Month: October 2023

Booker book review #1 – “If I Survive You” by Jonathan Escoffery

If I Survive You  is Jonathan Escoffery’s debut novel, published earlier this year. Quite an achievement to be shortlisted for the Booker on your first attempt! It is described by the publisher as a series of linked short stories, following the fortunes of a family living in Miami. The parents left their native Jamaica when they were young, in the 1970s, when there was civil and political turbulence in the country, looking for a better life and a better future for their two sons, Delano and Trelawney. Each of the chapters follows a different character or stage of a character’s life. Trelawney’s story, however, makes up the bulk of the book.

The family is neither settled nor happy. The father, Topper, works mostly as a labourer in building and landscaping. They eventually own their own home and he runs his own small business, but the house is structurally unsound and in a state of gradual decay – a metaphor perhaps for the family’s fortunes generally. The parents eventually separate after many years of unhappiness, and Sanya, the mother, returns to Jamaica. The country is still, at that stage, troubled by unrest and political turmoil but she finds that preferable to life in the United States.

Delano is the elder of the two brothers. He aspires to be a musician, but when responsibility is foisted on him fairly early in life (his partner becomes  pregnant) he sets up his own landscaping business. Trelawney is very different to his brother and the two are at loggerheads for most of the book. Even as children they fought bitterly and were cruel to one another, not helped by the fact that their father seems to favour Delano. It is not clear why. When the parents separate, they each take one boy to live with them, and Topper takes Delano, making it quite clear that he does not want Trelawney, seems even to fear him somehow. Possibly because Trelawney has greater potential, is more academic and gets a college degree. It’s as if his father considers him better able to look after himself. Delano, he seems to believe, needs him more, but this creates a toxic environment around the relationship between the three men.

In spite of his education, Trelawney does not have it easy, however, and it is his story we follow most closely. He is mostly homeless, at times even living in his car, which he can barely afford to put fuel in. He works in various dead-end jobs until finally securing a position as the manager of a housing block for elderly people, where he is forced to do the company’s bidding, maximising revenue at the expense of the ageing and frail inhabitants. Trelawney is a young man who has done everything that has been asked of him to participate fully in American society and yet as a Black man he remains subject to casual racism and systemic discrimination. Even his girlfriend’s family, themselves Latin American immigrants, cannot accept him and are openly hostile. We learn that Trelawney is relatively light-skinned, which makes him an outsider even in the Black community – perhaps that is also why he is rejected by his father? He cannot find anywhere that he fits, a home, a sense of belonging. 

A further motif that runs through the book is the Hurricane Andrew disaster, one of the most devastating ever to hit Florida. It represents one of the actual events that citizens had to try and ‘survive’, but for Trelawney, his brother, his whole family and countless others, there are many other daily battles for survival.

This is a powerful novel in many ways – the characters, particularly the three central males, are well-drawn. The author writes about racism and discrimination in a way that only a person intimately acquainted with such experiences could. He also writes honestly and sympathetically about a deeply dysfunctional family, particularly where paternal relationships are concerned. For me, the weakness of the novel lies in the lack of a narrative thread. In many ways it is series of ‘shorts’; I am reminded of Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker-winning Girl, Woman, Other here, but that book was more successful, I think, because each of those stories could have stood alone. That is not the case with If I Survive You where each story only makes sense in relation to the whole. And yet, there is not a strong enough story, for me, to hold the whole thing together.

In writing this review, I have struggled to recall certain details, for example, when it is set (from Wikipedia I learn that Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992)  and the names of most of the minor characters. Beyond the profound sense of unease about injustice, racism and societal trauma, I find myself unable to answer the question about why this book should be a Booker-winner.

Recommended, but perhaps not heartily.

Women’s prize shortlist book review #6 – “Pod” by Laline Paull

I have at last completed this book, which is the final one I read on the Women’s Prize shortlist for this year. The publisher’s blurb describes it as “An immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world – its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies – that is increasingly haunted by the cruelty and ignorance of the human race.” Its main character is Ea, a dolphin who makes the difficult decision to leave her pod, believing that her disability (a form of deafness that prevents her from performing the special ‘spinning’ rituals unique to her kind) has made her responsible in large part for a tragedy that struck the pod and resulted in the death of her mother.

I was attracted by the theme of a marine world threatened and disturbed by the crisis facing our oceans. I hoped it might explore this profoundly important theme, one of the most critical issues facing the human race today, in a unique and innovative way. I thought it might be interesting to deal with it from the perspective of sea creatures and was curious about how the author might deal with that without it becoming trivial or childlike. Well, the answer is that she introduces strong violence and an erotic dimension. The characters have names and they communicate. They also operate in communities and there are both inter and intra-species rivalries. The communities are ordered in hierarchies and often these hierarchies are brutal. In the pod of dolphins that Ea joins for example, or rather is captured and forced into, there is a strong male leader who has his own harem, and rape and sexual exploitation are part of life for the younger female members. 

I cannot summarise the plot of the novel any further than this because, in truth, I’m not actually sure what it was all about! I have never watched Game of Thrones, but you would have to have been living under a rock these last few years to be unaware of it. Well, I think Pod might be a literary, dolphin version of Game of Thrones! I dislike writing negative reviews, I’d rather not post a review at all (except I am also a completer-finisher and have to finish all six reviews of the Women’s prize shortlist!), but I am afraid I really struggled to finish this book. Yes, it is well-written, yes it is imaginative and yes it is certainly unusual, but for me, it just didn’t work. I didn’t really care for any of the characters, mainly because I didn’t feel I could connect with them. They were animals, but they spoke, but some understood each other and others did not. It felt incoherent, confused and confusing. The descriptive passages, such as the accounts of rape and of full-blown underwater battles, were powerful in their way, but I was unable to see these in my mind. I struggled to envision the world the author was trying to create.

I wonder if science fiction fans might find this book more engaging than I did. Perhaps followers of this genre might be better than me at stretching credulity, buying into a landscape completely unfamiliar. I’m not sure. I have read science fiction that I felt was more successful than this novel. 

I’d be keen to hear from anyone else who has read this book, would love to hear your views, because I really feel like I have missed something with this novel. I did not read it consistently, which was perhaps part of the problem and perhaps why it felt inconsistent. But unfortunately, I did not feel motivated to read it, it just did not capture my interest. I was relieved to get to the end! Hmm, such a shame when a book does not work for a reader.

Book review – “Old God’s Time” by Sebastian Barry

I have been an enthusiastic follower of Sebastian Barry for a few years now. I love his work and I have heard and watched a number of interviews with him and he comes across as a wonderful man too – humble, compassionate, witty and someone who even despite his immense and widely acknowledged literary prowess does not take himself too seriously. There are a couple of his novels that I have still to read, but I was very excited when Old God’s Time was published earlier this year and received strong reviews.

It is not like any of Barry’s other novels that I have read. It bears his trademark command of prose, his profound empathy, particularly for those in their dying years, and his extraordinary ability to capture the unique spirit of Ireland – the light, the landscape (even this relatively urban one) and a particular perspective on the human condition. This novel is set mostly in the present day in Dalkey, a small coastal town not far from Dublin. Tom Kettle is our main protagonist, an ageing retired detective, living alone in an apartment in a converted mansion, who is contacted by his former boss for assistance in the unsolved suspicious death of a priest. Another priest has made some allegations about the incident, which occurred many years earlier, that the force now needs to follow up. Tom was involved with the earlier investigation when he was still working. 

Tom is treated respectfully by the two young officers who come to interview him and by the former boss himself when Tom is invited to the station to provide a DNA sample, just to ensure they are following all the correct procedures. The contact throws up a lot of painful history for Tom. We learn that he adored his late wife June, herself a deeply troubled woman, and that they had two children Winnie and Joseph, also troubled, but for different reasons. Tom reflects on how June came into his life, the things they had in common and the experiences she had as a child in the care of the Catholic church that he would never be able to relate to. Suffice it to say that the church does not come out well in this novel.

As Tom’s introspection goes to deeper and ever darker places, elements of the family life he shared with June and the children are gradually revealed, both the good and the bad. He reflects candidly on his police career and concludes that perhaps it took him away from his family in ways that caused later troubles. But he was simply a man trying to do his best. 

This is in many ways a simple book, lacking the complex timelines and plotting of some of his other works. But in other ways it is a very profound novel about an ordinary man looking back on the events of his life, the joys and the heartbreak, as the past comes crashing in on him with a dramatic denouement. 

This book was longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, but, sadly, did not make it to the shortlist. It is, however, a ‘Highly recommended’ from me. If you are familiar with Barry’s work, you might find this one surprising.