Month: November 2025

Booker shortlist review #3 – “Flesh” by David Szalay

This was the fourth book that I read from this year’s Booker shortlist (this post is entitled number three because I read The Land in Winter back in February) and it is the title that won the prize. This book is undoubtedly better (in my humble opinion) than The Rest of Our Lives and more compelling than The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, although I’m not sure I prefer it to The Land in Winter. It is David Szalay’s second attempt at the Booker, his 2016 novel All That Man Is having been shortlisted previously. This review does not contain significant spoilers, but it is a tough one to review without giving away a little of the events. 

The novel centres on one main character, István, and follows the ups and downs of his life. We first meet him as a teenager in a small town in Hungary where he lives with his mother. István is on the cusp of sexual maturity and, not untypically, feels himself alone, different from other boys around him. When one of his classmates arranges an initiatory sexual encounter for him with a willing girl he at first seems to believe that this will launch him into a world he so desperately wants to belong to – the sexually experienced – but it goes embarrassingly wrong and he finds himself further isolated. From there he falls into the arms of a neighbour – a woman in her forties – with whom he embarks on a journey of sexual discovery. Events will soon spiral out of control, however, and will lead István to the first ‘down’ in his eventful life.

A few years later István is in the military, and serves in Iraq, where he distinguishes himself. His life finally seems to be ‘up’ although his experiences leave him with PTSD. After the army, more disappointing sexual encounters follow and then a lack of direction and meaning until István finds himself in London where he is employed as a security guard in a nightclub. Late one night, whilst heading home after his shift, István intervenes in a street mugging and saves a man’s life. The man, ageing, but still active as a businessman running a high-end protection services agency, takes István under his wing. This will set István on another upward trajectory that will take him into the worlds of high finance and the English upper classes. 

There is a lot going on in this novel – we follow the path of István’s life from the moment things start happening for him (as a boy in Hungary), to, really, a point when things stop happening for him. A period, I am guessing, of about 40 years. The novel is almost picaresque; it reminded me a little of the 1975 Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (starring Ryan O’Neal as the eponymous character) – a brilliant film if you haven’t seen it. The central character is not a bad person, in many ways he is highly sympathetic and someone who has a lot of love to give, but he also is blighted by a handful of bad decisions and some unforeseeable misfortunes. István, like Barry Lyndon, will experience tremendous highs and very deep lows. Sex is also a common theme and whatever stage István finds himself at, there is a sexual situation to match – sometimes this is part of the bad decision and sometimes it shows István at his most tender, some of his finest moments are in his intimate encounters with women.

Szalay’s writing style in this novel is spare, and the dialogue is particularly interesting, particularly authentic in its perfunctoriness, which, alongside the pretty fast-paced plot, makes it quite a fast read. I can see why it won the Booker – it is quite the novel of our times and with this particular writing style (so antithetical to Kiran Desai’s Indian epic) it seems to encapsulate the short attention span culture, the Instagram-worthy outer life but beneath which lies deep darkness. István lives in an era and a continent never more densely populated and yet as a man he finds himself so often alone.

This is a good read and I recommend it.

Booker shortlist review #2 – “The Loneliness of Sonia & Sunny” by Kiran Desai

This was the longest of the books shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. At almost 700 pages it was nearly half as long again as the next biggest, Susan Choi’s Flashlight (464 pages). I do enjoy a long book – the longest ever Booker shortlisted novel was Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport (2019), a book I loved and the stream of consciousness style of which suited its length. This book, I am not so sure.

The two main characters are Sonia and Sunny, Indian immigrants living in the United States. Sonia has recently graduated from college in Vermont. She wants to be a novelist but lacks motivation and application. At the start of the novel she is in a relationship with a much older man, an established and renowned artist who evades commitment and who exploits her youth, beauty and biddable nature. 

Sunny is the only child of a widowed mother, and is working as a journalist with the Associated Press in New York, dreaming of his big break but struggling to make an impact. He is in a long-term relationship with his American girlfriend, but when he meets her parents, the gulf between them and their respective cultures becomes clear. 

Sonia and Sunny’s family backgrounds are illustrated in detail and a powerful and rich canvas is painted by the author, drawing out the importance of tradition in Indian culture, but also the rapidity of change in that society. Sonia and Sunny’s grandparents, for example, are firmly in the past and struggle with the new realities whether this is in relation to public administration, marriage traditions or technology. Their parents’ generation straddles the past and the present and all are still trying to work out how to navigate the new realities. 

Sonia and Sunny represent the Indian dream, trying to establish themselves in the west, and make a career which matches their academic credentials but always rubbing up against hostile attitudes to immigrants and shaken by the culture clashes. They are first made aware of each other in the most traditional Indian way when Sonia’s grandfather approaches Sunny’s grandfather (a chess-playing companion) to try and arrange a meeting between the two. Sunny’s family goes through the motions of promising to introduce them whilst privately regarding the approach with contempt given the social gap between the two families.

It will be some time later that Sonia and Sunny meet in person, in India, for Sonia’s grandfather’s funeral. Will they strike up a romance, ironic, given their respective families’ attempt to match/eschew them? Or have they become far too American for such arrangements?

The real irony of the situation is expressed in the title of the book – both young people are lonely, in relationships of their own choosing which not only fail to fulfil them on either a romantic or a cultural level, but which verge on toxic. In the case of both of them, their partners cannot connect with their Indian cultural sensibilities, or even their immigrant sensibilities.

I did enjoy this book, but with caveats. I have loved many an Indian epic novel – I count Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy among my all-time favourite reads – but this one did not quite do it for me. I do think the background cast of characters, Sonia and Sunny’s extended families, was important in portraying modern India, what has changed and what hasn’t, but there were times when the level of detail felt too much. Towards the end, for example, the account of Sonia’s father’s illness and his experience of his treatment, felt unnecessary. And the lengthy chapters with Elon, Sonia’s artist lover, also felt drawn out more than was necessary; or perhaps it just felt that way to me because he was so ghastly! I’m afraid I do think some judicious editing was called for. 

The author handled all the many complex themes – loneliness, disillusion, the problem of the outsider, the clash of cultures, and the transformation of the vast nation of India – with aplomb, but I do think the narrative could have been tightened. 

The book is an achievement that is worth a read, but it would not have been winner-level for me. I listened to it on audio and it was beautifully read by Sneha Mathan.

Booker shortlist review #1 – “The Rest of Our Lives” by Ben Markovits

The winner of this year’s Booker Prize was announced last week and it was David Szalay’s Flesh. It was this author’s second attempt, having been nominated for All That Man Is in 2016 – the year I started this blog. That was also the first year I set myself the goal of reading all the novels on the shortlist – I don’t think I managed it that year either! (I have no idea how on earth the judges manage to get through so many books – they must have to forego all other meaningful activity for months!) When this year’s shortlist was announced a month or so ago I gave myself a fifty percent chance of getting through the shortlist before the announcement.


Well, predictably, I only got through half the books in time (I already had Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter under my belt), although I did manage to get through Anita Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny, all 700 pages of it, which has to be an achievement in itself. 

The first book that I decided to tackle was Ben Markovits’s The Rest of Our Lives – according to the blurb it was about a man in mid-life whose children are leaving home to go to college and so it seemed to chime with some aspects of my life right now. I also noted that the author is a lecturer in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I did my own undergraduate degree in English, so, a happy coincidence.

The central character is Tom, an academic in law, in his fifties, living in New York city with his wife Amy. It is clear that Tom has reached a state of disillusionment with his life. Amy had an affair some years earlier and it is clear that their marriage has never really recovered from this shock. Tom has been waiting until their children have left home before leaving his wife. Tom and Amy’s elder child Michael is at college in California, and when their daughter Miri goes to college in Pittsburgh, Tom drives her there and the moment of reckoning arrives. 

The journey to Pittsburgh is long – around seven hours (which makes my 3 hour journeys to drop my kids off seem pathetic!). After delivering Miri, Tom decides to keep going, not to go back to New York. He tells Amy that he is going to visit an old pal who has been seeking his advice on a legal matter. He keeps driving. 

In the background we learn of Tom’s health complaints, a swollen face every morning that no doctor has yet been able to diagnose satisfactorily. A friend of mine recently described middle age as being like ‘sniper’s alley’ when it comes to health – you can eat well, exercise, avoid smoking or drinking too much, do all the right things, and yet some nasty disease might still get you. It’s true, and one becomes acutely aware of this in middle age. We learn of Tom’s professional disappointments, never having quite attained the goals he hoped he might. He revisits a number of old friends and finds the relationships are not quite how he imagined. What will Tom do with the level of mediocrity he finds himself in?

This is a road trip novel where the central character goes on a journey of self-examination. This could be a cliche if it was not handled extremely well. And I’m afraid that, for me, it was not handled extremely well. I found the author’s writing style languorous and dull. The ending was abrupt and it felt like the author had just got rather bored with his story and decided to stop. The characters lacked spark. The most interesting character for me was actually Michael’s girlfriend Betty, although I am not sure what purpose she served in the novel, except to show Tom how things might have been if he’d made some different choices.

This was not a bad novel, but I find it quite hard to believe that it was considered Booker shortlist-standard, especially a shortlist that omits Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s Dream Count. 

Unfortunately, I find this book difficult to recommend. 

Audiobook review – “Women of a Certain Rage” by Georgie Hall

Last week I posted a non-fiction book review of a somewhat high-brow, very serious and political book (Prisoners of Geography) that left me feeling, yes, better informed about world affairs and the historical origins of certain persistent conflicts, but also rather gloomy. I now have something rather different to offer. I listened to this book in the summer too and it was much more fun. Definitely not high-brow, but that’s the great thing about reading there is a book for literally every mood! Georgie Hall’s Women of a Certain Rage probably falls into the genre of “chick-lit” and so is unlikely to be read by anyone other than women of a certain age, but it could do with being read by others too, to give them an insight of what is to come or what their partners or mothers might be going through. 

Eliza is a middle-aged mother of three living near Birmingham in central England – her eldest son Joe is at university, her middle daughter Summer is a teenager at college and her youngest, Edward is at school and is neurodivergent. Eliza has been married to Paddy for more than twenty years. They met in London when both were young and carefree and Eliza was starting out on her career in acting, full of dreams and ideals. Now in middle age, Eliza finds herself at a crisis point: her relationship with Paddy seems to have reached something of a stalemate and she feels she is becoming increasingly irrelevant to her children. Furthermore she and Paddy are part of the sandwiched generation – still looking after kids, but also with ageing and increasingly dependent parents, and in conflict with siblings over who should take responsibility. 

At the start of the book, Eliza is verbally abused by a lorry driver who calls her a “mad old bat” and she has a sudden realisation that for women, as they age and as youthful attractiveness fades, they become either invisible, irrelevant or a target. Eliza is then further unsettled by the attentiveness of an Italian restaurant owner. When he begins to pursue her, seemingly in the hope of having an affair with her, it causes her to re-evaluate her marriage. 

Paddy and Eliza are not well-off and Paddy’s passion is his narrowboat, a family treasure which has huge sentimental value due to the connection it brings him with his parents. When financial pressures threaten to take the narrowboat away from them, Eliza decides to take drastic action which will force her to dig deep into all her resources and resilience. 

Eliza is a warm and likeable character, struggling to navigate her way in a world that no longer seems to value what she has to offer. Going through the menopause throws her into a physical and emotional maelstrom which will expose all the fault lines in her life, her marriage and her family. Any woman in their forties or fifties will recognise at least some of what Eliza is going through; even if not the menopause, the challenges of a long marriage, teenage children and financial pressures will resonate. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and felt invested in Eliza and her journey. Yes, some of the characters are predictable and two-dimensional, but I liked how some of the relationships develop, especially that between Eliza and Paddy, Eliza and her siblings, and with her daughter Summer (although she was deeply irritating at times, a bit of a caricature). A fun, easy read.

I listened to it on audiobook and it was read energetically by Rachel Atkins. Recommended.