The Booker Prize Shortlist 2024

Hello Gentle Reader, 

After longlist which the judges stressed was not about the immediate pressing issues and concerns of today, and then turn face and engage in rhetoric that alluded to the writers being more concerned with immediate social issues; the shortlist also has raised a few eyebrows. Following is this year’s shortlist:

            Charlotte Wood – Australia – “Stone Yard Devotional,”
            Anne Michaels – Canada – “Held,”
            Yael van der Wouden – The Netherlands – “The Safekeep,”
            Percival Everett – United States of America – “James,”
            Samantha Harvey – United Kingdom – “Orbital,”
            Rachel Kushner – United States of America – “Creation Lake,”

For the first time in the Booker Prize’s history, the shortlist is almost made exclusively of women. The American author Percival Everett is only male castaway amongst a feminine sea. Everett’s novel “James,” takes the titular character from the American classic “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and dusts off the cliches and embodies him with a more complex character and hell filled history. Everett proves himself to be an accomplished pastiche writer, forging Twain’s signature parody and satire rooting the novel within its source material, but introduces elements of horror, adventure, and children’s story to examine the framing of race through language, stereotypes, and cliches, to change those narratives. Samantha Harvey’s novel “Orbital,” relays the experience of six astronauts stranded on a space station orbiting earth (much like the current astronauts abandoned above earth). “Orbital,” is described as a science fictional pastoral novel, and indeed dire elegy as it reflects on earth below and the ever-present reality of climate change becoming an ever-present reality and dangerous reality. Rachel Kushner in turn tackles very immediate and present realities in her novel “Creation Lake,” eco-radicals on the verge of terrorism, the absurdity and asinine rhetoric of a post-truth political age, a mounting anticorporation sentiment, all wrapped up in the conventions of a cheap espionage novel that attempts to engage in philosophical digressions. Charlotte Wood’s novel “Stone Yard Devotional,” touches the climate crisis in turn, but enters a quieter and more personal contemplative world, as a conservationist retreats from the world into a monastic life, despite having no attachment or faith in God or any religious proclivity. Yet, from there she reflects on her mother death and ruminates on the nature of forgiveness, grief, and the loss of hope.

Anne Michaels emerges as the dark horse candidate with her novel “Held.” A poet by trade, Anne Michaels is a consummate wordsmith refusing to engage in prosaic language or linear narratives. “Held,” is an elliptical kaleidoscope where dazzling and polished snapshots which grapple with Michael’s persistent themes of memory, history, extended and everlasting trauma, and the human capacity for love and to heal. The novels architecture is collage based, whereby different characters and stories cycle through. The repetition of association and motifs propels the narrative and burrows deeper into the characters consciousness. Rather than sculpting and defining, Anne Michael’s provides exquisite flashes of insight to detail her characters rather then delineate them into stationary existence both in reality and time, as the novel fluidly maneuvers through the 20^th century recounting four generations of a family. For Anne Michaels time is not an obstacle but a current.

Yael van der Wouden remains the first Dutch writer to be nominated let alone shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and her novel “The Safekeep,” is the only debut work on the shortlist. “The Safekeep,” pathologically examines the guilt of history and one’s own denial of their failure and perhaps complicity in the atrocities. Taking place 15 years after the Second World War the novel described as a society failing to come to terms with the fate of the Dutch Jews. The stoic, sour, and ill-tempered Isabel resides alone in her childhood home after her moth dies. Her life is ordered by routine and indignation towards her brother disapproving of them in turn, for the one is gay and the other a dreaming romantic fool, who sends his fiancé to Isabel, like a lamb to slaughter, which only ignites an even more twisted and erotically charged narrative. Yael van der Wouden explores themes of repression both on a macro and personal level, which moves further and further away from other shortlisted titles and their socially concerned novels.

The shortlist certainly has its standout and stellar novels, but also provides enough suspicion on topics they judges felt compelled to highlight or single out. When they attempted to dismiss the longlist as novels concerned with the pressing concerns of today, they failed to sell point and the shortlist only distills that some of the novels have more topical agendas then others. There is nothing wrong with that, but don’t attempt to conceal this glaringly obvious fact.

Best of luck to the shortlisted writers.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary