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2026 ToB
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Flesh
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Bretnie
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Dec 11, 2025 03:36PM
Space to discuss the 2026 TOB contender Flesh by David Szalay.
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If I start with Flesh, the rest of my TOB reads will be better. I started this when it won the Booker, before the shortie was published. I would have quit early on if my other audiobook holds had come through sooner, and I now I wish I'd just quit and listened to music for a few days. I never liked the main character, I didn't like the writing style, I actively hated the dialogue ("Ok. I don't know. Yeah.") I truly don't understand how it won the Booker. Maybe the TOB will enlighten me via the people who actually liked it.
Just DNFed this this morning and it was so freeing. Pretty bad!
I liked it, but I'm not going to argue for it. As a mediocre, fail-up man, it resonated is about all I got in defense. I'm also surprised it won the Booker.
I liked this one, but I hated most of the characters. Even without liking the characters, I was still invested in the story and eager to see what happened to them. I guess I liked how refreshing it was to have a unique protagonist-someone who was so passive. I ended up reading this one quickly. The prose skims along at nice pace.
I really liked it though I did not like the MC. I found the style of the book, the passivity of the MC and the things that happened matched each other. Also I found it refreshing to have a MC that didn’t try to a) look perfect b) look very bad. And IMHO the writing was excellent.
I didn't care for it. I didn't care for the writing - saying "okay" over and over is not all that interesting. For me, it was exhausting even though it's not long, but I tend not to enjoy unengaging characters who never develop self-awareness or agency. It appears to be one of those polarizing books.
I liked it a lot but it might have benefited from my very low expectations thanks to many of you! LOL The yeahs and I don't knows got really old, yes, but I thought the story picked up a lot in the second half and as István became nominally less passive, he became more interesting. The big moral crossroad really worked for me and I thought the ending was just right.
I'm only about a third of the way into it after a break from ToB reading, and I'm liking it. The style and structure reflects the subject, and I'm interested in the choices the author is making about what events are being related in the text and which ones happen off-screen.Just prior to starting this I finished up a book in which the author, every page or so, would stop to explain to us what every scene meant, and so I especially appreciate the way the author is managing the details and what is left unsaid. The text is true to its context and the author has trust in his readers.
Maybe I'll change my mind as I get deeper into the book, but so far, it feels like a proper tournament book.
The surprise of this TOB for me so far has been how much I disliked What we can Know and loved Flesh when I was expecting the opposite. The style of this book felt so fresh and new to me, and the way the story unfolded through what wasn’t said really drew me in.
I really liked it too, much more than I was expecting. Hell I probably would have voted for it to Zombie had I read it by the deadline.
Mindy wrote: "I liked it a lot but it might have benefited from my very low expectations thanks to many of you! LOL The yeahs and I don't knows got really old, yes, but I thought the story picked up a lot in the..."Exactly. I was expecting to hate it, given what people in here had said and also my patrons who had read it -- or abandoned it -- had said. I have a feeling that the opening story, about Istvan as a teenager and his first sexual experience, really skeeved a lot of pepole who then abandoned the book. But I thought the writing was excellent, and the portrait of a life was gripping and affecting.
A solid meh. The off stage gaps didn't work for me. The opening was a real turn off as well.
