2023 Booker Prize speculation Showing 451-500 of 1,356

[David]

I just finished August Blue. After seeing some lukewarm takes, I almost skipped it, but I have to say the book clicked for me. I would love to see it on the Booker list.

[Alwynne]

Cindy wrote: "Very keen to read The Fraud, I must say. I have not loved her fiction since On Beauty, which is my personal favorite of her novels, but do love her nonfiction writing. The Fraud sounds very differe..."

I liked On Beauty loved the contemporary take on Howards End. Finding The Fraud very much in the mainstream historical fiction mold, and a little clunky/superficial. Although I really enjoyed Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches so interested to find out about his life, had no idea he was once so popular.

David look forward to hearing about the Levy, I loved the memoirs but found her fiction less than enticing, but I've been reading reviews of August Blue that verge on rhapsodic, so very tempted to try it.

[Alwynne]

As to Zadie Smith and the Booker I've no idea whether it's a likely candidate or not, but seems very much a Women's Prize kind of title.

[Paul]

David wrote: "I just finished August Blue. After seeing some lukewarm takes, I almost skipped it, but I have to say the book clicked for me. I would love to see it on the Booker list."

I wanted to love it

But I'm still intrigued as to whether the Frozen references were deliberate (they must be surely - but I've yet to see them mentioned in interviews and mainstream reviews*), ditto the mistakes. And on the latter, disappointingly at least one - the mystery of the maths of Arthur's age - seems to have been corrected in the published version, so it turns out it was purely a mistake. So then is the odd Covid vaccine timeline deliberate or again just bad editing?

[* Actually google tells me The Telegraph did pick this up - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/wha...]

[David]

The version I read (ARC on netgalley) didn't have the discrepancy with Arthur's age, unless I read over it.

But the covid timeline is a mystery. I'm inclined to think it's a deliberate mystery. There's some question about whether this is set in the fall of 2020 or 2021 - but I find it hard to imagine an indoor concert taking place in the summer of 2020 or 2021. So I think it is meant to be a jumbled timeline with events taking place outside the time indicated.

It's also possible that reading this in tandem with Solenoid has altered my sense of linear reality.

[Yahaira]

I was about to start The Fraud, which would be my first Zadie since On Beauty, but now I'm wondering why so many of you don't think it has Booker potential. I would think historical fiction and Smith would be catnip.

[Robert]

Zadie Smith has always been nominated as her writing style is what makes a booker judge salivate. I won’t be surprised

I also think fire rush is booker worthy btw - again the writing style is just so full of verve

[Paul]

I suspect it did if it was the Netgalley ARC unless they went back to fix that.

Elsa is adopted by Arthur when she is 6 and she is now 34. He was 46 when he adopted her. That makes him around 74 now. But on three separate times (and by Elsa, and another character) we are told Arthur is 80, so he has aged 34 years while she has aged 28.

I am told in the audiobook version it has been changed so Arthur is 52 when he adopted Elsa, to make the maths work.

I’m interested how this sort of thing appears to other readers. To me it screams out as an issue and I spend the rest of the book trying to work out what is going on. Or would others simply skip / not notice this sort of thing?

[David]

Agree on Fire Rush, Robert. The mix of inventive prose (peppered with patois and dub lyrics) with mostly linear coming of age story makes it attractive for the Booker. It does seem under-edited to me, though, so it might fall by the wayside if the judges are looking for a sleeker work.

[David]

Paul wrote: "I’m interested how this sort of thing appears to other readers. To me it screams out as an issue and I spend the rest of the book trying to work out what is going on. Or would others simply skip / not notice this sort of thing?"

Not only didn't it bother me, but it added another layer of interest. Levy was playing around with the timeline and perceptions of reality and selfhood so much that I took it as one more mystery that wasn't meant to be solved.

[Alwynne]

Paul wrote: "I suspect it did if it was the Netgalley ARC unless they went back to fix that.

Elsa is adopted by Arthur when she is 6 and she is now 34. He was 46 when he adopted her. That makes him around 74 ..."

It would bother me but at the same time I'd chalk it up to cutbacks in the publishing industry. It's the kind of basic error that copyeditors routinely weeded out at pre-pub stage before their jobs were either disappeared or massively scaled back, in favour of putting more funds into areas like marketing. If the error was so vast that it rendered sections of the narrative incoherent then that would be another matter.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

With any other author I would think it was a mistake and report on NetGalley but with Levy given the time slips in her previous book I did wonder if it was deliberate.

This is conventional for Zadie Smith Robert - I would be shocked if it’s not on the WP (and I suspect Walter Scott) but it’s the judges that make me think this might be Booker listed more than the book.

[Alwynne]

Robert wrote: "Zadie Smith has always been nominated as her writing style is what makes a booker judge salivate. I won’t be surprised

I also think fire rush is booker worthy btw - again the writing style is jus..."

The style here is not the smoothest, at least so far. Feels rather forced and not terribly sophisticated but it may well improve. So far it reminds me more of Emma Donoghue than Zadie Smith.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Hoping Jonathan Coe gets longlisted now as he just said my Instagram review of Bournville might be the best review of his work he has ever read! The review was not that serious but fun to write.

[Alwynne]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "With any other author I would think it was a mistake and report on NetGalley but with Levy given the time slips in her previous book I did wonder if it was deliberate.

This is conventional for Za..."

Agree seems a good fit for Walter Scott. It seems very much a story led novel.

[Alwynne]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "With any other author I would think it was a mistake and report on NetGalley but with Levy given the time slips in her previous book I did wonder if it was deliberate.

This is conventional for Za..."

It may well be but as someone who's worked as a copyeditor in the past, it's also a very common type of error. I don't think readers always realise just how much work copyeditors often do to tidy up a text and render it consistent. Or how hard it can be to accurately copyedit one's own work.

[David]

I'm not a fiction writer, although I write constantly in a professional setting. I just can't imagine mixing up characters' ages or the novel's timeline. Which is why I'm inclined to think it's all deliberate. If the Arthur/Elsa age discrepancy was altered for publication, I would assume it's to avoid reader confusion rather than to fix an error.

[Yahaira]

So it's a sophistication issue?

[Cindy]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Hoping Jonathan Coe gets longlisted now as he just said my Instagram review of Bournville might be the best review of his work he has ever read! The review was not that serious but fun to write."

That review was terrific GY, and it was lovely of Coe to note it! I doubt Bournville is a Booker book, although I did like it.

[Owen]

Yahaira wrote: "So it's a sophistication issue?"

(Assuming you're talking about The Fraud and not August Blue!)

I'm a little surprised that that seems to be a growing consensus here - I thought The Fraud was a really beautifully written, layered novel that covered a lot of themes really effectively! I'm not a huge follower of the Women's Prize so I'm not sure how that differs from Booker, but I was left feeling like it was a pretty likely candidate for Booker - and a deserving one at that.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

There is definitely a lot going on and it’s very enjoyable.

[Yahaira]

thanks Owen, to me that sounds right up Booker's alley and maybe an upgrade from some of last year's selection.

I guess I'll have to read it for myself and judge then.

[PaulaJA]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Hoping Jonathan Coe gets longlisted now as he just said my Instagram review of Bournville might be the best review of his work he has ever read! The review was not that serious but fun to write."

The review was brilliant - even thinking how you got together the words and then made a review out of them amused me no end. What you were actually saying about the book, I need to think about.

[David]

endrju wrote: "David wrote: "I would love to see more books blur the boundaries between languages."

It seems Gina Apostol's doing that in La Tercera, judging by some reviews."

I spent some time with this in the bookstore today. It's very readable. The narrative is almost entirely in English, albeit with a fair number of Spanish-language words. My Spanish is barely passable but I didn't have a problem understanding the passages I picked at random.

However, there are untranslated dialogue exchanges in what I surmise is Tagalog. Based on the narrative, I could understand the gist of what was said (I think). This creates an interesting dynamic where an English-language reader is able to understand maybe 95% of what's going on, but only trilingual Filipino readers are initiated into the full story.

So I wouldn't avoid it based on language. But I was put off a bit by the length. As much as I like Apostol, I'm not sure I have a 500-page family saga on my horizon.

[David]

Back to the Levy, I thought Neil's review was excellent. On the apparent contradictions: "Time and identity are fractured here which leads to some odd apparent contradictions. But I read these not so much as contradictions but as indicators of the almost dream-like nature of the book. . . . So, fundamentally, I don’t think the task in reading August Blue is to make a logical, rational explanation of it. I don’t think it’s about a logical, rational story. I think it’s more storytelling where reality is warped to convey images and emotions."

I think that's very well said, Neil.

[Paul]

Well agreed - except the most glaring and earliest of those contradictions is then corrected in the final version. So it was just an error.

ARC “He was forty-six when he adopted me”

Final version “He was fifty-two when he adopted me”

I can see that from the preview on the Penguin website. If anyone has the final book is Arthur still born in 1946 (which means he can’t be 80)? And is Greek time still two hours behind UK time “ If it was five in the afternoon in Poros, it was seven in the evening in London.”

The person who told me the age at adoption had been corrected said the time zone had been as well.

In which case we are either reading too much into mistakes in a proof version. Or an overzealous editor decided to correct what were actually deliberate anomalies.

It’s a bit like if it turned out all along that George Perec’s typewriter was simply broken and an editor put all the “E”s back in La Disparition.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

It must be brilliant being Levy and even more so her publisher - whatever they do is hailed as even more examples of her genius

Omit some pages by error and it’s the fracturing of time

Mess up the page numbering or even better the ordering and its rejecting a conventional linear narrative

Accidentally include a page (or a chunk of text) twice and the very book is capturing the textual theme of doppelgänger

Print a page upside down and the idea of mirroring echoes that of the text

Yet repurpose the plot and characters of a kid’s movie and nonprofessional critics (and there’s a profession that has not needed to wait for ChatGPT to be effectively already rendered largely redundant) do not even notice

I would get some unpaid and untrained interns working for the publisher and put them on all her books

[Alwynne]

Paul wrote: "Well agreed - except the most glaring and earliest of those contradictions is then corrected in the final version. So it was just an error.

ARC “He was forty-six when he adopted me”

Final versio..."

Usually corrections come from the author and/or are cleared by them, would be very irregular for that not to be the case!

[David]

I’m not sure it was an error. Or even that there is such a thing as an error at that stage in the process.* A decision was made, presumably jointly with the author, to eliminate an element that was distracting from other elements of the story. (I personally thought it was stronger with Arthur aging at an advanced rate, but I can see why it was eliminated.)

It’s like making a stew. Maybe the roux is too thick so you cut it with a splash of water. Or someone adds a potato instead of tomato and you have to fish it out. Which is fine - you’re still cooking.

*EDIT to clarify I'm talking about August Blue, not generally.

[Paul]

Hmmmm. Not really sure of that. It was either deliberate to have various errors (the odd Covid timeline, the time zones, Arthur’s age) or it wasn’t. And if it was deliberate it’s odd to change it at the post ARC stage - I don’t think of ARCs sully function like test movie screenings.

I haven’t actually checked if the characters are still called Elsa etc - perhaps the Frozen stuff has gone as well.

[David]

It's fiction. Putting Greece two hours ahead of the UK is simply an element that can or cannot be added to a story. If Georgi Gospodinov did so, it would have been commentary. Perhaps Levy unintentionally departed from real-world time zones in an earlier draft. But once that element was introduced, it's not an error to decide to keep it in, nor is it an error to remove it. The same thing with characters aging at different rates.

The Frozen reference is a great example. Yes, there are references to Disney's Frozen - just as there are to at least a dozen artists and works. The question is whether the references to Frozen (the name Elsa, hair color, others? - I haven't seen the film) add to or detract from the book. Either way, I wouldn't call it an error any more than I would call nods to the Mozart-Leopold relationship an error.

[David]

Paul wrote: "And if it was deliberate it’s odd to change it at the post ARC stage - I don’t think of ARCs sully function like test movie screenings."

Being an advance reader is like when your friend hands you a spoon from what's cooking on the stove and asks how it tastes. I don't see any problem with changes to the text in response to feedback (or for any reason at all post-ARC or indeed post-publication - see Cristina Rivera Garza).

[Emmeline]

David, you’ve got my head hurting with the ideas that errors don’t actually exist. They definitely do! Hence the existence, however underused, of copy editors.

[Alwynne]

Emily wrote: "David, you’ve got my head hurting with the ideas that errors don’t actually exist. They definitely do! Hence the existence, however underused, of copy editors."

Thanks for that Emily, was doing my head in too, but couldn't think of a way to phrase it that was anywhere near tactful!

[Alwynne]

"I’m not sure it was an error. Or even that there is such a thing as an error at that stage in the process."

They definitely do creep in even at a very late stage, hence the note frequently found in ARCs asking that readers not quote from the text as it's unfinished.

[David]

I'll accept that I'm in the minority here. I think it's important to keep in mind we have a book that has almost certainly been vetted by a copy editor. Some of the elements discussed in Paul's review were removed, while some remain. I may be in the minority on this, but I wouldn't call any element that makes it to publication an error unless it's truly a typo.

[Paul]

Except here in Levy’s previous book the seeming mistakes and anomalies turned out to be deliberate (we asked the author in person). I’m half wondering here if an overzealous editor has “corrected” them.

[Jo]

Enjoyed catching up on discussion...

Struggling through The Fraud - not gripping me at all.

Absolutely LOVED Bourneville and really enjoyed listening to Jonathan Coe at Hay. Doubt ot will be on The Booker LL but what a great novel.

Intrigued to read Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time.

[Yahaira]

I've seen so many mistakes in finished copies lately, seems to be getting worse. I wish more copy editors and fact checkers were being hired.

[Lark]

I agree about copy editing becoming a sadly neglected part of the publishing process. I just had a hellish experience with this reality

[Paul]

Is that experience Lark (if you can say) a copy editor missing mistakes, or (as I am still not sure hasn’t happened to Levy) correcting things that weren’t mistakes.

Reminds of a Kundera rant in Testaments Betrayed about a translator who translated a particular word differently in the same paragraph to make the passage read more elegantly in English, when for Kundera the repetition of the same word was the whole point.

Having a great stock of synonyms is a feature of “good style” virtuosity; if the word “sadness” appears twice in the same paragraph of the original text, the translator, offended by the repetition (considered an attack on obligatory stylistic elegance), will be tempted to translate the second occurrence as ‘melancholy.’

[Emmeline]

I’m on the translator’s side (provisionally) in that case. Does Kundera know how inelegant that repetían sounds in English? There are languages that are more forgiving of repetition for stylistic effect; maybe the translator thought that effect was better achieved through other means…also, if the text reads strangely in English, it will be the translator who gets blamed for it.

[Alwynne]

Paul wrote: "Is that experience Lark (if you can say) a copy editor missing mistakes, or (as I am still not sure hasn’t happened to Levy) correcting things that weren’t mistakes.

Reminds of a Kundera rant in ..."

Technically there shouldn't be unauthorised alterations for work from a writer like Levy. She's fairly well established as are her publishers, the success of her memoirs will also have increased her negotiating power. So she'd presumably have the usual Society of Authors' style contract making provision for editing procedures - and usually this kind of author would expect final say in any changes.

[Paul]

Kundera claimed iirc that the repetition was equally inelegant in the original language (can’t remember if Czech or French). Although Kundera does give the distinct impression that translation is not really possible while being very happy to accept the world fame and royalties that come with his translations.

I am reading a Bernhardian novel at the moment, an English language original, but again there is a lot of repetition of the same words and it isn’t bad writing it is designed for effect.

As an aside on that does anyone else hear read Jen Craig’s novels. Would be comfortably in my top 10 contemporary world writers but seems to get little coverage (indeed yet to find a UK publisher).

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Note for copy editor: hear needs correcting to here

[David]

Unless it isn’t an error. Time and language are fractured.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Exactly - maybe a clever Levy-style reference to the aural tradition that underlies Craig’s work.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Surely the whole point of liking Craig is that she does not have a publisher:

In an era of sentences that trend not only towards our laziest tendencies but also towards the speed and rhythm of our economy: the elevator pitch sentence, the jump-cut sentence, the news hook sentence, the perfectly manscaped short back and sides sentence, in short the short sentence; a long sentence is antiseptic, so much so that defending its intrinsic value has become something of a moral duty.

And in an era of moral duties that trend toward self-promotion, readers of the long sentence have spawned Bookstagrams, BookToks, YouTube channels and Twitter threads with the surrogate combativeness and braggadocio of an office clerk in private browsing mode. Let it be known that these readers are not the kind of three pump chumps who jack-hammer their slender little flash-fictions before rolling over and falling asleep. These are sensitive and patient readers whose night-long stamina coaxes penetrability from the otherwise impenetrable. Not necessarily gauche enough for a muted post horn tattoo, these readers will almost certainly greet the owner of one with a nod of recognition — the kind that needs the world to know, in their own self-effacing way, that when you embark on a life-long journey to read every maximalist ‘systems novel’ to have ever gone out-of-print — no, you don’t get it, the unreadability is actually the point because it’s a schizoid reflection of post-60s paranoia — no, because you lose so much of the word-play unless it’s read in the original Catalan — the Gordon Lishes of the world will start to feel less like editors per se and more like cosmetic surgeons, financially motivated to perform syntacticoplasty on the loose folds of an author’s prose, because these readers prefer sentences so prolapsed by the weight of their own complexity that those tiny cotton balls, blackened to become full-stops, can barely staunch the flow of conditional clauses.

[Emmeline]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Surely the whole point of liking Craig is that she does not have a publisher:

In an era of sentences that trend not only towards our laziest tendencies but also towards the speed and rhythm of ou..."

Is that Craig or you riffing on her, GY? Can't decide if I need to read this or not. :-D

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

That’s neither but a Sydney Review of Books review of her latest - riffing on readers who love her type of writing (including I think the person writing the review).