Predict the Booker 2023

Predict the Booker 2023

On Wednesday evening, six Paulines boldly took on the annual challenge of pitting their wits against the Booker Prize panel, hoping to persuade our live and online audience that their selection from the 2023 shortlist would be this year's winner.  

The Booker prize is, as our erudite host Mr Mahmoud observed, the leading literary award in the English speaking world. It's also the literary award that the Pauline community is apparently incapable of predicting with any accuracy: we now have a five year record of absolute, total, 100% failure. Will this year be any different?* We're eternal optimists here at the book blog, so here's hoping that it will be (tho we'll have to wait until Sunday evening to find out).  In the meantime, here's what our volunteer readers thought of the novels they selected.  

First up was Archie, recommending This Other Eden by Paul Harding, a novel which is highly original in its subject and tone, although based on actual historical events. It tells the story of Apple Island, a multi-racial community off the coast of Maine, forcibly disbanded and destroyed by a delegation of eugenicists at the turn of the 20th century - an action for which the state of Maine only apologised in 2010. Although the reader has no doubt in which direction the story is heading, because the historical background is explained at the start, this only makes us focus even more intently on every detail, as we know that life on Apple Island has a limited time-frame.

Archie felt that Harding's subtle and lyrical prose style offered a rich verbal canvas on which to paint his picture of a community and way of life at the fringes of our understanding. The writing evokes the wonder and poetic license, the mixture of truth, exaggeration and metaphor, that characterises oral histories, the fabric from which this huddle of the dispossessed form their community and create their legends. Although there's a clear religious dimension to the story, as reflected in the title, the characters aren't idealised: Benjamin, the Adam-like founder of the community, is a hero or a thief, depending on which version of his story you believe, and the islanders are as full of good and evil as anyone anywhere else. But their harsh and meagre environment, and the ravages of an apocalyptic flood, are offset by their kindness and their neighbourliness, in spite of their material poverty. 

Ultimately, Archie argued, the novel draws on history to give us an allegory for how difference should be valued and respected, not demonised: it argues that diversity is the cornerstone of humanity. Although the novel is short, Archie noted that he'd found himself still thinking about it days and weeks later. Asked whether it's important that it's a true story, Archie felt it was: Harding has populated the island with his own invented characters, but the novel's basis in truth adds an element of shock when you think that events like the ones the novel describes actually happened. With impeccable co-curricular commitment, Archie then dashed off to play in the Autumn Concert.

Next up was Xavi, discussing Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein, a novel about history, heritage, mystery, religion, and, in his view, an example of what contemporary literature should be - explaining the world we live in through one in which we don't. Xavi described himself as 'wowed' by the quality of the novel's prose: Bernstein's language sculpts the text, shaping the voice of the novel's self-doubting, second-guessing narrator, whose arrival in an unnamed village triggers hostility when a series of unnatural events unfold. The novel's atmosphere is cramped and uncanny, and sharing mental space with its protagonist is unsettling. Xavi felt that Bernstein creates a profound ambivalence towards her: she is both a passive recipient of the villagers' hatred, and a perpetrator of harm within the community.  Bernstein uses her, Xavi argued, to question the idea that a woman must be innocent to be considered a victim.

Xavi also felt that this novel definitely takes the reader out of their comfort zone: the narrator makes the villagers confront their own history, which includes an atrocity in which they have been complicit. She represents their buried past, and disrupts their denial, prompting the reader to consider difficult questions about the inconsistencies of their own society: how can we reconcile the evil committed by the groups we identify with?

Asked whether it matters that Bernstein doesn't specify where the story takes place, Xavi noted that this is actually one of the novel's most interesting features. Initially, he told us, he imagined it taking place in Finland, or perhaps Germany, or Russia. But as he read on, he felt increasingly that the village setting sounded just like somewhere in the UK. The effect of keeping both place and narrator unnamed, he decided, was to make the novel timeless, allowing us to generalise outwards from the story towards what it represents. Overall, this was a powerful and disturbing novel that Xavi recommended at the very highest level.

Our next reader was Max, recommending The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, - a 'chunky novel' he noted. Longer than all the other novels put together, Mr Mahmoud pointed out.  

The novel tells the story of a family in crisis, as their father's business collapses and their previously affluent lifestyle with it. The opening chapters present what happens from the point of view of the family's two children - Cass, a teenage girl, and her younger brother, PJ - and the tone is comic, to the extent, Max felt, that the novel doesn't really feel like a Booker Prize contender at all. But gradually, as the narrative voice expands to include the children's parents, the novel gains depth. By blending these four parallel stories and contrasting perspectives, Max argued, Murray helps us understand the chaos that engulfs the family, and its subsequent unravelling in the face of forces beyond its control, whether that's the turbulence of late capitalism or the threat of ecological collapse. 

The novel has been labelled a 'soap opera', and Max agreed that it offers every kind of emotion, from hilarity to heartbreak, but felt that this doesn't detract from its power. The ending is unresolved: does the tragic denouement we expect actually ensue, or is catastrophe somehow averted? This, Max felt, was the novel's message: can humanity rectify its own mistakes, or is it trapped in the trauma of the past and present? Can humans change? Is the family's fate - by implication our fate - inescapable? You'll have to read it and reach your own conclusion.  

Our next reader was Aditya, introducing Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, a dystopian novel also set in Ireland, and presenting a country in collapse.  Aditya found this an enjoyable but deeply troubling read: the novel's protagonist, Eilish, is by all standards successful and comfortably well off, but as her country topples into totalitarianism, her life is turned upside down.  Mistrust and suspicion shroud every page: the profound societal changes are mirrored by the collapse of her family after her husband disappears.  

Lynch's style, which eschews paragraphing, is relentlessly claustrophobic, and often difficult to read, impeding the flow of the narrative and making the novel initially hard to engage with. But eventually, Aditya felt, your brain adjusts, and the style, and the reader's experience, comes to mirror the impact of the events overwhelming the central character continuously and cumulatively, emphasising her isolation and graphically conveying her disorientating and devastating experiences.  

Prophet Song, Aditya argued, is a powerful and evocative novel, that forces us to put ourselves in Eilish's place, and consider how we might respond to the choice she has to make, between freedom and her family ties - a situation which has an obvious, horrible resonance with contemporary events.  But ultimately, he felt the power of the novel lies not in its situation, but in its central character: if it can happen to her, it could happen to any of us. Although Lynch doesn't give any historical context for the political situation, Aditya thought this doesn't damage the novel, although initially the fact that we join the story half-way, as it were, makes it harder to get drawn in. Dystopian fiction like this, he concluded, is a way of examining the faults in our society and how we could end up with the sorts of events that the novel describes.  

Next up was Sai, who spoke in favour of Western Lane by Chetna Maroo.  

The core motif of this novel, he explained, is a sport - squash - played at competitive levels by Gopi, the young protagonist. The game comes to represent her wider life: in particular, the exhausting, devastating impact of her mother's death. The claustrophobic walls of the squash court at Western Lane (the sports centre where Gopi practises so relentlessly) and the ever present watchers who peer down from on high, evoke the cultural expectations that trap her family under the pressure of grief and loss. Squash is presented as taxing and toxic, but somehow, Gopi has to find the space and make the shots that will enable her to survive and overcome the loss not just of her mother, but also of her father: once her mentor, coach and rock, and now a man hollowed out by grief.

While the main elements of the novel - talent, hard work, the possibility of sporting triumph - might suggest a conventional Hollywood blockbuster plot with a predictable happy ending, this novel is, Sai argued, much more complex. The tension that dominates it is about much more than simply winning and losing a squash game. Sai was impressed by Maroo's calm, confident style, which is underpinned by brevity: the reader recognises the significance of what is left unsaid as much as what is actually stated. There's also a coming-of-age element to the narrative, as Gopi gradually starts to build relationships with different male figures who will replace her increasingly absent and despairing father.  Overall, Sai concluded, this is a moving and compelling novel, which reads as truthfully as an honest memoir, and powerfully accumulates the slow layers of heartbreak.  

Our final reader was Enyu, making his third contribution to Predict the Booker: previous audiences will certainly remember his enthusiastic advocacy for Richard Powers's Bewilderment (which clinched the SPS vote in 2021) as well as last year's blistering take-down of NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory (which definitely didn't).  Enyu explained that what he loves about Predict the Booker is that it gives an A Level English Student the chance to add a bit of contemporary seasoning to their usual diet of Shakespeare and Chaucer. He also paid tribute to the SPS community's dogged inability to make an accurate prediction, finding 'a Sisyphean beauty in the audience's unflinching wrongness' (undoubtedly the quote of the night). Urging us not to let him down by getting it right this year**, Enyu moved on to discuss the final novel on the shortlist: If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery.

Set against the background of the sinking city of Miami, If I Survive You focusses on Trelawney, a young Jamaican-American, and explores the inter-generational rivalries and conflicts that underpins his family and their relationships. From its opening question ('what are you?') the novel interrogates ideas about racial identities through its nuanced portrayal of Trelawney, and his inability to escape stereotyping or racial fetishization, however much he protects himself with humour or educates himself with political theory. Through his experiences, Escoffery conveys the universal immigrant dilemma: who are my people, and where do I belong?

The novel consists of eight inter-connected short stories, and offers a brilliant technical display, a dazzling parade of different tones, voices, genres, viewpoints, tenses and languages (a whole chapter is written in Jamaican patois).  Some might argue that this element of writerly 'flex', as Enyu put it, limits the novel's narrative momentum and makes it a less intimate experience for the reader. On the other hand, the rapidly shifting styles and viewpoints could also be seen as embodying a central idea of the novel, as each chapter makes you re-think the 'message' of the previous one, acknowledging the essentially contradictory nature of experience.

Nevertheless, one of Enyu's criticisms was the weakness of the novel's connective tissue: Trelawney, technically the thread that binds the different stories together, doesn't always feel as if he's the same character from story to story. But perhaps, Enyu reflected, this was exactly the point: Trelawney's shifting identities reflect his different attempts to find a community where he feels he belongs. Asked whether Escoffery's choice to use short stories rather than a linear narrative weakened the ending of the novel, Enyu agreed to some extent but argued that this is deliberate: the difficulty of ending the novel is a reflection of its subject matter - the racial prejudice it represents hasn't reached its conclusion yet. But our evening of Booker predictions had, and it was time for voting to commence.

As always, Mr Mahmoud asked the audience to offer two votes: one for the novel the audience thought should win, and another for the novel they thought would win.  The clear winner of the 'should win' vote, for both our live and online audience, was ...

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, as recommended by Max, with Study for Obedience and Prophet Song tying for second place. 

When it came to deciding which novel would win, the novel that gathered most votes across the two audiences was ...

This Other Eden by Paul Harding, as recommended by Archie. So that's our SPS Booker prediction for 2023.  Will our Sisyphean record of unflinching wrongness continue? Tune in to the Booker Ceremony, broadcast live on youtube (or Radio 4) on Sunday night and find out!

Our thanks as ever to the amazing Pauline readers who produced such brilliant and perceptive analyses of their chosen novels, to Mr Mahmoud for compering with such grace and eloquence, and to Mrs Cummings and Mrs Wilkinson of the Kayton Library for all their hard work and generosity in organising and hosting this event.  See you again next year!  

*No ... the winner was Paul Lynch's Prophet Song. Ah well ...

** Don't worry - we didn't!