G. Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project
O. Moshfegh, Eileen
D. Szalay, All That Man Is
M. Thien. Do Not Say We Have Nothing
On my third, equally doomed, attempt to get through the Booker shortlist before it's announced, I managed three of them, though I did pick the winner. I read Eileen and the Szalay afterwards and they definitely did not change my mind - indeed I'm not sure what Szalay is doing on the list at all. Like the bookmakers, I thought the jury would choose Thien, and it was good - I was particularly struck by the obvious but important insight around how those in the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution were the parents of the 1989 protesters.
Beatty has his own kind of history to tell, and tells it rather brilliantly - but it's really about how we think about race now, or rather specifically how Americans think about race. It's well done, outrageous, and very funny. I've heard him say he doesn't want it to be labelled as a satire and it is hard book to pin down in a genre, though it is definitely at least partly a satire. I'd call it a somewhat madcap fantasy about the complexity of racial politics. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to be the person doing the press lines on the plot.
Beatty has his own kind of history to tell, and tells it rather brilliantly - but it's really about how we think about race now, or rather specifically how Americans think about race. It's well done, outrageous, and very funny. I've heard him say he doesn't want it to be labelled as a satire and it is hard book to pin down in a genre, though it is definitely at least partly a satire. I'd call it a somewhat madcap fantasy about the complexity of racial politics. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to be the person doing the press lines on the plot.
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