The Booker Prize 2024 • Episode #166
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Hello, Kate here. This episode of the Book Club Review is sponsored by Sirius Readers, makers of seriously good reading lamps. If you're a regular listener to the pod, you'll know by now how I feel about these lamps, but if you haven't heard me talk about them already, Sirius Readers make reading lights that feature Daylight Wavelength Technology, which replicates the Daylight Spectrum.

I love these lamps. I have one for my desk and one by my bed. They're elegantly designed and easy to use, and I'm slightly obsessed with them. Why is that, you might ask? Well, it's hard to define why I love them so much, except to say that they feel like exactly what my eyes need. I find it easier to focus, I get more reading done, and my eyes don't get tired. And if you're a busy reader like me, that's a complete blessing.

There's a lot of engineering and technology that's gone into these lamps, and that's why they cost a little more than a regular high street light. But I think they're worth it. And if you're interested to try them out, we have a special offer for you.

Use the code BCR at checkout for £100 off any HD light. You get 30 days to try them out. And if you don't want to keep them, serious readers will collect them and refund you. If you're anything like me, though, you'll want to keep them. And not only that, you'll move them from room to room as you move about the house. OK, that's it from me about the lamps. We've got a lot of books to get to.

One other thing before we get going, and that's a note about spoilers. We try very hard on the Book Club Review not to plot spoil the books we're talking about for anyone who hasn't read them. That said, it's sometimes difficult in the moment of debate to avoid revealing too much.

I'll give you another warning later on when we get to The Safekeep, a novel of secrets that gradually reveal themselves throughout the book. And we do also touch on the ending of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, mainly because it turns out I basically misunderstood the whole book, focusing way too much on gophers when I should have been thinking about the main character. I wanted to let you know about those two in particular so you can decide whether you want to wait and read them before listening. Okay, on with the show, and it's a good one.

Hello and welcome to the Book Club Review. I'm Laura. I'm Kate. And this is the podcast about book clubs and the books that get people talking.

It's the time of the 2024 Booker Prize, and we wouldn't miss it. The Booker judges have worked hard to get through over 150 submitted books, to a long list of 12, and then a short list of six, at which point we come in to read, discuss, and debate them.

It's hard to think of another prize that so reliably throws up brilliant book club reads that might dazzle or exasperate, but always offer plenty of fuel for debate. The Booker Prize is awarded annually for the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. Since the prize was opened up to authors outside the Commonwealth in 2015, the pool of eligible writers has grown, leading to an interesting international shortlist this year.

We've got The Safe Keep by Dutch author Jael van der Waalden, Hell by Canadian Anne Michaels, Orbital by British author Samantha Harvey, James by American Percival Everett, Creation Lake by fellow American Rachel Kushner, and Stoneyard Devotional by Australian Charlotte Wood. Forming our booker club today, we have regular podcast guest Bill Chafee, who is zooming in from New York. I'm

I'm dialing in from Vancouver, as usual, and Kate is in London with Sarah Oliver. Finally, we're welcoming back the closest thing we have to a Booker Prize expert, Martin Voeg, who has read and written about every single Booker winner since the prize began in 1968 for his blog, Eyes on the Prize. And so, without further ado, let's dive in to our 2024 Booker Prize show. ♪

Martin, Sarah, Phil, welcome. Thanks so much for joining Laura and me for what feels as much a part of my year these days as Halloween or Christmas, the Booker Prize. I have a tendency to grumble and procrastinate like anything. It's so much required reading all in one go, particularly six novels on the trot, which I would never normally do. But then I basically do ride the satisfaction of feeling culturally on top of things for months to come.

Martin, having read every Booker Prize winner, I imagine you have a lifetime past to this sort of feeling. And you followed other prizes like the Women's Prize on your blog. I'm curious to know whether you ever read anything trashy? And if so, what it might be?

do i ever read anything trashy do music biographies count that's that's kind of my guilty pleasure i guess is that trash not really well and also i should qualify because i you know it sort of sounds what's the word qualitative doesn't it trash like somehow that is a slur which i don't see it as that at all i mean in the sense of something lightweight disposable throwaway as opposed to these kind of quite hefty books that we've been dealing with yeah exactly exactly it's all good holiday reads i just

pick the lightest thing on the latest prize shortlist that I'm reading and try and get through it. I have read trash, but not for some time now. I've become a bit addicted to this process of staying up to date with various prizes and all that sort of stuff. Strategic. This is very interesting. I think this is probably what happens to you when you read every single book a winner. I think so too. Phil,

Phil, when I wanted to do a little minisode for the Patreon on Nobel winners, you were my first choice, as I thought there was a good chance you'd have read most of them. But do you kick

and indulge in a crowd-pleasing bestseller every once in a while? And if so, what's the last one that you read? Oh my gosh, what is the last trashy book I read? They fell out of your head. Come back to me. I'm going to have to think what that is. We know what mine is. I've been reading everything other than the Booker Prize lists. That's what inspired this round of questioning, because I know that you've been offsetting your Booker reads with a fantasy hit on the side. Do you want to tell the listeners about it? Oh, absolutely.

I've been reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir. The quote on the front says, lesbian necromancers explore a gothic palace in space. Yes. And it's really fun and quite well written and very funny. I also read A Lady's Guide to Scandal, Sophie Irwin's second Georgette Hare wannabe novel, which was not good. Wouldn't recommend that. I know Gideon the Ninth is good because you flagged it up and I duly downloaded it and have been inhaling it on the Kindle.

My nighttime reading is always something very trashy. So I read a chapter of it. And I just finished the most recent Ruth Ware book. Have you read any of her? Ruth Ware? Never heard of her. Really? She's like a huge bestseller, particularly in the UK. And she writes these thrillery things. A lot of Agatha Christie mystery type things. This most recent one is called One Perfect Couple. The premise is this like reality show of these couples that go on to this deserted island in

That does sound really good.

And Sarah, you helpfully posted a poll on our WhatsApp group listing all the Booker reads so that I could keep track of who of us had read what. And it was only when I looked back at it some weeks later that I noticed that you'd included We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. Have you tackled it or any other crime fiction along the way? No, I just included that because the Booker shortlist was helpfully displayed in the Waterstones window.

And for some reason, someone had put We Solve Murders above it, like it was part of the seventh. Why not? The S Club 7. And yeah. Richard Osman, who is tall. Yeah, he's tall. You could easily just stretch out a hand and pop his book on top of a display. As for me, diversionary tactics from reading my book of books have included taking up Latin on Duolingo and joining an academic library where I sit surrounded by books in Japanese in an effort to escape potential distractions. But here we all are.

A quick word about the judges, which this year are chaired by artist, master potter and author Edmund de Waal, whose fine book, The Hair with Amber Eyes, is generally acknowledged to be a book club classic. You'll find many pleasing things on the Booker Prize website, one of which is tips from the Booker judges on how to read more, because of course they would know.

Author of The Confessions of Franny Langton, Sarah Collins, says it helps to stick to a disciplined reading schedule, treating it like work to be done at appointed times and giving it priority in the diary. Fellow author, Yayun Lee, takes a more academic view, saying, I have always advocated for slow and steady reading. I don't suppose we live in a busier time than people in the past, but we live in a time with many more distractions.

For readers who want to fit more reading into their lives, perhaps, she suggests, set up a reading corner where screens of any kind, phones and tablets and computers, are not allowed. Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan suggests putting your phone in a different room and to replace scrolling with a book when editing, commuting or being stood up on dates. Musician Nitin Sawni prefers to read between 5 and 9 a.m. when he has a clear mind before he properly begins his day.

And Edmund Duval says to make sure you carry a book with you everywhere and to find a book buddy. Talking about books is a generative act, he says. It makes reading more a natural part of everyday life. I have gathered my book buddies. Let's get to it, shall we? I thought, why not start with the lone British author on the shortlist, Samantha Harvey and her book Orbital.

Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work. But slowly they begin to wonder: What is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity? Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it 16 times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world, they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part or protective of it. The audiobook is read by Sarah Naudy and published by Penguin. Here's a clip.

They hang in their sleeping bags. A hand span away beyond the skin of metal, the universe unfolds in simple eternities. Their sleep begins to thin, and some distant earthly morning dawns, and their laptops flash, the first silent messages of a new day. The wide-awake, always-awake station vibrates with fans and filters. In the galley are the remnants of last night's dinner, dirty forks secured to the table by magnets.

and chopsticks wedged in a pouch on the wall. Four balloons are buoyed on the circulating air. Some foil bunting says, 'Happy Birthday.' It was nobody's birthday, but it was a celebration, and it was all they had. There's a smear of chocolate on a pair of scissors and a small felt moon on a piece of string, tied to the handles of the foldable table.

Outside, the Earth reels away in a massive moonglow, peeling backward as they forge towards its edgeless edge. The tufts of cloud across the Pacific brighten the nocturnal ocean to cobalt. Now there's Santiago, on South America's approaching coast, in a cloud-hazed burn of gold.

Unseen through the closed shutters, the trade winds blowing across the warm waters of the western Pacific have worked up a storm, an engine of heat. The winds take the warmth out of the ocean, where it gathers, as clouds which thicken and curdle and begin to spin in vertical stacks that have formed a typhoon. The judges said Orbital offers us a love letter to our planet, as well as a deeply moving acknowledgement of the individual and collective value of every human life.

Sarah, when we discussed Piranesi on the pod a while back, we learned you're really not a fan of books that don't feature the outdoors. I was wondering, as I read it, how you would get on with life in an international space station. Oh, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. I really enjoyed this book. It was clear to me that the person who wrote it loves the Earth. I really felt on board in a majestic way.

I found myself, and I'd never done this before, like looking up where the International Space Station is and when's it going to pass over. But the thing that most loved about it was this, it's a short book. It's just all yin and yang. And I really liked the meditation of it. It was just a pocket gym, I think. I did feel outside. It's a good point, isn't it? Because it starts with a map, right?

oh the map's so good at the beginning of the book which shows the transit of the space station as it crisscrosses the earth on its succeeding orbits and one of the things i love was when i first looked at this map it didn't really make much sense to me i looked at it processed what it was but it didn't mean anything to me and i loved when i finished the book and i turned back to it it made perfect sense because you almost

Oh, I used it all the time. It was like a family tree. Like I was like, oh, they're on five. Oh, they're descending fifth. Okay. I know where they're going to go. Okay. I can't wait to hear about this. Oh, that's so, I didn't think of doing that. Oh, every time. Yeah. And when I first opened it made no sense. Yeah. And I could not, I was like, they can't cross the earth 16 times in a day. That's not possible. And then now I understand that they do. Zip, zip.

They're going super fast. Martin, how did you feel about this one? I've got nothing but admiration for it. I think it's an incredibly well-constructed piece of writing. You reminded me of the map there. I'd completely forgotten about it. I can understand using that as a guide. It's very well done. It does that in a kind of an unobtrusive way as well. You don't feel the labour of something overwrought and over-structured. So I think that was great. I think it's beautifully written.

It is awe-inspiring in probably the truest sense, yet somehow it wasn't my favourite thing on there. I was kind of wanting it to go somewhere a little bit more than it did, and then...

I think writing about it on my blog, I realised that I probably shouldn't have expected a book called Orbital to go anywhere other than round in circles. And that's fine. I didn't feel like it progressed that much, but it was a very nice journey while it did. I thought it was interesting on the very engaging and sort of comprehensive side.

all the information that they pulled together for the Booker website, they had a quote from Samantha Harvey saying what she had been thinking, what she had intended when she wrote the book. And she said, I wanted to write about our human occupation of low Earth orbit for the last quarter of a century, not as sci-fi, but as realism. Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself.

She did that. You think? What about you, Phil? You're nodding. Yeah, I think she was very successful. I thought this was an absolutely gorgeous book. I fully agree with Sarah. My big takeaway is, yes, you don't come to something at the end. You are just still rotating at the end. But the things that have resonated with me are these two set pieces of

within which are meditations on images and the first is this Velázquez painting Las Maninas which is very famous for being this painting of the Spanish princess in the 17th century

But then Velazquez is in the painting as the painter, as are the king and queen watching. I had to, I'm sure all of us did, go and look at this painting during this section. I did, yes. I like to think... I knew the painting, but I didn't look it up. I knew the painting. I didn't have to look it up. LAUGHTER

But it was just like she fits that in with the broader meditations of the astronauts. And there's another similar meditation about this photograph by Michael Collins, the astronaut in 1969, of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong with the Earth in the background. Those particular passages have really stuck with me, and they were so pleasurable to read. And a book like this where it's just gorgeous words can sometimes be so ephemeral it floats away as I finish, but that was not the case of this one.

One of the things I thought when I was reading it was what a good book club read it would make because it's pleasingly short and yet the

It feels quite remarkable and unique in lots of ways. It's not really quite like anything else I've read. And I think you could dig into a lot of things like this perspective that she's offering, this point of view from the astronauts. And also, as she says, the sense of amazement and awe and wonder. And it gives this way of looking at the world and the planet. That's not a perspective any of us really get to have because none of us are going into space. Right. But through this book and the magic of this book, I think we get to experience that a little bit.

Laura, what did you think? I haven't finished it because I only started it a day or two ago. And I do think it is one of those books...

that you need to be in the right mindset for because it is quite slow and contemplative and there's no plot pulling you forward, unlike some of the other books on the list. Yeah, nothing happens, does it? Yeah, nothing really happens. But Phil is right that there are these moments, mine is different than yours, but that you remember and there's a musing around the obvious, but this idea that we are alone in this universe and we'd like to pretend we're not alone in this universe, but this is all we have.

And then just by a funny coincidence, I saw a post, I think it was on Instagram or LinkedIn today, and the headline on it was a picture of Mars and it just said, Mars sucks. I didn't read the caption, but I filled it in my head, which would just be like, Mars sucks. It's cold. Why are we obsessed with going to Mars rather than being obsessed with protecting this beautiful jewel of a planet we have? It's so much more important to our existence. There is that message embedded in this book. I felt like she had really dialed that back. It's the obvious fact.

thread that you feel in the background the whole time. And yet there's only a couple of points where she really touches on it explicitly. And the rest of the time I felt it leaves you to fill in that for yourself. It's not didactic. She's not really laboring that point. And I liked that restraint. I think my only feeling was it was very detached. You're up there, you're floating around with the astronauts.

You're looking down at the globe. It's passing beneath you. You're experiencing this view of the world. And it's all very dreamlike. And I suppose I just, from a booker, shortlisted book, maybe because of last year, where they were all so pointed and obvious. Yes, I just felt I wouldn't have minded it if there had been slightly more to this.

what is the message of this book? It's there, but she's not really saying, which I suppose also is why it makes quite a good discussion. I think that's why I like it. I think that's why it worked for me. Yeah, it's funny. I just wonder, I wonder if it had been a bit more pointed, whether almost that would have tipped it more over into a winning spot. ♪

Let's move on to The Safekeep by Jael van der Waalden. The first Dutch author ever to be shortlisted for the prize, although Marika Lucas Rijnveld's memorably downbeat The Discomfort of Evening did win the Booker International a few years ago. Phil, I know you and I are both still haunted by that book.

It's 15 years since the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Oysel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed and the conflict is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be, led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend Eva at Isabel's doorstep as a guest, there to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel's antithesis. She sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response, Isabel develops a fury-filled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house, her suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate desire for order transforms into infatuation, leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known.

The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva nor the house are what they seem. The audiobook is read by Saskia Marveld and Steena Nielsen and published by Penguin. Here's a clip. Isabelle found a broken piece of ceramic under the roots of a dead gourd. Spring had brought a shock of frost, a week of wet snow, and now at the lip of summer, the vegetable garden was shrinking into itself.

The beans, the radishes, the cauliflower, browned and rotting. Isabelle was on her knees, gloved hands and a stringed hat, removing the dying things. The shard nicked through her glove, pierced a little hole. It wasn't a wound and it didn't bleed. Isabelle took off her glove and stretched the skin of her palm tight, looking for a puncture. There was none, only a sting of pain that left quickly.

Back at the house, she washed the piece and held it in watery hands. Blue flowers along the inch of a rim. The suggestion of a hare's leg where the crockery had broken. It had once been a plate, which was part of a set. Her mother's favorite. The good chinaware. For holidays. For guests. When mother was alive, the set was kept in a glass vitrine in the dining room, and no one was allowed to handle it.

It had been years since her passing, and the plates were still kept behind the closed doors, unused. On the rare occasion when Isabel's brothers visited, Isabel would set the table using everyday plates, and Hendrik would try to pry open the vitrine and say, Isabel, Isabel, come now. What's the point of having good things if you can't touch them? And Isabel would answer, they are not for touching, they are for keeping.

The judges said, we loved this debut novel for its remarkable inhabitation of obsession. It navigates an emotional landscape of loss and return in an unforgettable way.

Now, just to say, The Safe Keep, I think, is a particularly tricky one to talk about as so much of the pleasure comes from the way the plot unfolds as you go through and things click into place. And I would hate to deny any reader the pleasure of that experience. So just to say ahead of time, if you haven't read The Safe Keep and you think you would like to, stop listening now and come back to us when you've experienced the novel.

This book seemed to me to do a lot of things really well. It's got strong, vivid characters that leap off the page. The house is very much a presence and these objects that really inculcate

encapsulate memory and almost bearing witness to the history of the house in ways that are gradually revealed as the novel goes on. It's a very sensual book. And also, there are some really meaningful issues that she's exploring through this fictional framework that I think she does incredibly successfully. So I was really impressed with The Safe Keep.

It was the one most people had said to me, oh, that's so good. I think lots of people have really enjoyed this novel and it feels like there's a real buzz about it. Martin, you're nodding. How did you get on with it? I was just going to agree. I think I've heard a lot of buzz about it and I can understand why as well. There's been quite a lot of talk this year among the judges about awarding something that's going to be popular and is going to resonate with the widest audience possible. And I think this is probably going to tick all the boxes there. It's almost...

I don't know if it's almost too obvious a winner from the bunch, but let's not go there yet. It's just got a lot going for it, hasn't it? It's got a gripping plot. It's extremely readable. Little twists that some of us will get, some of us won't get. I never get twists, which is why I didn't. Great characters, big themes, and it's got some sexy bits in it, which is very unusual for a book, a shortlisted book. So maybe that's the secret sauce for this one. I don't know. I would, just teasing you a bit,

There's a lot of sexy bits in this book. And my book club read this, Phil's in my book club.

And I said this at the time, but I feel like the mainstream romance trend has crossed over to the Booker because it is very sexy and very explicit. And as Phil said, quite fun. I think it's really well done, but there's still a lot. I would be disappointed if this won. I think it's a good read. I would recommend it to people, but it's a debut novel. How it ends, this tying up of loose ends felt naive and not realistic. And I...

I'm glad it's on the list, but I don't think it holds up to the craft of the other authors. Yeah, that's a very interesting point. The way she wraps it up was the one point at which I slightly raised my eyebrows and everything had been so carefully constructed with so much thought and care and nuance. And then suddenly it felt just a slight...

step too far into what I was prepared to believe that these characters would do and how they would feel in the way that they acted that was very convenient for the plot but didn't quite fit to me with the emotional truth of those characters as she had built them up. It is a very sexy novel, isn't it, for the Booker Prize? And one of the themes that's running through it is homosexuality. The main character's brother...

is in a relationship with a man. And clearly that's quite difficult. It's not something that he's able to be completely open about. And you see him kind of struggling with that as the novel goes on.

And then between the main two characters, this relationship develops. All I thought was, I thought the writing of that sex was very nicely done. I just thought it was quite detailed and there was a lot of it. There were points where I was like, I don't need to know that much about this position or that position. I get the idea. So I did have that thought. Sarah, how about you? Your note proved, come on. I just didn't love the book. I don't think I'm going to think about it

years later, there were a lot of places where I was like, I think you're going to go here. And then she goes there and I was like, I think you're going to go here. And then she does that. Oh, interesting. So it didn't surprise you maybe as much as it surprised me. Yeah, not quite. But there are strong characters and the sex is written well. So I give it that. It's certainly not a bad book and it's probably a great book club book because there's a lot to discuss. But there are other books on the list I'm really wowed by and think are really special. Yeah.

And this isn't quite that for me. Phil, how about you? It did resonate a bit more with me than Sarah. It's certainly not my favorite of the books. But I will say, Laura framed it in our book club discussion as structurally a romance book with all of the tropes of that, which is why you can read What's Coming, because it follows all those tropes. There's another book on this short list, which sort of sells itself as a genre book, but then it's very much not.

Whereas this one basically is a genre book and follows through on that, and I appreciate that. I thought it was evocative. I thought the characters were three-dimensional, and it was fun.

I'm wondering if the fact that I don't read romance or much genre fiction is why I was a little bit more excited by it. It felt like a nice deviation from a lot of the reading that I do do. I thought it was a lot of fun. I do agree with Laura that I thought the ending didn't sit right with me either. But other than that, a fun book. I can see why it's popular. Yeah.

one thing it's hard for us to talk about because again it taps into spoiling elements of the plot but the one thing I think I really was impressed by was the way that actually you've just articulated for me I hadn't quite thought that through she's packaged up in this very engaging for maybe a slightly younger audience way a novel that's dealing with some very weighty themes to do with the problematic history of certain aspects of what's

what happened in Holland during the war, which I wonder the degree to which that's something that's openly acknowledged and talked about in Dutch society today. It's hard without knowing that.

to know more about perhaps how almost political this book might be. And I found that really fascinating. It's something I would love to know more about. I would love to hear from Dutch people what this book meant to them. I don't know the degree to which she's flagging something up and writing about something that maybe isn't something that perhaps authors of her generation are that interested in. And I loved it for that. I thought she had done that really brilliantly. And it makes you want to go and find out more. That's what I like. It's a story that makes you think, oh, I didn't know anything about this. I'm curious. I'll go and look some things up.

So yeah, I think that's for me why that made it feel very bookery in that regard. All right, we must move on. For a complete change of scene, although I think Phil was alluding to this just now, we turn to Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake. A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part spy novel, part profound treatise on human history.

sadie smith a thirty four year old american under cover agent of ruthless tactics bold opinions and clean beauty is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of france her mission to infiltrate a commune of radical eco activists led by the charismatic svengali bruno

Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno's idealism laughable. He lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.

The audiobook is narrated by Rachel Kushner herself and published by Penguin. Here's a clip. Bruno described the jaw of the Neanderthal as a feature of pathos for its overdevelopment, the burden of a square jaw.

He talked about sunk costs, as if the body were a capital investment, a fixed investment. The parts of the body, like machines bolted to a factory floor, equipment that had been purchased and could not be resold. The Neanderthal jaw was a sunk cost.

Still, the tall's heavy bones and sturdy, heat-conserving build were to be admired, Bruno said, especially compared to the breadstick limbs of modern man, homo sapiens sapiens. Bruno did not say breadstick, but since I was translating as he was writing these emails in French, I drew from the full breadth of English, a wildly superior language and my native tongue.

The Talls survived cold very well, he said, if not the eons. Or so the story about them goes. A story that we must complicate, he said, if we are to know the truth about the ancient past, if we are to glimpse the truth about this world now and how to live in it, how to occupy the present and where to go tomorrow. My own tomorrow was thoroughly planned out.

I would be meeting Pascal Balmy, leader of Le Moulin, to whom these emails from Bruno Lacombe were written. And I didn't need the Neanderthals' help on where to go. Pascal Balmy said to go to the Café de la Route on the main square in the little village of Vantome at 1 p.m., and that was where I would be.

Kushner says, I had long wanted to tell a story about a group of young people who decamp from Paris to a rural outpost in France, where they are set on a collision course with the French state. At the same time, I became interested in prehistory, both what can be known about ancient people and what the longing to know actually is. A sense that we have taken a wrong turn, that our ancestors hid messages from us that we don't know how to read. Why now?

Every day is a better time than the day before to ask where we are going and where we have been. The judges say we found the prose thrilling, the ideas exciting, the book as a whole a profound and irresistible page-turner. Laura, shall we start with you? How did you find Kushner's noir-ish novel? I'm still not sure how I feel about this novel. I read it relatively quickly, and I did find it a page-turner up to a point, because also,

not a lot happens except towards the very end. So it's a bit meandering. I thought it was quite strange.

I thought this idea of this secret agent working for private force, an unknown private force, that blurb implied it was the French government, but that's totally unclear. She doesn't know who it is. So there was a bit of sensationalist paranoia in this idea that there's these secret agents out there deployed to create and manipulate situations. She's very much a villain until she's not. And the main thing that just annoyed me the whole way through is

and I was surprised by, is she has zero backstory. So if you're going to have a villain, if you're going to have this amoral person manipulating things in such a way that people could be hurt, people will go to jail. There's a previous case that she narrates with huge, terrible consequences to a young man, all because of her behavior. If I'm to believe, I just need to understand why this person would do this. I need more backstory, and there's no justification for why it's not there. Phil, how about you?

I... Basically, in there with Laura, this is certainly my least favorite of the books on the shortlist. I had never read Rachel Kushner before, and after this, I then read The Flamethrowers just to catch up with Kushner. And I found both of them frustrating in the same way. There's just something...

just too cool for school about Rachel Kushner. I just picture her in her leather jackets on motorcycles, and it comes through in the themes and the prose. So the Booker judges describe this as wrapping a thought-provoking novel of ideas into a page-turning spy thriller. It is a novel of ideas, I will say that. The stuff with Bruno, and there's lots about society, blah, blah, blah. But it was not thought-provoking. I did not leave thinking through anything. And it was also not a thriller. It was easy to read, but...

It was not the genre novel it was sold at, so it just left me pretty underwhelmed.

I loved it in a bit of a guilty pleasure sort of way. I totally clicked when Phil was saying, it's a bit too cool for school, isn't it? There was a little part of me, I think it was teenage me in my brain coming through going, this is actually really cool. I actually think this is the coolest book I've read in quite a long time. But at the same time, it's very silly. And I don't mind that at all. Was anyone influenced by the author photo of Kushner on the inside flap? Partly. Partly.

We're all used to author photos. And the cover. They're usually like slightly earnest looking. The cover's incredibly cool as well. No, it's not her. She's there in an off-the-shoulder dress with her sunglasses on looking impossibly cool. That is the one takeaway from that image. But anyway, sorry, Master. Yeah, it ticked a lot of boxes for me in the cover.

me regressing to being a teenager or a 20-something in the sense that she's an avowed fan of Don DeLillo and that shines through in here. It's got references to situationism in Guy Debord. It's got cultural references aplenty. It signposts what year it's set in by the fact that Daft Punk's Get Lucky is playing through one chapter. It's full of stuff that I find fun. And at the same time, it's just remarkably silly, I think.

I enjoy the amoral, nihilistic blankness of the lead character. I feel like I haven't read a good character like that in a while. I was almost slightly disappointed when that unraveled a little bit at the end and we realised that there was a little bit more to her than that. Give away too many spoilers. But I don't know. I love that it's on here. I don't for a minute think it's going to win, which probably means it will. But...

Love that it's here. I definitely didn't hate it. And I went and bought the Mars Room because I hadn't read any Kushner either. I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited.

I feel like I need to go next so that I can give Sarah the opportunity to rebut this. But I just thought, what is this book doing on this shortlist? I couldn't have been more astonished. I wanted to like it. I too was completely dazzled by incredibly cool Rachel Kushner's author photo. I thought, wow, she looks amazing. And then I started reading it openly enough. And yeah, this mysterious, as you say, Nora, amoral, but actually very strong. It's always

cool reading about a woman who is in control. And this character really is. She's got all the angles covered. She knows in advance what she's doing. She's playing everybody and reading every situation with all these different levels. And it's fun as the reader to follow that perspective with her. But the writing...

I feel like this is one of those times when I'm going to read something out and Phil's going to look at me and say, I think that's perfectly fine. But I just got to page 13. She's driving to this house where she's going to be staying. It says there was no sign, no gate, no mailbox indicating I'd reached Lucien's family estate. Just a narrow tunnel into the woods. As I turned up it, a large rust brown raptor sailed low between trees in the half lit under canopy. I sensed it was accustomed to having this place to itself.

Get used to me. I thought at it. And I just thought, what? I'm sorry. And again, Phil's giving me that look like, that's fine. What's your problem with this? But that's a really clunky sentence that I just was really like, this is just... You spent so many pages wading through all this...

detail about the landscape and the caves and the limestone and the history and the Neanderthals and the Homo erectus and the Homo sapiens. Like she read Sapiens by Yuval Narihori, got slightly carried away as we all did by how interesting and exciting human history really is. And then somehow it got digested through this weird French filter into this novel. And then she's walking through the woods at one point. This is the other page I...

folded the corner I couldn't really quite like that it was set in France like that was just a real street girl I was like I'll go back there this is a great place to be beautiful landscape and when she says in her the quote I pulled I had long wanted to tell a story about a group of young people who decamped from Paris to a rural outpost in France I thought why what is it about France but that side yeah she's talking about yeah

I turned around. On the path was a large bird with long legs, a heron, its body dusty blue and floating like a petticoat. It stepped and re-stepped on the path's soft embankment, which collapsed under its large, gangly feet. "'What's your problem?' I said to it. It moved in place, stepping on its thin legs. "'Why was it not in a hurry to get away?' I wondered, and then I saw why. It had a gopher in its beak. Its instinct to eat was overriding its instinct to flee. It took sideways steps, its large beak like gardening shears holding the gopher. I was like, "'What?'

have gophers in France I didn't even know what a gopher is and I'm from Europe basic detailed stuff that I really needed her to get right because every time something like that happens are you sure there's no gophers in France I'm not sure

They're American, aren't they? What is a gopher? Does she mean a squirrel? No, they're different rodents. I think England has shit wildlife. There's more in Europe, for sure. We had Gordon the gopher. We had Gordon the gopher on children's TV, so there must be a reason for that. What is the translation? There are no gophers. It's a marmot.

So, fine. A marmot? Wikipedia says endemic to North and Central America. I mean, there are marmots. There are no gophers. The point is, at the time I thought, I wonder if that's an Americanism for what she really means, which is a squirrel, or now I'm learning a marmot. Never mind. The point is, all of that stuff really interrupted this whole novel thing. I'm going to have to get in here, guys. I think you're missing things. I'm sorry. But she's confident because she's a dick. And there's so many times where she's

And I did it like this. And you know that she did it wrong. She isn't always right. She is wrong a lot. She isn't as capable as she thinks she is. Yeah. Or as endearing. People leave her. People distrust her. They don't like her. People choke her. People fight her. No one goes along with her plan. She's not as exciting and wonderful as... And she probably gets hired because...

There's not that many people willing to do these gigs, which totally are real. I don't know if you've seen the stuff in the press in the UK, but people totally infiltrate environmentalist groups and pregnant people and then leave and try to arrest them. There's horrible. These people are real. They do exist. They were police officers, though, which maybe makes it worse, right? Those were state police officers. Yeah, but I mean, they work for...

It reminded me of pieces of Burnham Wood. He's getting all this crazy work done by clandestine agencies, military, people thinking there's a military operation. It's not. It's just a billionaire, whatever they want to do. I don't know. I really loved...

I loved it. And I've read her other stuff. And I love it too. I love Mars Room and was the flamethrowers. She is quite a masculine writer. She's tough. But I really loved it. I think the philosophy thing worked. I really like reading about it. Oh, and here's the thing, because I know it's about how a reader touches a book and how they go into it. And when she said, Bruno,

Bruno goes to the caves. I literally rubbed my hands together and was like, here we go. I was so excited. I love caves and books. It's my favorite. I think this is my other problem with it. Just so many emails from Bruno in the cave. And I really dreaded another email pinging into her inbox. And I was going to have to wade through another email from Bruno about prehistory. But...

But for a long time, I thought something quite clever was happening. I thought this novel was being very artfully structured, that it would all come collapsing down on her. And I think my biggest frustration with the book is that the clever book I had seen within this book never materialized. It never happened. And in the end, the clunkiest contrivances wrap things up.

And even then following the conventions of noir, it didn't even really follow through with that. It is set up. Because ultimately that main character... He says, be careful, he's seductive. He'll get you. And she says, no, he won't get me. For once, I wasn't lying. And he does. Bruno gets her. Bruno changes her. I read it that way too. Did you? I was so impatient with it by this point, I just wanted it to end. And thankfully it did. LAUGHTER

The only other thing I would say is there's one beautiful passage, of course, typically I can't find now, I'm trying to, where she writes about Europe and she writes about the idea people have of Europe as being this romantic, beautiful old castles and vineyards and lovely tourist places to visit. And she's like, that isn't Europe. Europe is a network of truck stops and crossings and trade routes and borders and this grimy industrial underbelly that's not what we see and not what we think of when we think of Europe. And I thought that was

very true. I really recognized that when she wrote about that. And I love that because I felt like

It was doing that thing that I love where someone's articulating something you know and feel to be true, but you haven't really ever seen it written down before. And that passage really stayed with me. But that's also her being an asshole. That was it, really. That was the only thing. So yeah, it's a shame. I wanted to love it. I'm glad it's on the list. It added a bit of spice and variety. I am slightly mystified, but there you go. It's way better than the safe key. Yeah.

Whoa. Them spike words. Way better. We shall see. Let us move on to Australia for Charlotte Wood's novel, Stoneyard Devotional.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of New South Wales. She doesn't believe in God or know what prayer is, and finds herself living a strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.

But Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past. Stoneyard Devotional is narrated by Alisa Piper and published by Alan and Unwin. Here's a clip. Arrive, finally, at about three.

The place has the feel of a 1970s health resort or eco-commune, but is not welcoming. Signs on fences or stuck on little posts by driveways. No entry. No parking. A place of industry, not recreation. I park in a nondescript spot near a fence and sit in the quiet car.

On the way here, I stopped in the town and visited my parents' graves for the first time in 35 years. It took some time for me to find them in what is called the Lawn Cemetery, the newer part, fenced off. Why? From the original town graveyard, with its crooked rows of tilting white headstones and crosses. That old part is overlooked by enormous black pine trees.

Ravens and cockatoos scream from their high branches. The lawn cemetery, by contrast, is a dull, flat expanse filled with gently curved rows of low, ugly headstones of identical dimensions. Neater, I suppose, but why should a cemetery be neat? There is no lawn, just dusty, dead grass.

Charlotte Wood said,

And I wanted to try to master what Saul Bellow called stillness in the midst of chaos, risking a tonal restraint and depth that at the same time, I hope, simmers with energy.

Apparently the judges were thrilled and chilled by Stoneyard devotional. I'm not quite sure why they were chilled. I think a lot of this has to do with your feelings about mice. Martin, how did you get on with the nuns and the mice plague? Nuns and the mice. Yeah, I get what she's saying about the book there. It is incredibly realised, minimally constructed, very understated, which I like. I like that style of writing a lot. I felt it suffered by comparison a little bit to some of the other books on the list. It's

It's a list with quite a few loud books in various ways that have either got really strong points or there's some very interesting things going on. We just talked about two, I think, of the more talkable books. And this one felt very quiet by comparison. And I think that's obviously deliberate. I did enjoy reading it. I had a very pleasant time reading it, but I don't think it's one that I'd go back to. I wasn't excited to read more of her books. I don't know, really. I thought the mice were probably the most exciting part of things.

they kept you figuring out what was going on and how they were dealing with mice. And you've got things going on in the background that are slowing down the progress of the mice clearing. And that's quite interesting, but yeah, I'm struggling a bit more with this one. Phil, how about you? I love this one. This is absolutely one of my favorites. I thought it was unlike Kushner, an actual novel of ideas, which really did dive into these ideas.

Nothing much does happen. There is the mice, and the mice are a metaphor for global warming. As the climate there shifts, there's these mice who used to never be a problem, just flooding everywhere. And there's also the pandemic. But there's also this, I would say almost, there's a lot with her childhood. But one of the biggest personalities in this is this woman.

roving celebrity nun who she was actually in school with as a kid named Helen Perry. And as a kid, Helen Perry came from this very broken home and was bullied basically by the other kids, including the narrator. And there's a lot of fascinating stuff about their back and forth and

both as children and then as adults and just so much about regret and guilt and ethics and I think of all of these novels just this had the most ideas and it was really rich Kate you're a big fan of nuns and convents right can't get enough of nuns and and I have no problems I grew up on a farm I've got no problems whatsoever with mice so none of that bothered me

This was the first one that I read. So it's really lovely hearing you talking about it. It's bringing it all back to me because I didn't think, although I enjoyed it very much at the time, I was conscious that in the succeeding weeks, not that much has stayed with me.

I think what I did love was, I think she had really succeeded in this very pared back writing that really then was exposing something, something true and very powerful at the heart of this. And there were really beautifully tender moments as well, like the main character's recollections of her

her mother's garden, the way her mother was very connected to organic gardening and nurturing in a way that now is almost very fashionable to think that way, but at the time was pioneering in the community that they lived in.

But for the mother was just a way of life. And I love that. And clearly, that's I think, that felt very much like Charlotte Wood's writing about her own mother. I've heard a talk she gave where she was talking about things that she wanted to write about, and her mother was one of them. And so I love that all of that is encapsulated in this book. I also thought, perhaps for women of a certain age, I feel like this is a book that has a lot to say.

or perhaps anyone actually. But I feel like this is a book that would really resonate with someone who was maybe in midlife. And I think you then do get to this point where you're looking back as much as you're looking forward and thinking,

I thought this really spoke to that moment in a way that seemed to me really profound because it's asking the question, why would anyone turn their back on the world and want to go and live in this enclosed, slightly strange regulated existence of devotion in the middle of nowhere, even when there is quite strong negative things going on that would make that actively not very pleasant. But yet there is something that calls this woman, this main character to do that. And this novel seeks to explore that in a way that I thought was really interesting.

Sarah, how about you? I made the mistake of listening to this. I usually read books, but I listened to this one and I just wasn't feeling it. And I went on to other books. I started this list a bit late. And so I didn't, I just stopped. It started off with grief about her parents.

I'm a bit hardened to that sometimes, I think. That's the right order of things. It's not a child and I just want to read something else. And I missed The Matrix. It made me think of Matrix. I just wanted to read Matrix instead. It's a very different book about nuns. Very different book. There's not enough sex in this. There was not much sex in this. There was no sex, was there? Technically, it's such an accomplished book. She's clearly, it really is a

very polished, considered work by an author who I think really knows what she's doing and you really sense that. And I think almost it felt like it's almost slightly the fact that it's been shortlisted perhaps reflects that she's reached this stage in her writing and her reputation is such that

It just didn't feel to me like this was the book. I suppose I'm thinking now about should it win? It's such a fine piece of work, but I almost wonder whether something else by her would feel stronger because it had more plot and more going on. And this is a very quiet book, almost a meditation. I suppose on this punchy shortlist as well, it stands out because of its still quiet quality. But I loved having it there in the mix.

Yeah, my notes are put. Speaks to women of certain age. Atmospheric. Mice didn't bother me. I need to write notes.

Let us turn to Held by Canadian Anne Michaels. In a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence ignite and reignite as the century unfolds. 1917, on a battlefield near the river Escoe, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he has lost a memory, a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. His

his childhood on a far-away coast as the snow falls nineteen twenty john has returned from war to north yorkshire near another river alive but not still whole reunited with helena an artist he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living but the past erupts insistently into the present as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures ghosts whose messages he cannot understand

The audiobook is read by Anne Michaels and published by Bloomsbury. Here's a clip. It was possible that the blast had taken his hearing. There were no trees to identify the wind, no wind he thought at all. Was it raining? John could see the air glistening, but he couldn't feel it on his face. The mist erased all it touched. Through the curtain of his breath he saw a flash, a shout of light. It was very cold.

Somewhere out there were his precious boots, his feet. He should get up and look for them. When had he eaten last? He was not hungry. Memory seeping. The snow fell, night and day, into the night again. Silent streets, impossible to drive. They decided they would walk to each other across the city and meet in the middle. The sky, even at ten o'clock at night, was porcelain, a pale solid from which the snow detached and fell.

the cold was cleansing a benediction they would each leave at the same time and keep to their route they would keep walking until they found each other in the distance in the heavy snowfall john saw fragments of her elliptic stroboscopic helena's dark hat her gloves

Anne Michael said, every day writing this book, I asked myself, in these urgent times, what voice might be small enough to be heard? What do we need now? We measure history by events and actions, but this book wants to assert a different measure for history, the real and powerful effect of our inner lives, what we believe, what we value, what we love, what we aspire to.

Again and again, in different ways, Held asks what forces bring us to a present moment. These forces, from particle physics to evolution, to revolution, to hauntings, to hope, to a gesture, to an error, to empathy, to desire. This is Held's investigation and the ways we choose and all the ways beyond our choosing and all the ways love continues its work long past the span of a life.

The judges said the first few pages of this brief kaleidoscopic novel from the author of Fugitive Pieces may seem forbidding, yet every member of the judging panel was transported by this book. Michaels connects the fragments of her story through theme and image rather than character and chronology, intense moments surrounded by great gaps of space and time. Appropriately for a novel about consciousness, it seems to alter and expand your state of mind. Reading it is a unique experience.

Phil and Martin, you read this one with me. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I was rather baffled by it. It seemed to me a set of short stories rather than a novel. And the interconnections weren't in any way obvious to me. And I took to the internet and I found a Guardian review from critic Alice Jolly, who writes, We are asked to let go of traditional narrative structures and surrender to a looser architecture that is held together by association and recurring motifs.

As one of Michael's characters puts it, the elusiveness of the form is the form. Techniques of narrative layering are employed with great skill as themes echo and return. Martin, how did you feel about all of this? I had some more constructive thoughts, but that quote that you pulled out there, it's full of bits and pieces of self-referential stuff like that. There's a section where someone talks about history is made of fragments and somebody else says, oh, I like stories that begin in the middle and all this kind of stuff. And

It's quite knowing. What I was going to say is it's very much a poet's novel, isn't it? It's very clear. Like Fugitive Pieces, the Nan Michaelses...

an incredible poet who can construct these interconnected narratives over the span of, albeit a short novel, but over a novel that I think if you do have the patience, which I don't, to reread these books many times, are going to be so rich and so full of interesting layers and connections and images that I think

Are they though? I don't know. Like I say, I will never know. The Booker judges will know because they'll have read it at least three times. So they will get a full sense of this. I don't think the average reader will do that. One thing I would say about it on the positive side is I didn't agree with the fact that it starts difficult. I thought it started brilliantly.

I thought the first two sections of this really had me gripped. Agreed. Part in the trenches. Part agreed. And then the part that becomes almost this kind of Victorian gothic of the photographer with...

images of dead people appearing at the end of that section I was on the edge of my seat give me more of this and then we got no more of that whatsoever except in the most elusive sense so I think I'd read and not really got on with fugitive pieces and I was so excited that I was going to enjoy this one so much more that it then just fell apart a little bit for me it was just a little bit too self-consciously structured and a little bit too fragmentary I

I think I basically agree with all of that. I found it is a poet's novel. It's almost just poetry and not a novel. It is absolutely gorgeous, and it would really bear up to multiple readings, and each time would get richer.

There's so many parts where you're just, oh my God, that is stunning, gorgeous prose. But there is something, I mean, A, I don't think it's particularly, I forget the quote you read about from The Judge's Cape, but something about the narrative skill. She really buries who you're talking, you're very confused a lot of the time. Who is this about? Who's talking? How is this random person related to someone else? Yeah.

And there's something about the prose being so gorgeous and so uniform that sort of flattens both the narrative and flattens characters to the extent. I had that exact feeling those two first sections did stick out to me, and I basically don't remember the rest. I think it does hold up just sitting there reading on a beautiful prose level. But as a novel, I'm not sure it's there. Yeah, I'm completely in agreement with both of you.

There is a section which deals with characters. One of them, a woman, is a doctor. And they are clearly people who have been working in a war-torn country, helping very difficult. And that reminded me of the Paul Lynch prophet song that took me back to there and the novel we read for the Women's Prize where the woman is trapped in Sarajevo. So there is incredibly powerful things in there. And I almost thought at that point it was almost like what I had wanted maybe a bit more of in Orbital and wasn't getting. Here it was inheld. But there's a

point, isn't there, where something is so fragmentary and oblique that you just get lost in the woods. And I agree totally. I have many pages where I've folded corners because they're so exquisitely beautiful. And I also thought, I think certain people will find there is something incredibly consoling in this book that I think if you needed that, it would mean a lot to you. I think there are passages here that will mean so much to people who need to read those passages. It's one of those books.

But yeah, if you're just reading it like on a deadline, you're not going to read it three times. You're really trying to evaluate it. It's a tricky one. And once again, I found myself slightly surprised to find it on the list. Perhaps it's because by this point, they're all just so dazed with so many words that they've read and all these narratives they've had to follow that something like this, which just offers you a little thing here and there.

little thing here and maybe they're connected but you don't have to worry about it it's fine maybe that just seemed like a warm bath to the judges i don't know your point kate about the pros is there for the people like if you are struggling with trauma or grief so many of these things i'm like i'm going to keep it on my bookshelf and if i ever give a speech at a funeral or something there's so so should be on the cover

Perfect for funerals. Phil Chafee, the book club review. But yeah, it's not to diminish it. Again, the writing is, as we've all said, it's exquisite, but it feels like a slightly quixotic choice. And yet also, I think, just another one where I think good book club read, you will enjoy getting your teeth into held and trying to figure it out. All right.

Last but not least, we come to James by Percival Everett. A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1861, the Mississippi River. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he's about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson's Island until he can formulate a plan.

Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River toward the elusive promise of free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise.

With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries, the family he is desperate to protect, and the constant lie he must live, and together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all. The audiobook is read by Dominic Hoffman and published by Penguin. Here's a clip. Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. The moon was not quite full, but bright, and it was behind them, so I could see them as plain as day, though it was deep night.

Lightning bugs flashed against the black canvas. I waited at Miss Watson's kitchen door, rocked a loose stepboard with my foot, knew she was going to tell me to fix it tomorrow. I was waiting there for her to give me a pan of cornbread that she had made with my Sadie's recipe. Waiting is a big part of a slave's life. Waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands. Waiting for food. Waiting for the ends of days.

waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all. Those white boys, Huck and Tom, watched me. They were always playing some kind of pretending game where I was either a villain or prey, but certainly their toy. They hopped about out there with the chiggers, mosquitoes, and other biting bugs, but never made any progress toward me. It always pays to give white folks what they want. So I stepped into the yard and called out into the night. Who dat there? In the dark, like dat?

They rustled, clumsily about, giggled. Those boys couldn't sneak up on a blind and deaf man while a band was playing. Everett says Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of my novel. I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not, and also could not, have written. I do not view the work as a corrective, but rather I see myself in conversation with Twain.

The Booker judges say a masterful revisionist work that immerses the reader in the brutality of slavery, juxtaposed with a movingly persistent humanity. Through lyrical, richly textured prose, Everett crafts a captivating response to Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn that is both a bold exploration of a dark chapter in history and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

I think I'm right in saying this book was a huge hit with readers before it made the book a shortlist. Sarah, shall we start with you? Had you read Huckleberry Finn and do you think that makes a difference to the experience of reading this novel?

I think every American has read Huck Finn or at least been assigned to. Like it's like our Jane Eyre. You just have to. You know more if you're familiar with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I absolutely loved it. I was so excited when I read it. There were so many parts that I don't know what we're all going to say because there's massive spoilers in it. It's another one that's a bit tricky to talk about. Yeah. I feel like there's one...

really big spoiler. Yeah, I know what you mean. Which they talked about on the New York Times podcast when they did that for Book Club. And I was really horrified that they did that. So I don't want us to do that. Okay, we won't do that one. Because that's a shocker. But more generally, I think there's still a lot to say about it. But it is a conversation with Mark Twain. And it is the novel that he couldn't write because he didn't know how to make Jim a man. And James makes Jim a man, a real, realized man.

And that never happened in Huck Finn. And most readers never ask why. It's not something that students are asked to do when they analyze the book. Why isn't Jim a real man? Mm hmm.

But here he is. And it's just, I immediately sent it to four family members when I finished it. I think it's really exciting. It's a great pace of a book. Huck Finn's a great pace of a book. But it answers all those plot questions from another side. And it's just really beautiful. I was

Really happy to read it. I hadn't read Huckleberry Finn, but like many people my age, when we were growing up, and we only had four channels, and only two of them showed children's programs, there was a TV series of Huckleberry Finn that I actually looked up and found out was Canadian. Yeah, I think I watched that. Exactly. So it's interesting. I just watched the trailer of it. That's how I was able to figure out what it was. So my memory of the story comes from that. And in that, my memory is that Jim is, he's

a plot point. He feels like a device to move things along. Huck is very much the centre of the story and Jim is just there to get Huck from A to B. But this obviously completely inverts that and James is very much the centre. Phil, the other American here, do you have the same response to Sarah? I read Huck will be a friend in high school and Sarah said just about every American was assigned. But then I also re-read it. Oh, did you? Very cool. Phil's elite. Which I highly recommend. I think it...

It does, because you get the conversation in a really powerful way and you see where James is omitting things, where James is changing things.

I certainly agree. In Huckleberry Finn, James is called Enrode Jim, and that's very hard for modern ears, but also his characterization. I think he's a bit more than a plot point, but yes, he's not fully human. He's three-dimensional, but he's also slightly dumb, and Percival Everett has a great explanation as to why James presents himself that way, which is a matter of defense as a slave.

I thought this was great. I also thought tonally, it's obviously very dark stuff, American slavery, but as with Dwayne, he tackles this very dark subject and there's lots of entertaining stuff in this book. So the tone is preserved while Everett does interact much more with what slavery actually was.

Yeah, I remember this from when we did The Trees. Everett is a laugh-out-loud writer, if he wants to. So many times laughing out loud. Yeah, absolutely. And also, I think the other thing to say about this is just what a fantastic page-tour it is. It's thrilling. You're really pulled through by this incredibly propulsive plot, and you're so invested in these characters, you really care about what's going to happen next. Martin, how was it for you? Oh, I loved it, yeah. Since coming across Everett belatedly on the shortlist a few years ago for The Trees, I've

I've been trying to read a little bit more of his stuff. I read this back in about January, I think, so some of it's faded a little bit from my memory now as a pre-release. I was super excited about it. I loved it. My knowledge of the source material is pretty flimsy. I think I read bits and pieces when I was a kid, but it's a long time ago. It was him in his usual form and covering all the same ground, but attaching it to this great American novel of...

of the modern day structure. I almost feel like he's probably deserved many more prizes before now, but fair play if this is the one that gives him his dues, I think. I think the tree should have won a few years ago. I think this one is equally brilliant. And I think, again, as you've all touched on, the fact that he can bring that shockingly dark but brilliant humour to whatever subject he wants to touch is

In the trees it was lynchings and in this it's similarly tough ground and he manages it so well. Some of the same themes coming through again. The section where James joins the band of travelling minstrels, I don't know how that connects in it if at all with the source material but I thought that was astonishingly brilliantly done and I don't think anyone else could write a section like that. He's coming back to some of his key themes from other books from the notion of race as performance.

It's astonishing stuff and I almost feel like it's hard to say anything fresh about this because it's been so well talked about this year. But it's a brilliant book and it'd be a massively deserving winner. Yeah, looking at the front of this, I've just counted 30 books that Everett has previously written. He's so prolific because he's not that old. Yeah.

It's basically a book a year type career, right? Must be something like that. But again, it just feels like this is an extremely good writer who absolutely feels at the top of their game. And I suppose the ambition of taking on this absolute classic of American literature, taking that swing, and I think totally making it right. Yeah, it's ambitious. And it works. It reminded me of

because I had recently read Demon Copperhead, right? Which is also like, well, that's a retelling. But this is more ambitious because it's the other telling. It's narrated by another character, same time, same setting. Yeah. I loved Demon Copperhead, but this left me with more. And this was...

It was exciting. It does have classic written all over it. You just hope now that kids will be assigned to read them both together. Yeah. And that would become the American curriculum. Maybe that's optimistic, but that's what you hope. And this book would hold up to that. It feels like a classic.

I found it devastating. I read about 50% in a sprint and then stopped reading it until last night when I was feeling a bit guilty and was like, I should probably finish it. And it is exceptional. I knew it was, but it is hard reading and also it's a constant chase. And I find that quite anxiety inducing. And then this didn't annoy me, but it is quite episodic and it's a compliment to what is, I think, right? Essentially a children's novel. So the film

Phil is nodding his head, but it has this sort of like pace to it and episodic nature. Things keep happening. Maybe it's in more of a 19th century convention. In one paragraph at one point, there's always mishaps with steamships, but this is one of the earlier ones. And everything happens. I don't know. It would just happen very quickly. And it was all action. So it didn't feel necessarily believable. It doesn't feel like it's meant to be faithful to reality, which isn't defaulted. It just felt a response that was perfectly done.

And very moving, as ever, just very upsetting. It's all in there, so many layers. Trying quite hard to find something to critique, all I could come up with was the map at the beginning. The orbital map's way better. Oh, I didn't get a map. The hardback UK edition comes with this map, but the thing is, it's quite a simple line drawing. And the problem is, actually, slightly as with orbital, when Sarah was talking about how she had referred back to the map, my knowledge of the geography of the Mississippi is...

practically non-existent. So I needed to know. It's important. You need to know where they are and which side of the Mississippi they're on and whether they're in the free state or whether they're in one of the slave states. And this map is useless. It did not help with that at all, but really none of that can be placed at Everett's door. That's the publishers. It's a very nice map, don't get me wrong, but it

It's just I really wanted something more specific and less abstract to help me chart the journey that they go on in this book. The only other thing is I think the reason Everett didn't win for the trees was the ending, which I remember well, being somewhat confounding. And I also thought I watched the film of American fiction, which is the film of his book Erasure. And I was very curious to see what happened in the end of that one. When it got there, I was like,

huh the movie producers took the ending that ever had written and thought nope we're not going to do that and they gave it their own one which I thought was interesting and when it got to the end of James I was really like what's he gonna do and when it got there I felt a bit like oh what I was like oh you nailed it I love the ending I was just I just thought it trailed off a bit

That's all I thought. But at the time also, I questioned my reaction and I think I was mainly just sad because it had finished and I just wasn't ready to leave it. I actually think it was that, but I do think Everett and Endings. I agree with you about The Trees. I think this is a better book than The Trees. Yes. I read this first and then I read The Trees and I was like, oh, I like The Trees. I read bits out loud and laughed all the time. But this is a better book. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is a really good book.

Then, what are we saying? Do we think this is the one that should win? I would have said this or Creation Lake. I'd love to see Creation Lake win. Do not speak the name of Creation Lake in the same sentence as Gabe. It won't, because I read this one first and I was like, oh, nothing, it doesn't matter. James has to win. That's what I think. It feels slightly like a foregone conclusion, but then...

Sometimes they throw surprises our way. You never know, do you? You never know with the Book of Judges. This year feels like they've all got the message. It needs to be a crowd-pleasing, readable book. The purpose of the Book of Prize is to

highlight and celebrate and generate enthusiasm for works written in English around the globe, right? That helps everybody. That helps publishers. It helps authors. Everyone's interest is in these books being celebrated and widely read. If the judges go rogue, as they've been known to do, and perversely choose books that they believe critically to be excellent, but actually no one wants to read, that's

And I think this year's shortlist was a very interesting shortlist because even though we've all found things to like and dislike in almost all of them, I don't think anyone could deny this is an incredibly readable, punchy shortlist. I'm not sure. We just talked about Held, which is not... And also Orbital.

I don't think held orbital or even stoneward confessional are super crowd-pleasers. I think orbital's a crowd-pleaser. I think because I like Stoneyard. You love Stoneyard. I would potentially vote for that. For me, if I were voting, it would be between that or James. I'm just saying you're saying a crowd-pleaser and that's a different thing. James is literally a super crowd. Like James, if it were a film, people would jump at the end and be like, yes!

But it's like a critically acclaimed cloud teaser, right? You're just impressed and moved by what's been created.

Yeah, the only one I wondered about is The Safe Keep, just because that feels like such a classic booker book. If it were to win over James, that would be a horrible thing. Exactly, that's a throw up in my mouth. On last year's list, I would actually have thought it would be quite a strong contender. But on this year's list, I think that's, yeah, the thing is... And she has so many more books to write, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Percival Everett is at the top of his game, 20, 30 books into his career. That's her first novel. I do slightly agree, though. She's still got a lot to learn. There's an outside chance for the safekeep, I think. I wouldn't hate it, but...

It's going to be an odd choice if anything other than James gets it. But I think the safekeep is an option. Part of me can see Orbital being a left field choice as well. Yes, I could see that. Which I do think is an odd populist option as well. It's definitely not a conventional populist easy read novel, but I think it's got a lot in there that will tick a lot of people's boxes. You know why as well? It's because when the juries are split and...

two of them are arguing vociferously for one and the other three want another one and they can't agree then they end up compromising on something and when you need to compromise on something then orbital's your book because everyone can find things to love about orbital ah i wonder i hope we're not going to have another year of us all howling at the james it's gonna be james it was wasn't it

No one wants to go through that again. You mentioned Demon Copperhead before, and it feels like it's as nailed on as that one was for the Women's Prize that year. Why that didn't make the booker, I've no idea. Yeah, that's a weird one. Let's see. I would also, I was thinking about this, I read a bunch of the long lists that didn't make it. And if we're doing what should have been a contender, I think My Friends, the Hisham Attar book is...

so good. It's also about spies and stuff, but in my mind, it just blew Rachel Kushner out of the water. And so much more interesting and serious and real characters. I loved that so much. I was gutted it wasn't on there. It's probably...

sorry to james it's probably my favorite book of the year by some what is it again my friends he wrote i'm not going to go there he wrote two other books titles of which i can't remember but they were good excellent one about sienna hopefully and then the one that he got famous for what the hell that was cool but anyway i read both remember it on the next quiz yeah he is good

He wrote The Return, I think? A memoir. The Return, there you go, thank you. He's Libyan, but he also had a previous novel also about Libyans, but this one's very political. It should have been on this list. It was a real shock, I'm agreeing.

Well, no matter which wins, I think one thing we can agree, and I hope listeners certainly will agree, is that they've all made excellent, entertaining, enlightening books to discuss. And I can't think of four people I would rather discuss them with than the people I have gathered here today. So thank you all so much for joining me. And I may come back to you for a reaction once we find out which book is going to win. I also want to say that I feel like the Booker Prize redeemed itself this year. Yeah.

I felt like last year it went off the rails. And I don't want to speak too soon because we have to see who wins. But I feel like it was a great long list, a good short list and lots for everyone to get their teeth into. Yeah, that's the thing. You never know what you're going to get, which is, I think, what keeps it interesting and what keeps me coming back to it year after year in a way that other prizes don't quite surprise me the same way. But I love the Booker for that. It's unpredictability is its strength. But I agree this year is a standout year, I think.

That's nearly it for this episode. You'll find all the books mentioned in the show notes. It has been a while between podcasts and you might have been wondering why we've been so quiet. The answer is that it's all kicking off on our Patreon account with weekly minisodes from me featuring Laura's reading updates and chats with friends of the pod.

Listen in as Phil and I try to understand the somewhat shadowy process of choosing a Nobel Prize for Literature winner. And we pick out some of our favourites from the past. Or hear from Anna of Australian podcast Books on the Go on the year she stopped buying new books to focus on getting through her TBR. You can hear more from Martin on that Hisham Mattar book that he loved from the Book Along list and get more of a sense of the books Laura and I are reading from week to week. How much will all this extra bookish listening set you back?

It's less than the price of a pumpkin spice latte. At the higher tier, you can also join in the podcast book club and come and talk books with me in person at the end of every month over Zoom. Find the link in the show notes or head to the subscribe tab at thebookclubreview.co.uk to find the various ways you can support the show and access all this lovely extra stuff.

Next up on the main feed, we've got a nonfiction November special featuring a book both Phil and I loved and couldn't stop talking about, Carmageddon by Daniel Knowles. We're using this as a jumping off point for the nonfiction reads that change the way you see the world. That's out in a couple of weeks. Until then, come find the Book Club Review on Instagram and threads at bookclubreviewpodcast. And if you have time and can rate and review the show in your podcast app, we love it when you do that. It helps other listeners find us.

But for now, thanks for listening and happy book clubbing.