2010 Prize Winners Reviews

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I thought it would be good to share our opinions of the books that raked in the prizes last year.

I'll start with my impressions so far of the books that made the Booker shortlist. I have already reviewed Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America and gave it a rave.

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson

This is the book that won the Booker last year. The question of the title is asked by Jeremy, the central character, who wonders whether his Jewish friends have some inside secret to life that sets them apart. Following a mugging where he is called a Jew, he seeks to learn about and embrace Jewish culture, but never quite obtains that insider status. While not a bad read, this is a turgid novel about very little really. If this is the best novel published in the Commonwealth in 2010, then English literature is in a bad way.

In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgut

It's really stretching things to call this a novel. It is really three short stories, loosely-linked by the central character Damon and his experiences as a traveler. (I read a crit saying it was like three movements of a concerto. Ahem. Fine if that floats your boat, but it's still stretching the definition).

Of the three stories, only the third is absorbing in any way. Damon is an etremely soulless and unempathetic character, and the people he meets in the first two stories are simply repellent or boring. The final story, recounting Damon's guardianship of a manic-depressive woman on a trip through India is gripping and sad. It comes to an excellent and reflective conclusion, but it's not enough to save the novel.

Galgut's writing style is really annoying. He continually switches the narrative voice between third and first person, sometimes in the same sentence. I completely disagree with critics that have described this as a beautiful way of showing Damon Galgut's loose relationship with Damon the character. They are dead wrong; it's a pretentious gimmick which would drive any reader crazy.

So the 2010 Booker Committee is not looking too smart so far: a winner that is boring and unengaging and a shortlisted novel that isn't even a novel. I'm still reading the other short-listed books, and there may be better news ahead.

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Room, by Emma Donoghue

Room is told with the narrative voice of a five year old boy. The story stars on his 5th birthday, and you are immediately struck by his habit of naming things as if they were proper nouns: Room, Rug, Bed, Door.

The reason for this soon becomes clear. Jack was born in Room, and has never been outside it. So far as he knows, there is only one of everything he sees. The only people Jack knows are his Ma and an infrequent visitor he calls Old Nick. He is unaware of the existence of an outside world.

Jack describes the rituals that he and Ma occupy their time with and the games they play. As he innocently describes these, you begin to intuit the real reason they are in Room.

One day Ma makes a slip of the tongue that Jack is sharp enough to pick up on: there is an Outside that he knows nothing about. As the book goes on, he learns more and more about Outside and ultimately has to figure out how to live there, no longer in the controlled world of Room.

As far as prizes go, this is more like it. A highly original idea, an appealing main character, brilliantly told, laugh-out-loud funny at times, yet with a strong emotional impact. Of the four short-listed books that I've read, this is the best, shading even Peter Carey.