Tag: Man Booker Prize

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The Luminaries-Eleanor Catton

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2013, The Luminaries is an extraordinary work that uses well known and recognisable story telling techniques, all while pulling the wool over our eyes. A whopping great tome of 832 pages Catton uses 19th century language and styling in a way that will be familiar to most readers. But the story and the handling of character development are not.

Set on the west coast of southern New Zealand during the gold rush of the 1860 weaves together a cast of characters that start out as disparate entities but their lives and their tales become increasingly entwined as they each retell their version of events. At the centre of the narrative is a controversy surrounding the suspicious death of a local hermit; the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy member of the community; the passing out of a popular working girl in the main street as a result of some dodgy opium and the ownership of a pile of gold.

The opening of the book is as much a part of the great deception of this book as anything else. We are presented in the opening pages with elaborately drawn astrological charts and character tables which leads you to think that you have your work cut out for you. I was expecting something of the weight and complexity of a Wolf Hall or Bringing Up the Bodies. But, the more you read, the lighter the story becomes. The characters become less substantial and the story becomes less important.

This book is more of an intellectual exercise than a work of storytelling. It challenges the reader to question what we expect from a novel like this. For me I must admit that I’m not entirely convinced that the experiment worked. It seems that I still need a bit more of a story to maintain my interest, because I found my connection with the book waned from about the 300 page or so and it became a bit of a chore to finish. Given that, I’m not all together convinced that this was the book I would have picked to win the Man Booker. Of  short-listed entries for the same year I prefer the Colm Toibin. However, the fun thing about literary prizes is the debates you can have over the result, so I would encourage you to give this a go so that you can join the discussion.

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The Sense of an Ending- Julian Barnes

I read the other day that the Man Booker Prize  for 2011 had been awarded to The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. It occurred to me that I had the book in ‘My Tower of Shame’, I decided it was time to see what the fuss was about. The only thing that stopped me reading this in one sitting was that I had to go to sleep to get up for work the next morning. Unlike some books that win various prizes, that when read leave you wondering what the judges were thinking, this book is excellent.

It is in a sense a memoir, but not. It is about history, the personal kind, and the fallibility of memory for the reliable retelling of our stories. It is the story of Tony Webster, now in his sixties. He is remembering the key moments in his youth. His friendship with boys he met at school, and most notably that of Adrian, the boy who came to the group late, and whose high opinion the other sought. He remembers the first woman he loved, and the lasting effect that his own interpretation of the memories of that time have had on him. It is also about suicide, and divorce and being a father, and of life continuing on and on to its inevitable conclusion. He talks about how when we are young, we are ‘still waiting for life to start, not realising that it has in fact already begun’. Then in our middle age we realise that the opportunities to effect any real change in our lives has gone, and that this is probably ‘it’.

I just finished reading this morning, and I confess that a lot of it has probably gone over my head, and I won’t get it until after, when I’ve had a chance to ruminate and mull over it. But, that in itself is a measure of how superb this book is. So many books are fine, and a good way to pass the time and escape from reality for a while. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact it can be a pleasure in and of itself. But, great literature is the kind that stays with you for months, if not years later, while you try to figure out the enigma of it.

A great book and a worthy winner, and at no more than 150 pages a quick and satisfying read. Well worth picking up.

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Cloud Atlas- David Mitchell

Cover of "Cloud Atlas"
Cover of Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell was published in 2004, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  It is a series of six short stories, spread across time beginning in the 1800’s and finishing in a post- apocalyptic future.

In addition to being six stories, it is also divided into two halves. In the first half we move through each story, in chronological order, moving forwards through time. Each story comes to an abrupt end, leaving the reader anxious to know what comes next, only to continue on into the next. The experience is not unlike watching television. We move from historical fiction, through to 1970’s political thriller, to a futurist sci-fi drama, with no more than the turning of a page.  A testament to how good this guy is as a writer, despite the shock of being dragged away from a story that we have become emotionally involved in, we are quickly sucked into the new world within no more than a few paragraphs.

Something else that is noteworthy is that with each change of story, as well as changing between eras and genres, each story has a new voice, they are all written from a different point-of-view.

As I said the book is in two halves. The first half is mainly concerned with the narrative of each individual story. The reader is vaguely aware of a ‘link’ between them, but we are absorbed in the ‘here-and-now’ of each new story. But, something happens about mid-way through the sixth story (incidentally the only one of the six that is told without any break). The book shifts from being merely a description of the events unfolding, and begins to explore some far bigger, and weightier issues. It starts to ask some big questions about freedom, about the role and nature of history, about the difference between civilisation and barbarism (and who gets to decide which is which). Following the conclusion of the sixth story, we start moving back through the other five stories (from where we left off) in reverse chronological order.

This book is brilliant. There were times when I was reading where I felt compelled to write down quotes from it, to remember later. Other times I simply had to sit and ponder the questions that this book asks of it reader. I had to leave a full day before I could even think about starting another book, because I had been so deeply affected, and didn’t want that feeling to go away.

Apparently, this book has been made into a film, set for release sometime in 2011. I’m not sure whether this will translate on to the screen effectively. But, I understand the impulse of those behind the project to want to share this with as many people as possible.

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