but even allowing for that it still doesn't leave me satisfied.

Scores on the door: 7 out of 10


ETA: New scoring system

The Man Booker- A thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Here we go, book one of the long list.

But first, a disclaimer. I am not a book critic and I will be fumbling my way around here- normally my critique of a book is summed up by 'Loved it/hated it'....




And....I am hoping to get through the books before the award is announced and I will be deciding which one I would give the prize to. That doesn't mean that the book that I award most points to will be my 'winner', as I'll be thinking of the books in terms of what I think of as 'prizeworthiness'.

Jacob de Zoet is on a mission; a turn-of-the-18th century Dutchman, his only chance of earning enough to marry the woman he loves is to work as a trading company's clerk to Japan. There is but one problem- Jacob is an honest man and the theme of 'doing the right/honourable thing' is a thread that runs through this novel, causing him no end of problems. Falling in love with a Japanese woman, Orito, doesn't help matters much.

There is a lot of historical detail in this book. As someone who knows nothing of Japanese culture and history, it seemed accurate enough to me ;0) I really enjoyed the narrative and for the first time in a long, long time I had a book in my hands that I just didn't want to put down. There was just one wrong note for me- the 'device' (getting all scholarly here!!) that he uses to separate Jacob and Orito had me staring at he pages in perplexity and, frankly, annoyance. To me it seemed a contrivance that really spoiled the flow and 'believability' of the book. To say that I couldn't suspend my disbelief* is putting it mildly.

However, the rest of the book was so good that in time I manage d to forgive MItchell for this bum note.

Scores on the door- 9 out of 10

ETA: New scoring system

* I know, I know- the convention is 'suspending your belief', but for me it's always my disbelief that I have trouble suspending, and this is my blog ;0)

ETA: I haven't really given enough detail about the book I think, but I don't want to spoil it. IF there isn't enough detail for you, check out reviews on Amazon:0)

Man Booker

My blog has been deathly quiet because I am trying not to use the computer so much on account of sore hands. However, I have decided to read the Man Booker longlist and will post my thoughts on each of them here. Be warned: I am no literary critic and will not be attempting any 'high faluting' stuff, just my humble thoughts on each one.