2023 NBA Longlist, Reviewed - Part Three

In which we discuss the last four books on the National Book Award - Fiction longlist

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

After a very busy work week, multiple attempts at major life changes, and a rather nasty cold, I have finally finished the 2023 NBA Fiction longlist! While I’m still gathering my thoughts on the list as a whole, I am excited to write about the four books I finally finished this week, which includes two shortlisted books: The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen, and Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal; and two other longlisted books: Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips, and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

I started with Night Watch, by previous NBA-listed author Jane Anne Phillips. This historical novel didn’t really sound like my vibe when I first started, and I saw several critical reviews of this floating around beforehand, so I went in with the squinted eye of skepticism. It’s set during the civil war, following a woman and her daughter who take refuge in an asylum. The book starts from the perspective of the young girl, ConaLee, and it’s through here that we witness the first of multiple acts of sexual violence. I was reminded of the wardrobe scene in Emma Donoghue’s Room, in which the young narrator hears his mother being raped through the doors of the wardrobe, but due to his young age, isn’t fully aware of what is going on. Something similar plays out here. It doesn’t dwell, but it does make an impression of what world we’re in, that these women would experience constant sexual assault due to the very nature of them being women. The man we first meet, ConaLee’s supposed father, turns out to not be her father at all, and he also makes a pass at her before dropping them off at the asylum. I thought the opening scene was strong, did a good job of setting the tone and had a unique narrative voice. I quickly connected with the characters and could easily situate myself in the story.

After this opening is where I had a few ups and downs with this book. There is a pages long rape scene that’s a bit hard to stomach, and I don’t have any issues with rape scenes in books, even those that go on, but it’s also never comfortable to read, and there were times when I questioned the necessity of how long and how often these things happened. I began to feel like I was reading a Joyce Carol Oates novel (if you know, you know). But overall, it ended up being the structure of the story that left me feeling unsteady at times. The way Phillips goes in and out of time works beautifully in some passages and feels clumsy in others. This is a book that’s trying to do a lot of really interesting things and succeeds at most of them, but when it doesn’t land, that makes it all the more noticeable. I also found certain moments a bit try hard, but not as much as a certain NYT critic apparently did. I think the strongest aspects of this book are Philipps’s ear for language, her playfulness of structure and story, and how she manages to stay near truth even when almost exceeding its grasp in favor of heartstrings. I mostly ended up liking this one, but it won’t make my end of year list.

The next book I read was Temple Folk, and I was excited about this one because of the author blurbs. I love short stories, and I had already loved the other collection on this longlist, Holler, Child, which I covered in my previous letter. Bilal is a talented writer, with restrained prose and clear insight into a variety of characters. These stories consider ideas around race, religion, politics, and more, exploring the lives of various characters of different economic backgrounds, with the placement of each story perfectly juxtaposing just how different each life can be. While I found the first story the least intriguing of the bunch, I slowly grew to appreciate Bilal’s stories and found their understated, nuanced depictions to be a welcome change to the more bombastic and attention-grabbing style of something like Loot or Chain-Gang All-Stars. There was a little bit of disappointment on my end when I first started this collection, just because I was just coming off of Holler, Child and I always (maybe unfairly) end up comparing all of the short story collections together in their own way, and I began with the feeling of Holler, Child being stronger thematically and with the prose. But I think both are equally strong, now that I’ve finished both, and I think they’re just doing really different things.

The third book I read was the one that took me the longest, with The End of Drum-Time. It seems to me that out of all of the books on the longlist and shortlist, this is the most divisive. Most every review I’ve seen from a major critic has been glowing, while most every reader review has called it boring, pretentious, and uninteresting to say the least.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Now having read it, I think the reason it hasn’t done well with the average reader is in how it functions as a novel. Because the NBA is an American-based award, featuring American writers, people are used to books that typically show a more American-centric style and lens. But Drum-Time doesn’t necessarily do that. It isn’t really following the conventional rules of American fiction, I don’t think. Not unless you’re considering books from the 50’s and 60’s that operated as mood pieces with little else going on. We saw a small bit of that in books like The Price of Salt and A Single Man, but this book takes the feeling of a book just being “a vibe” and utilizes it in interesting ways, by how Pylväinen creates a mood piece out of the experience of a certain group of people. It’s like we the reader are gently placed into the narrative sand of the Sami people, and slowly sink into their lives and way of being, so we feel truly integrated by the time we really begin to understand the threat to their way of life. the first half of the book almost keeps a feeling of separation between the wielding of christianity against booze and the day to day experience of these reindeer herders. It feels like nothing is happening because nothing is supposed to be happening. These people are living the absolute quietest most ordinary lives, which is part of why I think there’s such a strong emotional impact when you realize that people doing something so ordinary and uneventful could still have their lives changed forever. I find that very powerful. And of course the book is boring at times, books like these sometimes can be boring. But I found the way she wrote about the everyday lives of these people to be profound and beautiful. So I didn’t mind it as much. It may not make my top ten, but I can understand why it made the shortlist.

Now, the last book I read was A Council of Dolls. I just finished this one, so it’s the one I’ve had the least time to process, but I can say that I found it to be one of the more traditionally plotted and easily captivating of the books I’ve read. It goes back in time with each section—I’ve noticed this being the new thing now, with the sectioned books going back in time to either follow the previous generation or someone else in the story—and while I guess it does have this now heavily popular structure, which I think is good to highlight during awards season, I didn’t think each section worked as strongly as I would have hoped. The first section was the strongest to me, and I feel like it could have stood on it’s own—I should check and see if it was published on its own, because that would make sense—the later sections vary in interest, for me. I thought the narrative voice was good, and I liked the characters, and I found the whole doll concept really interesting. I just don’t know what all I think yet, aside from the fact that this was a middle-of-the-road book for me, regarding this award list.

I’m still gathering my thoughts on the longlist as a whole, but I do plan on writing about it soon so stay tuned! I’m excited to feel free to finally move on and read other books. Life has been far too busy to be bogged down by books I’m not thrilled to read right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for a final wrap up later this week!

Until then,

XOXO