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. 

Book review – “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall

I remember a friend recommending this book to me a few years ago and I made a mental note but never got around to reading it, so I was delighted to pick this up at my local Oxfam bookshop at the start of the summer. The book was first published ten years ago (my edition was revised and updated in 2016) but a further edition has been published this year. One can understand why a new version was needed; 2015 seems almost quaint at this point, another era. It pre-dates the first Trump presidency, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Britain leaving the European Union and, of course, the Covid-19  pandemic. It also pre-dates by some distance the devastating events of the last two years in Israel and Gaza.

And yet, one of the striking things about reading this nine year-old edition is how prescient it is and how it explores some territorial issues that never seem to go away. The Middle East chapter explores the ancient origins of conflict in the region, the way it has been used as a political football by colonisers (particularly the British and the French, sadly) and the cavalier attitudes that have been shown towards tribal, cultural and religious sentiments. The seeds of present-day conflict in many countries in this region have been sown over decades, if not centuries. 

The Africa chapter is equally shame-inducing – the actions of arrogant colonisers have created so many of the problems that the continent is experiencing today and the wealth of natural resources present there continue to make Africa a target for richer nations wishing to exploit division and grow richer and more powerful in the process. Marshall also argues that the vagaries of climate, topographical challenges and the prevalence of some devastating diseases have hampered African nations’ ability to prosper.  

The book opens with a chapter on Russia and a very interesting discussion about the psyche of that nation which may go some way to explaining its attitude to Ukraine. Of course, Russia first invaded Ukraine when it took Crimea in 2014 – that will have been very recent history when Marshall was writing this book – and it is quite prescient that he chooses to start the book almost with a warning that Russia has not yet completed the job it set out to do in 2014, now more than ten years ago. Putin can afford to be a patient man as, unlike many world leaders, he does not have to worry about the threat of being voted out of power. 

China is endlessly fascinating and merits a chapter of its own, as does the United States, and here Marshall writes of the tremendous natural advantages that country enjoys – perhaps leaders of that country might be a little more humble and recognise the many gifts they have been given. 

Marshall is a journalist and broadcaster and former foreign affairs editor for Sky news. He knows his stuff and has written several books on the subject of the politics of nationality and of place, all of which seem to have been well-reviewed. I have seen him speak on several news and current affairs programmes over the years and he is a man worth listening to. 

This book is by no means a light read, nor an uplifting one but perhaps an essential one for anyone interested in world affairs and global justice.

Book review – “Dream Count” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I posted earlier in the week about this year’s Booker Prize shortlist and one of the books I was surprised not to see on the list (it did not even make the longlist) was the latest (and for me long-awaited) novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. So surprised was I by this oversight that I even double checked the eligibility criteria – was it published within the time frame? It was indeed and I remain very puzzled. It is hard to believe that it is twelve years since Adichie published her last novel Americanah, though in the intervening period she has written some shorter form non-fiction works. She and her partner have a young family so presumably she has been focusing on raising her children and she also lost both her parents and has written about her grief at these events.

Well, it was, in  my opinion,  worth the wait because she has well and truly hit a very rich seam once again with this, her fourth novel. Dream Count reflects on the dilemmas facing women today, on the choices between career and family, on the unreliability of too many men, on cultural clashes, on food, on the Covid 19 pandemic, on loneliness and fulfilment, on Africa and on inequality. 

The novel traces the story of four women – Chiamaka, who comes from a wealthy Nigerian family, her cousin Omelogor, a brilliant financial analyst and sometime academic, Chiamaka’s friend Zikora, a lawyer, and her long-time housekeeper in the US Kadiatou. The novel opens with Chiamaka’s story at the time of the Covid 19 pandemic when she finds herself stranded in the US, only able to communicate with family via internet video calls, as happened with so many of us. Chiamaka is a travel writer, who has had only moderate success, but her family’s wealth means she has no real need to work. There is pressure from her family to marry and have a family, however. Chiamaka is a romantic and the novel recounts some of her many relationships, but the men in her life invariably fall short either of her ideals of marriage or in terms of their character. 

Omelogor is a self-made woman, highly intelligent and extremely able from a young age she became a financier in Nigeria and made her fortune by taking her own share of the corrupt profits she helped her unscrupulous bosses cream off the state. A modern day Robin Hood-ess she sets about redistributing funds to less fortunate, less educated women in her community, women trying to support their families by setting up small businesses. Latterly she takes a sabbatical in the US and becomes a researcher into internet pornography and how this impacts on men’s perceptions of women and how they conduct themselves in relationships.

Kadiatou is Chiamaka’s housekeeper in the US. A deeply caring woman who left Nigeria at the behest of a man who promised to marry her. She has a daughter to whom she is devoted. Kadiatou becomes embroiled in a high-profile sexual assault case which closely resembles the true story of Nafissatou Diallo, a maid at a luxury New York hotel, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Director of the IMF, in 2011. The author references this case in her afterword. In her exploration of Kadiatou’s assault, the author explores the perennial problem of power imbalance and how the law and the media are stacked against immigrants, women and poorer people.

The fourth main character is Zikora, close friend of Chiamaka and Omelogor, a lawyer who also experiences family pressure to marry and start a family, but who again, finds herself let down by inadequate men, but also, sadly, a distant mother. 

The novel alternates between the different women’s perspectives, exploring their back stories, their thoughts, their preoccupations and their dreams. ‘Dream count’ seems to refer to the different sexual and romantic relationships and encounters they have, the good, the bad and the really ugly. Thus the term ‘dream’ becomes one that is loaded with irony and with cultural perceptions (a partner may appear ideal, dream-like, from the outside, but there are usually problems and inadequacies that make them unsuitable or unacceptable to these women). In their different ways none is prepared to settle for a second-best. 

There is so much to love in this novel. I listened to it on audio and was delighted that the opening part of Chiamaka is read by the author. Her voice is smooth and rich and filled with the nuance that only she, as the author, could understand. Thus she brings expression that makes listening even more of a pleasure. If I had read this as a book I feel sure I would have been turning the corner on every other page, defacing it with hundreds of underlinings and notes because the language and the expression are so powerful. 

It is the best post-pandemic novel I have read to date and a book I highly recommend. 

Booker Prize shortlist 2025

The shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize was announced recently, an event which more or less passed me by. I have been so busy with my day job recently (and will continue to be for the next few weeks) that my reading, writing and blogging have fallen badly by the wayside. I have a long break in November, however, and I am determined to get some balance back in my life.

In the nine years since I have been writing this blog I have endeavoured each year to read through the shortlist in time for the announcement of the winner. I think most years I get through all the books (even if it takes me months!), but I think I have only once managed to get to the end by the time of the winner announcement, and only called it right on one occasion also (with the very memorable Shuggie Bain, winner in 2020).

This year’s shortlist is made up of experienced novelists. I am familiar with the work of half of them – Kiran Desai, a previous Booker winner (2006, The Inheritance of Loss) is the daughter of legendary Indian novelist Anita Desai, who wrote Fasting, Feasting, which I read many years ago and which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. David Szalay, wrote All That Man Is which was shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 (the year I started blogging). And Andrew Miller whose book The Land in Winter I read a few months ago in my book club and have already reviewed it on here – so I have one under my belt!

Some of the books are exceedingly long – Flashlight comes in at just under 500 pages and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny a whopping 700 pages! I am not quite sure where to start; I think The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits speaks to me most at this point – the opening line of the blurb is “What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home?” Kind of where I am in life!

This year’s Prize is distinguished also by its interesting judging panel, which includes Sex and the City actor Sarah Jessica Parker, and authors Kiley Reid and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, both of whose work I have reviewed on here. The judging panel is chaired by veteran bestselling author Roddy Doyle.

So, what chance do I give myself of finishing even half these novels by 10th November when the winner is announced? Let’s say 50/50!

Happy reading!

Book review and travels in Vienna – “When the World Was Ours” by Liz Kessler

I read this book at the end of the summer. It is set partly in Vienna, where we went for our family holiday in July, though that is not why I read the book, or why I went to Austria! Pure coincidence. When the World Was Ours is actually a book for young people, or what is often called ‘middle grade’ fiction, but that should not deter any adult from buying it – I was gripped from start to finish and absolutely loved it. 

The book opens in Vienna in the mid-1930s at the birthday celebration of nine year-old Leo. Leo’s father has taken him to the city’s ferris wheel for a treat, along with Leo’s two very close friends Max and Elsa. There they meet an English couple, a dentist and his wife, who are in town for a conference and afterwards the couple and all the children are invited back to Leo’s family home for Sachertorte, the iconic Austrian dessert. 

The three children are inseparable, firm friends; Elsa’s main dilemma is which of the two boys she will marry when they grow up! But timing is everything, and as political events around the children develop, it is clear that they will not be unaffected by the fascist takeover of the city and country by Hitler and his army. Leo is Jewish, as is Elsa. Max is not. This will create a wedge between them as Leo and Elsa’s families must navigate the new environment; should they stay or should they try and escape? Meanwhile, for Max, the challenge is rather different. Always a more timid boy, somewhat in Leo’s shadow, he finds there are expectations upon him once his father begins to rise up the Nazi ranks, which it is not clear he will be able to meet.

I do not want to say more about the plot of the novel as it is a critical part of the enjoyment of the book. There is a gloomy inevitability about many of the events, however, as you might expect. It is a compelling read, with chapters alternating between the perspectives of each of the children.
The characters are well-drawn and the writing has a graceful simplicity that suits the subject-matter, the primary intended audience and the gravity of the events. It is plain without being patronising and I felt it was an authentic portrayal of the voices of the individual children.

I had the great pleasure to meet the author and discuss the book with her as she lives in the north west of England, not far from me. She came to our book club and was very generous with her time and her thoughts. As is stated at the beginning of the book, there are autobiographical elements as it is based on her own family history. This adds even more poignancy to the story and is a timely reminder that fascism and authoritarianism must never again be allowed to take hold. The consequences are intolerable.

Vienna

It was by sheer coincidence that my family went on holiday to Austria this summer. We have been skiing there a number of times  in the last couple of decades, but it is many years since I have been there in the summer. We spent a few days in Vienna and then travelled west to Schladming, normally a ski resort but a walker’s paradise in the summer, and where the hills were most definitely alive – verdant, green, lush and beautiful. 

Before I went I looked up ‘famous Austrian writers’ because I found I could not think of any! The list did not include many that I had heard of apart from Arthur Schnitzler, who wrote the novella Eyes Wide Shut, famously adapted for the screen by Stanley Kubrick and starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Austrian culture is perhaps better distinguished by its eminent composers and artists, such as Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, Haydn and Klimt.

Vienna is truly one of the must-see capitals of Europe, however, not least because of its historical significance and its closeness to eastern Europe; Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is less than one hour’s drive away and the mighty Danube runs through both cities. Vienna is a stunning city, beauty on every corner, and it even gives its name to a particular kind of patisserie – Viennoiserie! Needless to say we sampled much of what it had to offer on this front, frequenting many coffee houses, including the famous Cafe Central, where Sigmund Freud is said to have hung out, and the Hotel Sacher, which claims the Sachertorte as its own. 

Pastries galore!
Mr Freud at Cafe Central!

Had I read When the World Was Ours before going to Vienna, I would certainly have headed for the vast green space to the east of the city where the Riesenrad, the giant ferris wheel, still stands – next time!

Book review and literary controversy – “The Salt Path” by Raynor Winn

I suggested this to my book club as our first read of the summer – I had seen a trailer for the film (starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs) and it reminded me that I had bought this book some time ago and it was sitting on a bookshelf somewhere in my house, unread. We thought we could read the book then watch the film – I’m a fan of Gillian Anderson (frankly, who isn’t?) so thought it was bound to be good. 

Almost as soon as I started reading it, the whole controversy around the book blew up – for anyone who needs reminding, there were allegations (published in The Observer in July) that the author misrepresented aspects of her partner Moth’s illness, and that she had defrauded a past employer and that was the reason for losing their home. Even if you have not read the book, I am certain you will have heard of it, if you live in the UK certainly, so you will no doubt know that the premise of the book is that the author and her partner are evicted from the rural home they have lived in for years after falling into debt as a result of a bad business investment (she alleges in the book that the couple were poorly advised, misled even, by an old friend). At around the same time Moth is diagnosed with an incurable degenerative neurological condition. Facing poverty, homelessness and inevitable physical decline, they decide to embark upon a walk, England’s South West Coast Path that goes through Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. The distance is in excess of 600 miles. 

The book was a spectacular success for the debut author – a story of grit and determination in the face of a cruel world (both the human and the natural), a journey of self-discovery and finding joy in the simple things in life when all material possessions are stripped away. The book also set the author on a successful career in writing and she has since published two further nature memoirs. A fourth book was due to be published this summer but Penguin have put this on hold due to the controversy surrounding the author and The Salt Path.

But what of the book itself? My fellow book club members and I quite liked it, but I’m afraid it did not meet our expectations. The writing is good in parts, but in others I found it quite…mediocre? The comments on double standards in attitudes to homelessness and poverty are worthy but they are handled in a clumsy way; for example, where the couple encounter abusive locals or holidaymakers who sneer at their clothing, their poverty, their demeanour or their behaviour I found the account did not ring true. You would not necessarily expect the author to recall every word precisely accurately but I would expect an author to be able to write a conversation or dialogue that felt authentic. Some of the stories about places they camped and how they fled at dawn to avoid paying for a pitch felt like tall tales. Finally, I just found the book a bit boring, I’m afraid. I wasn’t gripped, or keen to read on finding out what happened on the next 10 mile stretch. Many times I just found myself drifting off. 

As for the accusations of misrepresentation, well that is problematic. The publisher really should have done their due diligence, particularly as the book is so detailed at the start about the ‘bad business’ that got them into financial difficulty (I’m surprised their former business acquaintance’s lawyers are not on to them as well). Personally, I found this part of the book particularly uninteresting and it read to me like getting back in print under cover of a confessed naivety. I think it’s okay for a memoir to stretch the truth a little for narrative effect, but on the face of it it seems the author has gone too far in that respect, though it must be said she denies all the allegations made against her. For me though, the book is quite weak overall so I am not sure what has been gained by the misrepresentation (if there has been any) – it would have been enough had they just found themselves at a financial/health/age-related crossroads and embarked on the journey for no particular reason. 

Quite honestly, I am surprised it won so many plaudits and everyone in my book club was decidedly underwhelmed. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found is a far superior example of the genre in my view. 

Women’s Prize shortlist review – “Fundamentally” by Nussaibah Younis

This is my final review of all the titles on the Women’s Prize shortlist, the winner of which was announced weeks ago! It has taken me ages to get through them all, I can’t believe it. Have I suddenly become very slow at reading? I have been working a lot of evenings which means prepping in the afternoon and then getting home late, crossing over with my usual reading times, so guess what has been put to one side? I’ve also been reading multiple books at once and am still slogging my way through Proust! Doesn’t matter, I suppose. There are no prizes for most books read, although the nagging notifications on my Goodreads account, telling me I’m behind on this year’s reading goals, make me feel like a bit of a reading failure, which is ridiculous!

Fundamentally is another debut novel, and I learn from Wikipedia that the author Nussaibah Younis went to a grammar school in the town where I live – small world! She went on to university in Oxford and is now based in London, but had a career in international relations, specialising in Iraq. She was brought up Muslim but describes herself as no longer religious. I am recounting this because there are significant autobiographical elements in Fundamentally, something which seems fairly obvious even if you did not know the author’s background. Similar, in that respect to Aria Aber’s Good Girl. That does not make the novel less good, or less worthy of being shortlisted, of course, but you wonder if the author has a limited range or if they are simply honing their craft by writing about what they know. Apparently, Younis is working on her second novel, so we will find out.

The central character and first person narrator in Fundamentally is Nadia Amin, a young British Asian woman who was brought up a Muslim but has rejected her faith, following, among other things, a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother. As a young adult she pursued a hedonistic lifestyle in London alongside her university studies. She gained a PhD which led to a prized lectureship. She also had an open relationship with another woman Rosie, but when this breaks down, she decides to escape by applying for a United Nations special posting running a rehabilitation programme for former ISIS brides in Iraq. Nadia is running away and she knows it, all the while hoping that Rosie will change her mind. 

Arriving in Iraq, Nadia realises quickly how naive she has been – the scale of the task is huge. The women she is working with in the camp are not the group of malleable, self-effacing, grateful subjects she envisaged. Rather they are complex, varied, traumatised and with ideas of their own. One young woman has a particular impact on Nadia: Sara, a Londoner who was lured to ISIS at the age of 15. In her, Nadia sees shadows of herself. Despite warnings from her colleagues, Nadia involves herself closely with Sara’s case, perhaps too closely, until events spiral out of her control. This is the central plot of the novel – how the relationship between Nadia and Sara resolves and the journeys that both women go on as a result of what they learn from each other. 

The other aspect of the novel is exploring the role of the UN and other agencies in former war zones and developing countries. With her background, the author is highly qualified to write about this. There is a mixture of fondness and criticism – the people working in the field are largely very dedicated but operating in highly complex environments, trying to square the needs and aspirations of governments (good and bad), officials, and those they are meant to be helping. There is both comedy (the bureaucratic somersaults that have to be performed to get anything done), sadness (at the inevitable waste, duplication and corruption) and nuance – not every person in need is objectively “good” all of the time. Rather like democracy, the UN comes across in this novel as far from ideal but perhaps better than the alternatives. 

I really enjoyed Fundamentally – there are a few cliches and some characters are inadequate and two dimensional (Geordie ex-soldier Tom was one I found particularly grating) but it is a great story. The ‘ISIS brides problem’ is difficult and complicated at every level but it deserves to be seen in all its complexity rather than in the lazy homogenised way it is often portrayed. I listened to it on audio and the actor, Sarah Slemani, handles the wide range of voices (and accents) remarkably well. 

Recommended

Women’s Prize shortlist book review – “All Fours” by Miranda July

This book has caused quite a stir in literary circles and is possibly the most remarkable and unusual books that made it to the Women’s Prize shortlist. There was quite a lot of sex on the shortlist this year – an intense lesbian relationship in The Safekeep, the book that won the prize, as well as sex as exploration and rebellion in Good Girl and as relief from the pressures of a confined life in Fundamentally. But All Fours is pretty much all about sex and one woman’s search for her fundamental sexual core as she enters a new phase of her life.

The book is first person narrated and our central character (unnamed) is a moderately successful filmmaker and writer who enjoys a modicum of fame but has never fully lived up to the promise that her one really popular work suggested. She is in her 40s and now lives in LA with her partner Harris and their young child Sam. Her life has become somewhat routine and her relationship has settled into a loving but comfortable and predictable dynamic. She has a close bond with her child; as a baby they almost died following a very rare pregnancy complication where a foetus would normally die, and the event resonates throughout her life. 

As a gift to herself, the narrator, supported by her partner, decides to go on a road trip to New York, where she will spend time in a fancy hotel and enjoy a writing retreat to make some headway on her current project. Soon after she sets off from home, however, she decides to make a detour and finds herself at a motel, a mere half an hour from her home. At a car rental showroom she finds herself deeply attracted to one of the employees, Davey, a young married man whose wife, Claire, is an aspiring interior designer. 

What happens next is inexplicable to both the reader and the narrator who finds herself drawn along a strange path where she sets about to transform her dingey motel room, with Claire’s help, into something resembling a boutique Parisian hotel room. She also seduces Davey and the two embark on an unusual, intense, sexual relationship. All the while, the narrator, lies to Harris and Sam, telling them first about the road trip and second about New York. 

During her sojourn at the motel, the narrator undergoes a deep exploration of her life and her soul. With Davey she explores all parts of her sexual self. To say this is a ‘menopause novel’ is too simplistic, but the narrator’s age (forty-five) and her anticipation of the change that she fears is about to swallow her, undoubtedly drives the crisis she is experiencing. There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to the novel – she disappears into a kind of time warp, where collisions with her real life (calls with Harris and Sam) jar and seem unreal. She is at once desperate to be with them again, to have the reassurance of their stability, but also desperate to escape, tortured by the thought that life has nothing more to give her sexually. 

The novel is explicit as well as at times being very dark and at times very funny. The narrator is very self-aware but also very unknowing about herself, which is why she needs to go on this journey – both literal and metaphorical. Once she leaves the motel, one thing is for sure – her life will never be the same again. 

I really enjoyed the book. The sex is very graphic but pretty well done – I only recall cringing once or twice which is not much given that there is a lot of it! It’s also a really challenging book – as it sets out to question the ordinary lives most of us lead and it’s difficult not to ask yourself, is this enough? So it may be an uncomfortable read for some. It gives the middle finger to Trump-era America with its gender fluidity and libertarian approach to sex and sexuality; it may be far too “woke” for some, but I consider that a plus. 

A brave book and an interesting choice for the Women’s Prize shortlist – that said, it could not really have been left off it.

Women’s Prize shortlist book review – “Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is the most experienced of the authors shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize and a writer I admire. I have not read all of her work, but I love her style and reviewed Oh William! on this blog after it was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Strout writes many of her books in series, and Tell Me Everything  is book number five in her Amgash series (Oh William! was book number three). So, many of the same characters appear throughout the novels. She uses these characters in other novels too – for example, Olive Kitteridge appears in this book but she also has a book, in fact a two-book series, of her own! (Olive Kitteridge: A novel in stories and Olive, again). Some might not like this; it might seem that Strout is simply recycling, that she lacks ideas. I disagree. I think it takes huge authorial control and discipline to maintain  characters, remember their personality traits as well as their personal histories, but it also enables the author to take a very deep dive into the nature of what it is to be human and to observe over a long period of time the way that a person evolves and also the ways in which they do not change.

There is a bit of debate online about whether Tell Me Everything, or indeed any of the other books, can be read and enjoyed in isolation. As I said, I have not read her work extensively, but I certainly enjoyed Tell Me Everything and it really makes me want to go back and read her other novels. 

The central character in Tell Me Everything is Bob Burgess, a small-time lawyer and stalwart of the community in Crosby, Maine. This is quintessential Main Street America and, if nothing else, feels like an antidote to the more troubling vision of the United States that appears so often on our television screens these days. Bob spends most of his time on what we might call “pottering” until he is contacted out of the blue by a former school-mate who asks him to defend her brother, Matthew Beach, who stands accused of the murder of their mother Diana. Matthew is a lonely isolated man, probably neurodivergent, who lived with and cared for his sometimes cruel mother. 

As Bob begins to investigate he uncovers secrets about the family, the past, with which he is linked of course, living in a relatively small community and having gone to the same school as Matthew’s sister, and events beyond Crosby which seem to come back to impact on the town and its inhabitants. The case is not easy for Bob – he seems to be one of life’s innocents and he is shocked and hurt, not only by what he uncovers, but also by turns of events which affect the people around him. 

Bob shares many of his thoughts with his close friend Lucy Barton, central character in many of Elizabeth Strout’s novels, and through their discussions Strout is able to explore the central human questions and concerns that underlie both this case and other events going on around them. These other events include the serious illness of Bob’s brother’s wife, the professional challenges faced by Bob’s wife Margaret, the local minister, and Lucy’s relationship with her husband William, a man she once left due to his infidelity but who she now lives with again. There is also the Lucy Barton/Olive Kitteridge dimension; Olive lives in a retirement home but the two women strike up what appears to be an unlikely friendship, but after many get-togethers in which Olive shares lengthy stories about herself, her family and the many people she has known in Crosby, the two women find they have much in common – a deep interest in people. 

Though in many ways this seems like an old-fashioned novel with mostly middle-aged people in a small town with small lives, Strout brings in some very contemporary problems – child abuse, the opioid epidemic and other addiction problems, poverty, and family differences causing irreparable conflict and damage. All of these very modern problems impact on the characters and events in this novel.

I loved this book and could not put it down. My book club was divided – which probably reflects how readers more generally feel about Elizabeth Strout. I accept that her books might be a bit “Marmite”! I also love the way Strout writes – it appears simple, but is deceptively so, perhaps the hardest kind of writing to actually do. And her dialogue, which makes up a very high proportion of the book, is so natural. Her observation of people is brilliantly acute.

Of all the books on the shortlist this was the one I enjoyed the most, I think, but I can see it may not be the most consequential and therefore not one of those that was likely to win despite the author’s reputation and stature.

I recommend it highly though.