Your almost got them all this year, Martin. I guess you're going to have to slog through The Lives of Others. Let us know if it's worth it.

Thanks for posting this, Martin! I do count on your yearly report to us.

Rosefolly

This is an interesting book. It has two parts, which are called "Eye" and "Camera". The book has had two print runs - one of them has "Eye" first, then "Camera" - the other is the other way round. I read "Eye" then "Camera" - and as a result, I may not be reading quite the same book as you might read.

I really loved this book, and I do really fancy it to win - hence, I'm going to give you a very slimmed-down not-too-much-in-the-way-of-spoilers review. It would be a great book for a discussion.

"Eye" is about an artist of the fifteenth century. "Camera" is about teenager whose mother has died in the present day. "Eye" and "Camera" have a lot in common - for example, in "Eye", the artist paints some frescoes which the teenager and the mother visit in "Camera".

Really, I don't want to say any more. There are reviews on the internet which give away more than I'm telling, but I think it's more fun to find out yourself how the connections work, and how the book's title is just perfect. The writing is beautiful, and the gimmick works really well. I loved it - go and read it !

I read "Eye" followed by "Camera". I think that "Camera" followed by "Eye" works better. But both are wonderful.

If anyone is interested, I can do a "spoiler" review which will tell you rather more about the book and the stories. There are no major spoilers, but I'll give away stuff you might prefer to find out yourself.

Martin, You've convinced me to put this on my TBR list and it sounds like an excellent book for the book club. Thanks for the review.

I was wondering if you agreed with a review of The Bone Clocks that it was like a starburst candy, fun but empty calories.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bone Clocks review

I was going to put How to be Both on hold but my library system doesn't have it yet. I hope I don't forget to keep looking for it; it sounds interesting.

OK - another one where I have to review it without giving away a spoiler.

It's a first-person story, about a girl and her family. She loses her sister when she is five, and her brother runs away when she is twelve. The book is basically about how she deals with these events, and about how the events occur.

It's a very interesting book - the story is told from the middle, outwards, so to speak, rather than telling it sequentially. There are some characters I found very unconvincing - one in particular was downright annoying. But the book is fascinating. And I'm missing out one very important spoiler which changes the whole way you think about the book.

Will it win? Probably not. But I think it deserved its place on the shortlist.

Rouan - just a thought. How To Be Both is published on Dec 2nd in the US. It'll probably hit your library system about a week earlier. Stick a note in your diary!

Sarahcanary - you've read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (which came as no surprise to me :) ) - would you like to review it here?

I'm now re-reading To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.

Our hero is a dentist - quite a successful one. For some reason, he resists getting a web-site for his dental practice - so he is very puzzled to discover a web-site has actually been made for his practice. Over the course of time, he finds postings made on forums in his name, and a twitter account; the postings are about a strange religion called the Ulms, which are some sort of strange Jewish-like (but not Jewish) religion, whose basic tenet is the doubt the existence of God. The story is about him, and how he finds out more about this strange religion, and how it affects him.

It's actually better than it sounds. But to my mind, it can't make up its mind whether it is an amusing satire about modern society, or a serious discussion about what religion is actually about. As a result, it fails to deliver on either. Still, it does have some excellent jokes. The problem is that they are just that - jokes told by the characters, not jokes in the sense of a comedy.

I don't expect it to win. I'm rather surprised it was shortlisted.

Now onto The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Thanks for the suggestion Martin; I will also put a reminder on my work calendar to remind me to look for it.

Martin - It's been a while since I read "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," and it is hard to say much about this book without giving the major plot point away, as you pointed out. One thing I might add to what you said, is that the book is not only about the effect the loss of the sister has on the main character, but the effect it has on her whole family.

I agree with what you said about the characters, although I confess to finding some of them intriguing. It is certainly not my favorite Fowler book, but it does bring up some interesting ethical topics and might be an interesting book to discuss here if others are interested in reading it.

These books sound very interesting. I requested from the library: "Bone Clocks, J and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" for a start.

I have started to listen to The Bone Clocks on BBC Radio 4's 'A Book at Bedtime' which will be broadcast for the next three weeks Mon - Fri. Hope I manage all 15 episodes as it doesn't start until 10.45pm and I often fall asleep after a couple of minutes. ;-(

Here is a link that might be useful: The Bone Clocks

This post was edited by veer on Tue, Sep 23, 14 at 4:19

OK, so I managed to read it this time.

It's a blockbuster of a novel, about 550 pages. And, to be fair, it's well written and keeps your interest. It's about a middle-class family in Calcutta from about 1920 to 1970 or thereabouts. However, it's not written serially - that would be too easy! But it's never really confusing.

One nice touch is that for a considerable part of the book, there are two stories - one young man runs away to become a communist guerilla, and while he's away, his story is told in alternating chapters as a first-person diary as if written to a girlfriend. The rest of the story is normal third person.

But I have several criticisms of the book. The first is that there seems to be nothing new here. It's a story of a family during a large part of the twentieth century - well, so what? That's been done over and over again. And the family doesn't seem to have a single person likeable person in it. Well, perhaps one. Most of them range from a bit surly to downright nasty. The other, more serious criticism is that there is just too much going on. We have in this family a communist guerilla, a maths genius, a drug addict, someone who is addicted to kinky sex (I won't specify, but the book spells it out in a most unpleasant chapter), and a girl who has a cast in one eye and darker skin than normal, which makes her unmarriagable. One of these - perhaps two - in a family might not seem reasonable. All of them (and there are one of two other more dysfunctional characters as well) seems unbelievable. I think there could have been two or three shorter novels here.

It tells a story about a time and place I knew very little about. That in itself is quite interesting. But set against, that, it's too long, too convoluted, has practically no sympathetic characters, has some most graphic descriptions of violence (including a scene I had to skip over) and is, in the end, just a bit too much.

I'll be astounded if it wins - to my mind, the flaws massively outweigh the good points. I'm frankly surprised it was short-listed.

Before I read The Lives of Others I started to re-read The Narrow Road to the Deep North but I abandoned it after forty pages. I just didn't want to grind through a story of Japanese POWs again. And the love story didn't have anything particularly interesting to tell, either. The main character, though flawed, is at least basically a decent person. It's another book where it was well written, but I really didn't think it had anything new to say. But it takes a long time saying it.

However, it's probably a more convincing story than The Lives of Others - it might win, but I'd be disappointed if it does.

Now, onto J. Should finish in time to be able to do a final wrap-up and spectacularly inaccurate prediction before the winner is announced on October 14th.

Well, not exactly more. But I've just re-read the previous threads about the Booker. And I've been reminded about The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri - it was also about Calcutta and the revolutionary uprisings in the sixties and seventies. And it was short-listed only last year.

So, I'm even more justified in my assertion that The Lives of Others isn't doing anything new.

Let me say immediately that I'm not a fan of Howard Jacobson. He won the Booker in 2010 with The Finkler Question which I didn't like at all. He's meant to be very funny, but it does nothing for me. And his books seem to make a bit too much about being Jewish for my liking.

Which makes it all the more surprising how much I like this one. It's a dystopian novel, and it's a very serious book - quite a departure for him. It's about some time in the future, after SOMETHING HAPPENED - IF IT HAPPENED. The story is set in a small village, and revolves around the rather sweet love affair between Aileen and Kevern. As the book moves on, we discover more about the way the society is set up, and the way that people act towards each other. They are forever apologising to each other for the slightest wrong, and trying to act in a reasonable way - but are forever irritable with each other, too.

I don't want to give anything away - it's a book where you slowly unravel what's going on as you read it. Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and this time, I would have no objection if Jacobson won this year!

J - has to have a good chance
How to be both - I'd love it to win, but I suspect not.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North - feels like a Booker Winner, but I hope not.
The Lives of Others - ditto
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour - I'd be astounded if it wins.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - I don't think so, though I wouldn't mind if it did.

A pretty good short-list this year.

Prize announced on October 14th

This is quite interesting - it's all six authors on the shortlist discussing what made them write the books they wrote. Be careful, though - there are definite spoilers in the discussions. You may prefer to read these AFTER you've read the books :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Booker Shortlist - Author Inspiration

Interesting piece, Martin. Thanks for posting.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Sigh.

A cop-out by the judges. Such an obvious winner. Oh, well. A good short-list and a disappointing winner. Like last year.

Martin, an interesting interview with the author, Richard Flanagan, this morning on the BBC Today programme talking about the growth of 'Australian' literature.

Btw I've just added the word programme to my computer's 'dictionary' . . . ;-)

A lot of interest here in Australia.
So many men were in the camps and some families still have survivors with tales to tell. The resilience and heroism was incredible.
Not many wanted to talk about those times but perhaps they should have.
Today yet again a memorial to the fallen has been tagged and vandalised.
It upsets and angers the Returned Soldiers (veterans) so much.