The Booker Prize is always a strange collection of titles, but what I love about the Longlist is that it introduces me to many authors and books I do not know. From last year's Longlist I discovered I read and enjoyed winner Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, and John Lanchester's The Wall.
I haven't read any of the books on this year's Longlist yet, so let's take a quick look at the nominees:
Diane Cook - The New Wilderness (USA)Five year old Agnes lives in a heavily polluted city. Her mother, Bea, wants to save her daughter from the ravages of climate change so relocates to the Wilderness State. Here they live as nomadic hunter-gatherers, in a vast untouched expanse of nature. Agnes grows wilder while Bea cannot fully seperate from her urban upbringing and they grow further apart. This sounds like an intriguing dystopian novel - my favourite kind!
Tsitsi Dangarembga - This Mournable Body (Zimbabwe)Tambu has left her dead-end job and is now living in an Harare youth hostel. She moves into a boarding house, run by a widow, and takes up work as a biology teacher. Each choice she has to make leads her further away form the future she imagined for herself. This is the third novel which features Tambu, having been the protagonist in Dangarembga's earlier novels Nervous Conditions (1988) and The Book of Not (2006).
Gabriel Krauze - Who They Was (UK)Set in the public housing tower blocks of North West London, this autobiographical novel is about how to survive the violence of street gangs and drug dealers. It is about how you can escape the past but never truly leave it behind. Krauze was part of this world as a gang member in his early life, and has drawn on his personal experiences for his debut novel.
Hilary Mantel - The Mirror and The Light (UK)Mantel completes her Thomas Cromwell trilogy with The Mirror and the Light, finishing what she began with Wolf Hall (2009) and continued with Bringing Up the Bodies (2012). The fact that the previous two volumes won the Booker Prize makes her the hottest contender for this year's award. Opening with the death of Anne Boleyn, we follow Cromwell in his final years, during a volatile period in England in the reign of Henry VIII.
Colum McCann - Apeirogon (Ireland/USA)This novel explores an unlikely friendship between two men on the Israel-Palestine border who are brought together by their shared grief at the loss of their daughters. Israeli Rami's 13 year old daughter is killed by a suicide bomber. Palestinian Bassam's 10 year old daughter is shot by the border police. The novel is written in 1001 fragments of varying lengths which bring the story together like a mosaic.
Maaza Mengiste - The Shadow King (Ethiopia/USA)Set in Ethiopia in 1935, this novel focuses on women soldiers at the start of World War 2. Young Hirut is adapting to her life as a maid in the household of an army officer. As Mussolini invades the country and Hirut finds herself caring for the wounded, frustrated that she cannot do more. She takes action and inspires women to take up arms against the Italians, and is forced to endure life as a prisoner of war.
Kiley Reid - Such a Fun Age (USA)African-American babysitter Emira is asked to take a white toddler out so his mother Alix can work. At the local supermarket a security guard accuses the babysitter of kidnapping the child. Humiliated, Emira is furious at her treatment. When Alix steps in to make things right, messy complications arise. The novel explores class, racism, transactional relationships and the challenges of being young adults in the modern world.
Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain (Scotland/USA)Glasgow, 1981. Agnes Bain wants more from life, but when her husband leaves her and their three children she is trapped and descends into alcoholic despair. Her children try to help her, but they must leave to save themselves. Her son Shuggie stays. Stuart's debut novel is a gritty portrayal of a dysfunctional family living rough in the bleak Thatcher era.
Brandon Taylor - Real Life (USA)
Set in an American midwest university town, a young man is studying for a degree in biochemistry. Black, queer, introverted, Wallace has left behind life and all he knows in Alabama. Self-preservation is key to his survival and he builds a wall behind which even his closest friends cannot penetrate. But at the end of summer, Wallace must confront the trauma of his past in order to determine his future. This is Brandon Taylor's debut novel.
Anne Tyler - Redhead by the Side of the Road (USA)
Baltimore, Maryland is the setting for many of Anne Tyler's novels (including the delightful Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant). Self-employed, mid-40 year old Micah is a creature of habit, leading a very structured life. His routine is disrupted when the woman he has been seeing faces eviction and a teenager shows up claiming to be his son. Tyler has a rare talent of capturing ordinary life with wit and empathy. She was previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015 for her novel A Spool of Blue Thread.
Sophie Ward - Love and Other Thought Experiments (UK)In this experimental novel, Ward was inspired by philosophical thought experiments. Eliza and Rachel are wanting to have a child and have planned out their future as a family. One night Rachel is convinced that an ant is stuck in her eye, but scientist Eliza dismisses this as impossible. Over ten interconnected chapters, each told from a different person's perspective and based on a different known thought experiment, the two women explore love and life.
C Pam Zhang - How Much of These Hills is Gold (USA)In the dying days of the American gold rush, two siblings, aged 12 and 11, find themselves orphaned and alone. As Chinese-American immigrants, Lucy and Sam find themselves unwanted in a western mining town. They place their father's body on their backs and set off across the harsh landscape to find a spot to bury him and a place to call home. This is a debut novel by Chinese-American author Zhang.
Despite the over-abundance of American authors, I am really pleased with the diversity of this year's nominees in that more than half of the authors are writers of colour and nine are women. Of all these titles, the ones I am most interested in are the books by Mantel, Cook, Stuart and Ward. I must admit that I am extremely disappointed that Maggie O'Farrell was not nominated for her brilliant Hamnet. I also wish that there were a Canadian or Australian novel to make the cut. I wonder whether the judges will play it safe by choosing Mantel for the win, making it a trifecta for her Cromwell trilogy, or whether they will aim for something unexpected. We shall see.
Here's what the judges had to say about the longlist.
Here's what the judges had to say about the longlist.
The Shortlist will be announced on 15 September 2020, with the Winner of the £50,000 revealed in November. Better get reading!