My (Brief) Affair with The Booker Shortlist

In which I discuss the six books that appeared on the 2021 Booker Prize short list…

“I have a lover! A lover!” - Madame Bovary.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

Ever since I read (the synopsis) of Madame Bovary in 2012, I have wanted to have an affair. It’s intoxicating, this idea of being a rebellious person who does “bad” things, all in the name of freedom and desire, much like the great women of literature. I come from a long line of adulterers, so one could argue that it’s in my blood. But because I am currently happy in my marriage and the only people I would have an affair with are celebrities or people who are also in happy marriages, I have had to pursue other paths on my way to an entanglement. My latest venture has been by cheating on my National Book Award reading challenge, with the books from the 2021 Booker Prize shortlist.

If I’m making myself out to be the unlikable narrator of an Ottessa Moshfegh novel, let me begin my defense by saying that I had already read three books from the short list before the year had even started. Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. I was a big fan of her memoir, Priestdaddy, and knew that if No One… was even a tenth as funny, it would be a favorite read of the year.

Now, I have seen many people tear this book to shreds, and I’m not going to pretend like I don’t understand why. The reading experience at times feels like throwing back handfuls of skittles, only for every fifth pebble to be rotten—the book pulls its structure from the nightmare inducing Twitter feed, where, depending on who you follow, you could stumble across an innocent Disney meme, a video capturing police violence, and someone’s nude all in one scroll. Lockwood takes this idea and filters it through her lens, stacking each stand alone paragraph on top of each other in a similar way, where you never know if you’re going to get a joke about vaginas or a startling update about the terrible happenings of our world—and I think a major factor of your enjoyment of this book has to do with whether or not you enjoy her humor, her playful structure, or just how close this book feels tied to our own darker reality.

I think that, for me, what I loved about this book was how Lockwood showcased the change in the protagonists priorities throughout the novel. In the first half, she’s so deeply invested in the goings on of the world, but more specifically, what’s happening on social media. She has this constant need to consume everything, fearful of missing any of it. It isn’t until she, along with us as the reader, slowly discover that there’s something happening outside of the internet, something in her real life, that doesn’t fit into her usual scrolling routine, that we begin to feel both her struggle to pull away from bad habits and also her desperate need to be more present in the life outside of the feed. It’s been over a year since I read the book, and there are still many moments that stand out to me. Lockwood—who spent the early part of her career cultivating a very recognizable online persona—has a deep understanding of the blurred lines of the online world to our own. While some aspects of the book itself might not totally cohere, it’s one that I still really enjoyed.

The next book I read from the short list was Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. I actually picked this one up after it was longlisted for the Booker Prize, because I thought it might have a shot at the National Book Award, and my friend Bernie Lombardi (who convinced me to read most of the books we’re discussing today) said he thought I would like it. This doorstopper clocks in at around 600 pages, and it ended up being one of my favorites reads of last year. The story is split into two timelines, one in the early 1900’s following a female aviator, and the other in present day as an actress takes on the role of the aviator in a film. The writing here is splendid, the characters alive and deeply investing, with a plot that makes this hefty book unputdownable. Shipstead has a great understanding of how a big book works and handles this sizable work with ease. I think that because this book is considered more “traditional” in its narrative approach, one could argue against its placement on the shortlist. But I think that a book can be more traditional and still a standout, as long as it’s as well executed as Great Circle is.

If No One Is Talking About This is in the category of the newly established “Great Online Novel”, then Great Circle operates within the “Great American Novel” structure. It’s a very American book in its presentation and ideas. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, just that I think it distinguishes itself from the pack because of this. I also think this one is the most overtly feminist, in many ways, and the one that considers gender the most outright, from these six books. This book was, to me, unexpectedly queer, which only enhanced my enjoyment.

A few days after finishing Great Circle, the National Book Award longlist dropped, and one of the Booker shortlisted books made an appearance—Bewilderment by Richard Powers. Despite the fact that Powers had previously won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, AND received praise from my queen Lauren Groff, I had somehow overlooked him. I picked up Bewilderment at my local bookstore and read the first fifty pages in one sitting.

What I need you to understand about me is that I hate books about dads. I do not like dads, I do not care for dads, I have no need for dads, unless they’re the hot daddies who give me money. That being said, I fell head over heals for the father/son dynamic on display in Bewilderment. In some ways, I feel like Richard Powers is probably the straight man’s Barbara Kingsolver. I don’t know if that actually makes any sense, but I just feel like they both seem to write a lot about nature and the ways we connect to it, and are responsible for it, as humans. They both write beautifully about nature, and somehow manage to tie it all into their exploration of the human condition in a way that feels fresh. With this novel, Powers is considering ideas relating to ecological damage and the anxieties of being human. (would he be considered a “cli-fi” writer? Tell me internet—inquiring minds want to know!) Even if you don’t always get what Powers is saying about nature and the condition of our earth, there’s such a lovely quality to the way he writes about this parent and their child. There’s a real tenderness here, and I think it’s just stellar.

After I finished Bewilderment, I had a brief moment where I considered the fact that every time I unintentionally read a Booker book, I fall in love—but then I shooed the thought away, sticking with my allegiance to the NBA. It really wasn’t until my National Book Award reading project—and then this little liaison with the next three books we’re discussing—that I realized what was missing from my reading life. My friend Bernie is constantly arguing with me over my unwillingness to read things that I have convinced myself I have no interest in. It wasn’t until he and I officially became besties for the resties that I heard him out and decided to pick up some of his latest recommendations.

I started with The Promise by Damon Galgut, the winner of last year’s prize. The novel is about the dissolution of one family over an unkept promise, spanning more than three decades. There was much to love about this novel, from the playful narration to the seamless way Galgut engages with political ideas without it ever obstructing the narrative—it’s entertaining and lively and always engaging. Bernie had sent one of Galgut’s earlier novels to me before this, called The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, and what I found most intriguing was the way that novel and The Promise engage with similar ideas and certain character dynamics, because it showed how long Galgut had been working towards telling this specific type of story.

One thing I noticed while reading this novel was how different Galgut discusses racism and whiteness from U.S. writers. With both The Promise and The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, Galgut is interrogating his own whiteness, is always aware of it in every situation, and how it shapes these character’s lives. Most white U.S. writers tend to avoid discussing the role their whiteness plays into different aspects of their lives, their character’s lives. This is just another form of privilege, really, to not have to engage with the politics of race because it’s not something that’s really had an impact on you. I think reading writers like Galgut has really helped me reconsider the ways that other writers are approaching their work and even how I approach my own work. I love when a book has me considering both the work on the page and how these ideas apply to my real life.

I later moved on to The Fortune Men by Nodifa Mohamed. The novel is set in fifties Wales, when an immigrant is accused of murder. Mohamed does great work here in a narrative sense, with how he allows the miscarriage of justice to play out. Though we know where this story is going, we are kept deeply invested throughout. There were structural elements that fell a bit flat for me—the novel moves back and forth between the two main characters, and it seems he was attempting to create this thematic tie between the two, in a religious sense, but it never quite jelled together for me. But even still, the talent here is undeniable.

The last book on the list was A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam. The novel follows this man Krishan, as he heads to a funeral and contemplates ideas of time, memory, and grief. I found myself head over heels for this one, from the opening paragraph, which asks us to consider what it really means to exist in the present moment and of how much more difficult that becomes as we get older. Arudgrahasam’s structure of the book perfectly compliments this exploration in how, as the narrative moves forward, our narrator continues to be pulled back into the past, almost existing in both moments entirely. It’s Proustian, stylistically and in the ideas it considers, and I loved seeing that through a more modern lens. It also feels like a focus on this novel is what it means to move forward in the aftermath of tragedy, both in personal loss and in the collective impact of the Sri Lankan civil war, and I liked how those things were parallel in the narrative.

Overall, I thought this was a strong short list, with books that have invaded my mind and consumed my heart. Sometimes, when I experience books like these, I always have flashbacks to when I was seven years old, in children’s church, and was told that I would become new when I was saved, washed in the blood of the lamb—for some reason, I always imagined this blood bath to be a swirling portal of red, something I could pass through and become new. Reading these books is sort of what I imagined the passing through would feel like. Maybe that’s what it is to read these books, is to be saved.

I’m glad I had this brief affair with these Booker books. It was reinvigorating, challenging, exciting, the way all good affairs seem to be. I think it’s a sign that I need to open up the marriage between me and the National Book Award. Just to keep things interesting.

If you’ve stayed with me this long, thank you for allowing me the silly affair framework—I can’t help it, I was flipping through Madame Bovary as I read these books and once I have an idea like this, I can’t let it go. I’m hoping that in the next week or two I can finish up the books on the 1961 longlist and discuss those with y’all too, so stay tuned.

Until then,

XOXO.