– LVI –

Everyone becomes an expert on life and how to live it, when of course it's not their own.

Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist

Hello Gentle Reader,

The Booker Prize Shortlist has been revealed, leaning heavily towards established authorial voices with a few up and comers in the fray to even it out. Without further delay here is this year’s shortlist:

            Marlon James – “The Disappearers,”
            Elizabeth Strout – “The Things We Never Say,”
            M. John Harrison – “The End of Everything,”
            Rebecca Perry – “May We Feed the King,”
            Luke Kennard – “Black Bag,”
            Douglas Stuart – “John of John,”

The shortlist is dominated by Marlon James, Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart. Both Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have both already won the award, and by all accounts relatively recently, 2015 for James and 2020 for Stuart. There was a relatively short double award period for Hilary Mantel as well (2009 and 2012), where previous double winners waited over a decade to win the prize a second time. This has always been a massive complaint leveraged against the Booker Prize, with its inability to look beyond itself at times. Re-awarding the usual candidates who have already won or been nominated prior. This year’s shortlist is a prime example of this insularity in judging; however, Marlon James's novel “The Disappearers,” has been described as yet another masterpiece. It would not be surprising to see James win this year’s award.

Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are the two outliers on this year’s award. Both of their novels are certainly an off-kilter injection of the world. Specifically in the case of Luke Kennard whose novel “Black Bag,” has all the satire and almost implausible premise of Ali Smith’s novel “There but for the,” which was critically omitted from the Booker Prize in 2011, and was considered a massive snub. “Black Bag,” equally delights in its psychological probing and satire of the modern world, and just how warped our definition of reality is becoming. Whereas Rebecca Perry’s novel “May We Feed the King,” has been praised as a strong debut. Recounting the parrel lives of one museum curator and one reluctant king, the novel has been described as a meditation on history and the nature of storytelling, in addition to our fantasies of the past in attempts to escape from our present.

To go without saying, M. John Harrision is this year’s dark horse with his unapologetic literary science fiction novel: “The End of Everything.”

Ultimately, Gentle Reader, Marlon James appears to be the strongest contender (based on critical consensus) for this year’s prize. Though, either Luke Kennard, Rebecca Perry or M. John Harrison may challenge this assumption, with their unique visions and purviews of society. It is, however, disappointing to see some writers cut. Specifically, Gwendoline Riley with her novel “The Palm House.” There’s something compelling about Riley’s stainless-steel musical prose. How on a prosody level its euphonious intricacies ring out crystalline clarity in its brevity; a complete contrast to Riley's contemporaries, who are the usual austere anemic grey minimalists. Nothing short of a lifeless brood. Whereas Riley’s work has the surgeon’s proclivity and pathologist eye for examining the existential and urban dissatisfaction of individuals cast a drift in an increasingly alienated, damaged and fragmented reality, which reveals a loss of innocence and a growing sense of disillusionment; all delivered in Riley's signature deadpan manner; the other hallmark of Riley's dry ice wit is her gallows humour. Certainly, an underrated writer.

Congratulations to the shortlisted writers. It’ll be interesting to see who wins this year’s prize.

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

The Eighth Day

Hello Gentle Reader,  

As they say, every season has its personality. In the same fashion as every month has its character. Spring is coloured in verdant hues. Rejuvenated and flourishing in the renewal. Easter, however, views resurrection as a possibility only after sacrifice and repentance. Regardless, rejoice in the sense of reawakening. While summer operates as a dream. Brilliant, bright and burning. A season of perpetual youth. Love enriched by the sun; the doom concealed by the haze of heat. Days spent on holidays. Beach getaways. Afternoons in the park; be it picnics or passing time. Smoldering nights, carried through by bonfires, music and dancing. For those seeking depletion and darkness, look no further then January. A month already spent and exhausted. Everyone reduced to shades shuffling into the darkness that is the shadow and tunnel of the New Year. November is a month coloured in gunmetal grey. Cemetery light hanging overhead, with an air of remembrance awash over austere fields. August is the dreams end. A month of brilliant finality, having resigned itself to the fate of extinguishment, while still bursting with summertime celebrations. When it comes to September, the argument maybe, that the year really begins then. The expectations are already understood. Leaves stiffen up, drained of summers folly. Then the adoption of the regalia of departure. As the days reduce, the light distances itself. The trees dress for the ball in their gold, yellow, orange and red. Morning dew replaced with diamond frost. What follows suit is the fall. The freefall leaving. The forest begins to close up shop. Squirrels race to stock up. Their hovels now hoarding for the future. Birds have already flown the coop. Empty nests left behind. What a fair weather of a friend they are. Still as the geese honk in their ‘V’ flock formations, as the day races for the horizon (and its only 7:30pm), you still watch them go, knowing summer has come to an end. A sentimental soul would mourn the end. Thankfully you’ve been spared such a disposition.

September does bring with it clarity and sobriety. This is the month of the Harvest Moon. And what a moon. A reassuring presence hanging over head. A lantern, whose glow baptises the night in a yellow to clearing milk white light of steady calm. Out in the country, there are desperate and later farmers still at work in their fields. Reaping away as they do, before the first snowfall. Now days, they are less reliant on the generosity of moonlight. Having been emancipated from the whims of the celestial calendar and cycle. Their machines illuminate with glaring panache. The countryside, fields and farm are now floodlit with the spotlights of these agricultural machines cutting and swathing through them. For the uninitiated, such an irradiated showcase might bring to mind a man hunt or a search and rescue mission. In the way the lights scan and pierce through the night, piercing and ripping away all its concealing cover. The nights have never been brighter. Then there is the familiar march. The back-to-school trudge. The children pack along down the street, shuffling in the weak and dim morning light. No matter one’s age, they inevitably remember being school age and dreading the return. Placed back in routine; back on schedule. The conversations about timetables, course listings and classes. Then there is the dreary walk home. Spent and exhausted from the day’s curriculum being lectured over. Older generations though insisted. Education equals opportunity. You have no idea. Despite this, in the country, before today’s automation, students whose families worked the land, hanged back to help with the harvest. Their truancy marked as absent by the teachers with brisk, tsk tsk tsks.

Since reading “A Little Party Dress,” I’ve considered myself a delighted admirer of the late French writer Christian Bobin, whose lyrical and meditative essays are a breath of fresh air. They are compositions which reflectively review the bewildering reality that surround and abound. Though, these days, people are less aware or inclined to observe the world around them. Bobin once rallied and raged against the television as the source and wellspring of evil, in the collection, “I Never Dared Hope for You.” Bobin accused that box sitting in the corner of living rooms of dispatching the horrors, carnage, chaos and tragedy from around the world into the living rooms of its viewers, as some form of cheap entertainment. Not that scripted dramas have hauled themselves up to a standard of impeachable moral probity either. In a race to being transgressive they find new ways to push the envelope of decency through their simulated acts of violence and torture. The more explicit the better. While an audiences delight with a perverse depravity. Even sex (once taboo on its own, reduced to insinuation) has been stripped of its sensuality, replaced by graphic brutality, assault and rape. Then there is reality television. This on its own has found new ways to unleash and capitalise on the carnal instincts of people. Revealing not the decadence of the soul, but its squalor. Phones have now all but replaced the television. The ‘evil,’ Christian Bobin lamented about, had spawned wings. At least with the television, there was at least the reprieve, the sigh of relief, with the knowledge it remained incarcerated in the house. Relegated to the corner of the living room. Mobile phones though, with their lamprey hold, have sucked the attention away and down. True the world spins; perhaps ever closer to calamity and crisis, and yet people appear pacified by their phones. Rather in a fashion similar to gamblers in the casino. Locked into slot machines. The lights. The anticipation. The prospect. Out in the distance bells chime and lights flash. Winner, winner. Now that could be you. Spin away. It’s a rather common sight today. To observe people strolling about looking down. Commuting on public transit and looking down. Waiting for the bus or their ride share and looking down. Queuing in lines and looking down. The worst is in the restaurants. Groups or couples sitting together and lost in the insularity of their screens. The death of the art of conversation was never silence; it was the rapid riptide of distraction. There has been no replacement of correction though. Rather, the sustained exasperation of alienation.

“The Eighth Day,” does not quite follow in the same context as “A Little Party Dress,” and “I Never Dared Hope for You,” which were two complete collections on their own. Slim volumes, but what they lacked in size, they more then compensated with artistry and depth. Both “A Little Party Dress,” and “I Never Dared Hope for You,” show Christian Bobin at the top of his game. Both collections were summarised as “lyrical essays,” whereby the author delighted in showcasing his alchemical approach to prose, by having no allegiance to any set school or parameter. Instead fusing memory, reflection, essay, fragment, vignette and meditation into these original compositions of lumine thought. “The Eighth Day,” in turn operates more as an anthology of Bobin’s work, assembling eleven different compositions from across Bobin's bibliography by translator Pauline Matarasso. Additionally, Matarasso introduced each piece with her own analysis and thoughts on the work. Furthermore, Matarasso took great pains in this anthology to depict and categorise Christian Bobin as a poet. While it was certainly meant as a great compliment, it would be a great dissatisfaction and deterrent to many readers to read or understand Bobin within the rigorous and formalistically fastidious school of poetry. Poetry as a term unto itself, will inevitably cause many to either turn their nose up at it or find themselves experiencing sudden onset nausea. Poetry has inevitably been darkened by academia and school in general, in how its taught. To quote a friend of mine: ‘poetry is as heartwarming as cold medicine or cod liver oil. It’s something you need to hold your nose to get through. It carries all the connotations of being good for you. It lacks any sense of enjoyment. Its entirely prescriptive, with no redeeming qualities.’ I do not share this perspective; I do understand and empathise with it. For readers of “The Eighth Day,” I recommend they bypass Matarasso’s introductions and analysis to the text, and come to their own conclusions with the texts on hand. Despite this, Christian Bobin still shines through. As ever, Bobin reveals himself as contemplative in approach; exquisite in prose style and delivery; while being meticulous in capturing and chronicling his descriptions of the world around him and the interior resonance within.

“On the day of her mother’s funeral, C. got stung by a bee. The courtyard of the family house was full of people. I saw the child, in the infinity of her four years, between the shock of the pain and the welling up of tears, scan the crowd urgently for her own sure source of comfort, and then cut short the search, having learnt at a stroke the meaning of absence and death. This scene which only lasted a few seconds, was the most poignant I have seen. There comes a moment for all of us when a knowledge past consoling enters our souls, and renders it. It is in this light of that moment, whether it has decidedly come to us or not, that we should speak to one another, love one another and if possible, laugh together.”

As with any anthology, “The Eighth Day,” rather bumped along. The essays never did quite jive well with each other. Rather it’s a smattering of offerings, akin to a box of chocolates at Christmas. Different offerings and testers. A unified or complete collection, would instead move through with a sense of clear transparent uniformity, rather like a window pane or glass. Frequently, with this collection, Christian Bobin’s authorial voice appeared ever present, as if the author were a vessel in which his recollections and thoughts were being released from, but acknowledgement needed to be made or due, with a double down on aphorisms or almost diary like entries. For example the above quoted passage, at his best, Bobin would let the scene rest concluding with “[ . . . ] was the most poignant I have seen,” rather then veer off into a sermon. Bobin’s strength has always been his motivation to write to get outside of himself. The assembled pieces, did not always deliver on that front. However, one particular one did: “Queen, King, Jack.” Matarasso described it as Christian Bobin writing himself his own fairy tale (it was at this point I disregarded her introductions moving forward). The piece, however, shows Bobin at his best, complete his propensity for lyricism, capturing texture, colour, and plays of light remarkably well. Other pieces were devastating in their own revelations and meditations, specifically Bobin’s fathers’ erasure into Alzheimer’s. A nice collection to read for completist measures in English (currently); but certainly not a recommended entry point. 

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