2023 NBA Longlist, Reviewed - Part Two

In which we take a look at three more of the NBA longlisted books and see what all of the fuss is about...

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

I know the National Book Award Fiction shortlist dropped this morning—I have plenty of thoughts—but I am holding off until I finish reading the rest of the longlist before chiming in. Today, I wanted to talk about three of the longlisted books I’ve read over the last week, how they compare to the ones I wrote about in my last newsletter, and what I’m looking forward to with the four books left.

I started by re-reading Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which seems like most people’s pick to win this year’s award, and a book I didn’t love when I listened to it on audio. Upon reading the book in print, I liked it a whole lot more—I think it’s compelling and thought provoking and engaging. I saw someone describe it as The Hunger Games meets the prison industrial complex, and I don’t think that’s inaccurate. I find this description of the book complicated—on the one hand, at face value this book isn’t doing too much that’s really “new”, per se, especially if you’ve read a lot of books within this genre. My husband—an avid reader of genre fiction—enjoyed this book, but knew where the story was going and didn’t really find anything too new or surprising thematically. I know a lot of people who primarily read “literary” fiction found this fresh and exciting. Maybe it’s just that this book is a perfect marriage of elevated language and ideas, grownup action, and expertly fitting topical conversation into a popular mode of genre fiction. Who can say? Not me.

To be clear, I think this was a good book, and I’m glad it made the list—I think it’s well-crafted and exciting and it also stylistically represents where American fiction seems to be heading. For that reason, I could understand it winning. This isn’t the type of book I usually gravitate towards, but I think it’s a worthy contender. I’m still meh about the foot notes—I personally didn’t think they were necessary, but I also know people who found them very informative, so, again, a reader-by-reader basis. Overall, though, I appreciate what it’s doing.

The next book I read was the Booker-shortlisted This Other Eden by Paul Harding. Harding won the Pulitzer back in 2010 for his novel Tinkers, and it’s really interesting to consider the reception of that book by general readers and how it parallels the inclusion of his latest novel on all of these lists now. When Harding won the Pulitzer, people were kind of gooped and gagged, seeing as Tinkers was published by a tiny publisher, hardly anyone had read it, and it was one of those quiet novels that always gets overlooked by the big, bombastic books that are also backed by one of the many imprints of PRH. It definitely reads like Marilynne Robinson=lite, but I also really enjoyed Tinkers, so I was excited to dive into This Other Eden when it first came out. While I definitely think Tinkers is a more investing novel overall, This Other Eden —on a sentence level—is one of the strongest books on the list. There are times when Harding tries too hard, and these little moments almost distract too much from the quiet moments of beauty he has throughout the book, and I also don’t think he landed the ending here, but I do think as far as being “well-written”, this one is pretty stellar. It actually reminds me in small ways of another Booker finalist, The Bee Sting, in how both spend so much time on small, intimate moments, and really let them play out. This is Harding’s strong suit, I think, and the reason why this novel is as impactful as it is.

Where Chain-Gang All-Stars doesn’t always feel fresh, but does a lot within the confines of its playground, This Other Eden tries various stylistic and narrative things that work to varying degrees. In this way, I guess one has to weigh out which is more deserving—the book that takes chances and sometimes fails, or the book that isn’t doing a ton of new stuff but executes it so well. I’m back and forth on it.

The third book I read last week was Holler, Child by Latoya Watkins. This one has been my favorite of the books I’ve read so far—stellar prose, captivating narratives, fully developed characters, so many surprises and inventive approaches to these various stories. This one didn’t make the shortlist, unfortunately, or else I would be rooting for it to win. There’s something about the way Watkins crafts such conversational prose with pure poetry that reminds me of much of the dialogue in Toni Morrison’s work. It’s rich and filled with so much meaning, but never verbose or overwrought. So much of this collection deals with loss, particularly child loss—through death, loss of innocence, etc—and I think this creates such a visceral response throughout the reading. There are also a lot of animals throughout this story, and I thought it was interesting, the way she uses them to symbolize various things throughout the stories. It’s hard not to rave about this one, but I truly loved it and now I want to read Watkins novel, asap!

So far, this list hasn’t been as disappointing as last year’s—while there were a handful on that list that I liked, I was disappointed with the list overall, and with this list I can at least say that I have enjoyed them for the most part. I am anxious to see what the ones I have left are like. I started Night Watch and am two thirds in—I’m liking it, but not loving, but it does make me curious to know what her other work is like. I have all of her other books, so I will eventually report back.

If you’ve got any thoughts about the books we looked at today, let me know! I’ll be back this weekend to cover the last four books on the list, so stay tuned!

Until then,

XOXO