2024 Goldsmiths shortlist: Choice

[Hugh, Active moderator]

Choice by Neel Mukherjee (Hamish Hamilton)

[Paul]

Shame there wasn’t somewhere here you closely follows the Goldsmiths Prize and got an ARC of this so could have flagged it as a contender. Oh….

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Well guilty. But not entirely as charged. I bought this in July as a Booker contender.

[Hugh, Active moderator]

I had a paper ARC of this one courtesy of Five Leaves. A bit mixed.

[Paul]

As a Per Petersson fan I liked this bit

He had once read a memorable line in a review of a Per Petterson novel: The only true problem of the realist novel is time.'

Particularly when I thought ‘that rings a bell’, found the review, of I Refuse:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Which is by a reviewer called … Neel Mukherjee!

[Paul]

Bit mixed views with this. Lots to admire and the literary parts resonated although when you criticise big presses and drop in Per Petersson, Sebald and Claire-Louise Bennett you are preaching to the converted. But the three stories felt a bit crudely clued together.

The underlying story of Salim in Part II ie how he came as a refugee to the UK is based on a real testimony Mukherjee was commissioned to tell some years ago - see here:

https://thecommapressblog.wordpress.c...