2024 Int Booker longlist: The Silver Bone

[Hugh, Active moderator]

The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov translated by Boris Dralyuk (MacLehose), Ukrainain/Ukraine

[Yahaira]

not sure what made this special enough to be listed

[Erin]

I just read an interview with the author in the Wash. Post talking about what led him to write this, and I'm now quite a bit more interested.

[Paul]

I'd be even more interested in an article on what on earth led the judges to longlist it though! Well, actually we know - a big name and the Ukraine link.

Although not sure how linked this is to the situation (it's written pre 2022 but post 2014) - perhaps the most sympathetic of the characters declares at one point

“If only someone would win out and take power for good.
Otherwise, they’ll all just kill each other – and us, too, while
they’re at it.”

Which I suspect isn't the message the author wants to convey for the present day.

[Yahaira]

that Washington Post article makes it sound more interesting than it turned out to be.

[Ruben]

Not sure yet I will read this, but I read Kurkov's Diary of an Invasion some months ago and recalled the following quote:

"Before the start of the war, I began work on a novel about events in Kyiv in the spring of 1919 during the civil war that began after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The present war crossed out all my plans for that novel. I spent the first few days moving my family away from Kyiv. Like hundreds of my colleagues, we are now refugees. In our new shelter in western Ukraine, as I soon as I had a tabletop to work at, I sat down at my computer again, but I could no longer think about fiction. I began to write articles and essays about Russian-Ukrainian relations, about Ukraine, and about this war. I began to publish my texts in the UK and the USA, in France and Germany, in Norway and Denmark. The rhythm of my life has not altered for two months. That novel will be completed at some point in the future. For now, every writer, every artist, or representative of any creative profession, must work for their country and for victory in this war."

[Paul]

That's the third in the series I think he is talking about - this one and the second were completed pre the second invasion (although post the first)

[Cindy]

I tried to like this one and just didn't. I found it boring, actually.

[Tracy]

Me, too. The mystery could have been a short story.

[Rachel]

I would love to be a fly on the wall listening to whichever judge(s) rallied for this book to be on the list justify its merits. Especially with the author having already been longlisted last year. I’m not against the same authors showing up on the lists in subsequent years, of course, but I’d like to believe it would take more than a genre mystery novel, and an extremely dull one at that, to do it.

This book is shelved right along the Grisham, Child, Coben, Patterson, Cussler, etc. at the libraries in my area and rightfully so.

[Paul]

Not difficult to imagine

Let me read you all a passage from a book:

"Before the start of the war, I began work on a novel about events in Kyiv in the spring of 1919 during the civil war that began after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The present war crossed out all my plans for that novel. I spent the first few days moving my family away from Kyiv. Like hundreds of my colleagues, we are now refugees. In our new shelter in western Ukraine, as I soon as I had a tabletop to work at, I sat down at my computer again, but I could no longer think about fiction. I began to write articles and essays about Russian-Ukrainian relations, about Ukraine, and about this war. I began to publish my texts in the UK and the USA, in France and Germany, in Norway and Denmark. The rhythm of my life has not altered for two months. That novel will be completed at some point in the future. For now, every writer, every artist, or representative of any creative profession, must work for their country and for victory in this war."

That is from Kurkov's Diary of an Invasion

But that's not eligible (unless Fitzcarraldo publish it and call it auto-fiction)

However it so happens he had already completed another "novel about events in Kyiv in the spring of 1919 during the civil war that began after the Russian Revolution of 1917" and it's just been translated...

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Also I do think the Booker got very excited about that poll showing young people reading lots of translated fiction - and assuming it was representative (the sample size was small I recall) I am pretty sure Scandinavian crime/mystery fiction was a good chunk of it …. so I can see the judges thinking genre fiction of this type (based on comments - I have not read it) is positively encouraged

[Rachel]

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Also I do think the Booker got very excited about that poll showing young people reading lots of translated fiction - and assuming it was representative (the sample size was small I recall) I am pr..."

I could see that. Unfortunately, even within the crime/mystery genre it is not (imo) a compelling or well-told mystery. The actual mystery described in the summary does not truly begin until there's just over 100 pages left and the titular silver bone not mentioned for the first time until pg. 203/283.

The historical background is the most interesting part but that's not enough to carry it.

[Roman Clodia]

I DNF'd - then went straight to the final chapter and found I hadn't missed a thing!