Booker Longlist Announcement – some hopes rather than predictions..

It’s the Booker Longlist announcement next Tuesday, and I have been just looking back at what I have read that is likely to have a chance. They are is ascending order as regards my own enjoyment of them..

I’m keen to hear if anyone else has read anything they think could have a chance..

Said The Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa – a blend of fact and fiction that centres around the records of female patients in Cork District Lunatic Asylum at the turn of the 20th century; a ghost story of sorts.

Communion by Jon Doyle – Set in Port Talbot, Wales, during The Passion, a 72 hour National Theatre of Wales production staged across the town over Easter weekend in 2011, this concerns Mack, a former seminarian now working rather as a security guard at the local steelworks, where many of the men, including his father, find work.

Arborescence by Rhett Davies – imagines a world in which people choose to show solidarity with the planet by becoming trees.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his mother) by Rabih Alameddine – finding humour in traumatic times; the Civil War in Lebanon, the country’s financial crash in 2019, and the Covid pandemic. But the novel covers an even wider period than that, the protagonist’s childhood and life as a young adult.

The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin – I’m hopeful here as I don’t think this is the sort of think Booker will go for, but arguably it is Vlautin’s best to date.. Eddie Wilkens, in his forties, a painter and decorator, whose largely trouble-free days occasionally require him to deal with his unreliable and alcoholic assistant, Houston.

This Is Where The Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin – an outstanding book explores the lives of several wonderfully described characters as they age through a post-partition Pakistan to the modern day.

and, Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam – which I’ve just finished and much enjoyed. My short review is below..

<blockquote>AND THUS DO THESE MAN WHOOP ON, three boys in a four-seater, lights beaming it down the winding, binding road, blurring past whistling women and winking men, banging out bare bhangra bangers like there’s no tomorrow, bruv.</blockquote>

Three British Pakistani lads in their early twenties cruise down Manchester’s infamous Curry Mile about to embark on a night out that will, the reader knows from the outset, somehow end in tears.

Immy is fresh out of a broken relationship, but has convinced himself that meaningless flings will help block out the pain.

Khan, a Cambridge graduate about to start his dream job, is still grieving the death of his brother while aware that a side hustle he has taken on could ruin everything.

Haris is the most sensitive and devout of the three, and just a few days away from marrying the perfect Muslim woman, but doubt creeps in.

The structure of the novel is quite unique; once used to it, it becomes one of the book’s most appealing features. Sufiyaan takes one themes like male friendship, modern day masculinity, violence, and love, but what makes it so enjoyable is its humour.

There is an outstanding scene, spread across Chapters 9 and 10 which takes place in a restaurant with an India Pakistan cricket match (a fictional one as far as I can make out) on the TV in the background.