2023 Int Booker longlist - The Birthday Party

[Hugh, Active moderator]

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker

[Alwynne]

I wasn't that keen on this one, it felt like a very conventional, almost hackneyed crime story and I didn't find the elaborate style or structure particularly convincing.

[Roman Clodia]

Ha, I was the opposite of Alwynne as I found this nail-biting and tense due to the writing - but would agree that it's replaying a hackneyed plot, presumably deliberately?

[Alwynne]

Roman Clodia wrote: "Ha, I was the opposite of Alwynne as I found this nail-biting and tense due to the writing - but would agree that it's replaying a hackneyed plot, presumably deliberately?"

Definitely and I could see what he was aiming for, it just didn't work for me.

[Tommi]

I was on board for the first 300 pages, patiently waiting for the drawn-out style to really make sense. I didn’t mind the long sentences and thought there were lots to enjoy in the meandering prose, but for me it didn’t feel justified for the whole length, i.e., it didn’t pay off the way I was perhaps expecting it do. So, mixed feelings. A worthwhile read still.

[Paul]

Tooooooooooo loooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg

[Yahaira]

waiting 300 pages?!

[Paul]

I also struggled with the writing here. I normally love labyrinthine, nested sentences (indeed that's how I communicate) but they didn't work here. E,g, the first sentence of the novel - feels a bit random to me rather than well constructed

She watches him through the window and what she sees in the car park, despite the reflection of the sun that blinds her and prevents her from seeing him as she’d like to, leaning against that old Renault Kangoo he’s going to have to get around to trading in one of these days–as though by watching him she can guess what he’s thinking, when maybe he’s just waiting for her to come out of this police station where he’s brought her for the how many times now, two or three in two weeks, she can’t remember–what she sees, in any case, elevated slightly over the car park which seems to incline somewhat past the grove of trees, standing near the chairs in the waiting room between a scrawny plant and a concrete pillar painted yellow on which she could read appeals for witnesses if she bothered to take an interest, is, because she’s slightly above it, overlooking and thus observing a misshapen version of it, a bit more packed down than it really is, the silhouette, compact but large, solid, of this man whom, she now thinks, she’s no doubt been too long in the habit of seeing as though he were still a child–not her child, she has none and has never felt the desire to have any–but one of those kids you look after from time to time, like a godchild or one of those nephews you can enjoy selfishly, for the pleasure they bring, taking advantage of their youthfulness without having to bother with all the trouble it entails, that educating them generates like so much inevitable collateral damage.

[Paul]

For me the combination of dense prose and page-turning suspense treads a fine line between the best and the worst of literary fiction and genre thrillers.

On another day (or with a shorter book) I might have loved this. But for me, unfortunately, the novel fell on the wrong side of that line.

[Roman Clodia]

I agree about that first convoluted sentence and contemplated giving up right there, but very glad I didn't.

[Tommi]

Yahaira wrote: "waiting 300 pages?!"

Fitzcarraldo pages tend to turn faster with me – not sure if it’s the wide margins and small page size or the overall quality of their publications!

[Yahaira]

you have more patience than me lol but I'll give this one a chance once my library hold comes in (it's out of stock in the US and there's already a reprint. the publisher does have a few in stock online apparently)

[Alwynne]

Tommi wrote: "I was on board for the first 300 pages, patiently waiting for the drawn-out style to really make sense. I didn’t mind the long sentences and thought there were lots to enjoy in the meandering prose..."

I had a similar experience and didn't think the payoff was worth the time and effort. I also thought it was quite a culturally conservative book, although could see it working as an upmarket mini-series for Netflix. He seems to have had a fair amount of success as far as adaptations of his work goes.

[WndyJW]

I started this last night and read a bit more today and I think I’m going to love it. Admittedly, that first paragraph was a bit over the top, but after that I was swept along with the prose. I’ll be reading this most of the evening so I’ll have a better idea if it’s working for me.

When I get too tired to keep the thread of the original thought in these meandering sentences I will switch to the easy to read and quite engaging Forbidden Notebook.

[WndyJW]

I’m 261 pages in and I am enjoying the book, but 500 pages of this type of prose is about 50% too many (is that math right? 50% is 250 out of 500 right?) I’ve started skimming some of the pointlessly discursive paragraphs, especially because there are passages that seem to be gratuitously meandering, they aren’t interesting insights into anything and so seem contrived just for this style of writing. In spite of these criticisms I do feel it’s worth reading, but I don’t know if I’ll feel that way at 361 pages.

[Paul]

50% too many …. Hmmm, ambiguous.

If the book is 500 pages and ideal is 250 then people would normally say “this book is twice as long as it needs to be.” Which on % terms would be 100% longer than the ideal length.

So 50% longer than it needs to be would mean ideal length was 333 pages. Ie 333 pages + 50% of 333 is 500.

But if one meant “50% of the book isn’t needed” then the % would be measured relative to the final length. So for a 500 page book where 50% isn’t needed that does imply an ideal length of 250.

Confusing isn’t it.

Mind you Twitter has been in meltdown this week over a maths question:

6 ÷ 2(1+2)= ?

9 or 1. You decide.

[WndyJW]

Thank you, Paul. 50% of the book is not needed, in my opinion.

I thought the rule was start with the parenthetical so 1+2=3, 2x3=6, 6/6=1. Or are mathematical equations a matter of opinion?

[Paul]

Well apparently according to the Daily Mail which is the UK's most reliable newspaper the answer is 9

As 6 ÷ 2(1+2) = 6 ÷ 2 * 3 = 3 * 3 (as you do the divided bit first) = 9

Which is an interesting interpretation - but what it actually shows is that it is a badly written i.e. ambiguous equation

Try typing into Google - it also says 9.


Has this not dominated your Twitter feed for the last week - it has mine?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...

[Paul]

Chat GPT does well:

There is some ambiguity in this expression because it can be interpreted in different ways depending on the order of operations applied.

One possible interpretation is to use the PEMDAS (or BEDMAS) rule, which specifies that you should perform operations in the following order: parentheses, exponents, multiplication and division (from left to right), and addition and subtraction (from left to right).

Using PEMDAS, the expression can be simplified as follows:

6 ÷ 2(1+2)
= 6 ÷ 2 x 3 (simplify the parentheses first)
= 6 ÷ 6 (perform the multiplication next)
= 1 (perform the division last)

Therefore, one possible answer is 1.

However, another interpretation is to perform the multiplication before the division, which can lead to a different result:

6 ÷ 2(1+2)
= 6 ÷ 2 x 3 (simplify the parentheses first)
= 6 ÷ 6 (perform the multiplication first)
= 1 (perform the division last)

Therefore, depending on the interpretation, the answer can be either 1 or 9. It's always a good practice to use parentheses to make the intended order of operations clear.

[Paul]

Sorry to turn this into an arithmetic thread but it's more interesting that the book, which we can agree is too long.

[WndyJW]

So there isn’t a definite rule about order of operations? I don’t know what the practical application of that operation would be, although I’ve seen the blackboards with equations that require a ladder to fit them all in, but it seems that there should be a rule al follow.
I am math challenged and even I remembered to do parentheses first.

[David]

Based on the order of operations I learned in school, the answer is unambiguously 1.

Perhaps there are different orders of operations out there, like style guides.

It looks like ChatGPT arrives at 1 regardless of which method employed.

[Paul]

I have copied the ChatGPT text wrong somehow. It should have read

To evaluate this expression using the standard order of operations, we need to remember that multiplication and division should be performed from left to right before addition and subtraction. Using this rule, we get:

Start with the parentheses: 1 + 2 = 3.
Next, we have the multiplication and division. From left to right, 6 ÷ 2 = 3.
Finally, we multiply 3 by 3 to get the answer, which is 9.
Therefore, the result of 6 ÷ 2(1+2) is 9.

So ChatGPT also gets 9 (as does Google and does the Daily Mail)

I also asked my German friend if he knew the answer and he said nein.

[WndyJW]

I see what you did there, Paul. Tell me again what ChatGPT is? Is that AI? It is, I just looked it up.

I’m with Malcolm on the AI thing: https://youtu.be/g3j9muCo4o0

[WndyJW]

Wow! I could not put this down and finished it at 2:15am. I still feel Mauvignier could have made this shorter. The beginning did not need to be so drawn out, but once the story picked up the discursions created space for tension to build and it did build.
This is a solid 4 star for me.

[Ruben]

WndyJW wrote: "Wow! I could not put this down and finished it at 2:15am. I still feel Mauvignier could have made this shorter. The beginning did not need to be so drawn out, but once the story picked up the discu..."

I had a very similar experience and solid 4 stars for me too.

I saw the first sentence as a fair warning by the author: this is what you are signing up to for 500 pages, if you are not up for it, leave now....I think many of us will have made that assessment.

(and the answer is 1)

[WndyJW]

RC and Alwynne wrote excellent reviews for those interested.

In all honestly this got 4 stars instead of the more valid 3 stars from me because of the last 200 pages, which were gripping. I should probably change my rating to 3 stars because the meandering sentences were unlikely thoughts and memories characters experienced while under extreme stress, and unlike Saramago, the master of discursive prose, there were no brilliant insights into human nature, no nuggets of wisdom, nothing that makes the sometimes page long, multi-comma sentences worth reading, so that to me they often felt contrived just to draw out the page count, and, as RC points out, Christine didn’t add much to the story, especially since (view spoiler)[ once we realized she didn’t die, she didn’t do anything but lock herself in her bedroom! And we never did find out who was sending her threatening letters, unless we’re supposed to know it was the brothers. (hide spoiler)]

I give Mauvignier credit for twists that I didn’t see coming until a chapter or two ahead of the revelations, but maybe smarter readers saw what was coming much earlier than I did.

If anyone want to know the ending without having to read 500 pages send me a message.

[Yahaira]

I don't know if this is an app issue (I'm on the Android app right now), but just a heads up that the spoiler tag didn't work for me

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Spoiler tags don’t work in the App version

[Paul]

That was one of my issues - the characters seemed more full of unlikely thoughts than actually thinking what was going on.

Plus you had third person PoV narrators who knew what was going on but didn't tell us (e.g. Marion).

As often with literary thrillers it is pretty poor as a thriller. I'd (unusally for me) read a proper thriller immediately before and it was far better.

[endrju]

I just started it and I'm enjoying the style very much. I can see this on the top of my ranking list if it continues this way.

[Tracy]

I finished last night. I would have enjoyed the story much more without the extra words.

I saw in a bio of the translator, Daniel Levin Becker, that he is a member of the Oulipo. Could that figure in somehow? Hmm…

[Paul]

Yes the Oulipan constraint was to write a book with twice as many words as needed but which had to fool the jury of a major book prize.

[WndyJW]

I’m glad I read it, but I don’t know that it’s award winning literature.

[endrju]

Compared to what I've read so far of the longlist it's the most worthy of the award, at least for now (I'm at around 50 pages in). It reminds me a bit of Del Amo* also published by Fitz, and it pushes all the right buttons for me.

*Does anyone know if any more translations in English are forthcoming?

[WndyJW]

I thought the same thing, endrju! At one point I thought Patrice could be the great-grandson of the father in Animalia whose nemesis was that wild boar! I’m glad you reminded me of that.

Although Animalia was an easy 5+ stars for me and The Birthday Party was a 3.5, rounded up to 4 on Instagram, I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting and reading it, where I don’t go into detail, and down to 3 here where we discuss it at length.

I just went to Animalia and saw that my review is gone. Im quite sure I wrote a review because I passionately loved it, but there’s nothing there. This is the wind time this week I thought a review was missing. I wonder if reviews got deleted when the looks of the book pages were changed?

[Paul]

Were they long reviews as the ones of mine that vanish tend to be the long ones. Possible also can be attached to a different version of the book so doesn’t show up (look for it on your shelf).

As to the similarities between Animalia and The Birthday Party. Well I guess they are both c500 pages books in Bluescuff covers translated from a French original.

And I am struggling otherwise …

And that the International Booker only recognised one of them, well words fail me.

[WndyJW]

It was similar to Animalia, there were just moments when Patrice was being described that reminded me of the farmers in Animalia, that was it.

It might have been a longer than usual review for me.

[WndyJW]

That was weird. I searched for Animalia under My Books, clicked on it and my review displayed as a message. I copied it and was going to paste it into my review, clicked edit and my review displayed before I pasted it. Goodreads is just wonky.

[David]

Yahaira wrote: "I just finished the birthday party and that was far from 'nice' lol"

Are you Team Birthday Party, Yahaira? That will be up for me after Pyre.

[Yahaira]

I am!! the pacing was great and the way you move between characters thoughts and the past and present was masterful. I still can't believe there wasn't a moment it dragged in over 400 pages

[David]

That's encouraging!

[Yahaira]

seven of us were reading it together and we all loved it

[endrju]

The best read from the longlist for me (at least so far). It's just what Boulder was missing, the intensity of involvement of the reader and the depth of characterization that are produced when an author gives a novel a bit more space. I would've read a couple of hundred pages more gladly.

[Paul]

Couldn't disagree more on that in terms of my reaction to both books, but glad you found this worked for you and does suggest the jury have managed to find books that appeal to different readers.

[Roman Clodia]

And sometimes the same reader as I liked this and Boulder for different reasons

[Paul]

Glad they've also found a reader who likes more than one book on the list.

[Yahaira]

have you only liked one book so far Paul?

[Paul]

Only one of the 8 I hadn't already read.

[Yahaira]

Paul wrote: "Only one of the 8 I hadn't already read."

which one? I have three left: ninth building, whale, and the dreaming one