Booker Prize

[pippistrelle]

Is anyone reading the Booker nominees this year? What's your favourite, and what do you think will win?

@Misknit Your analysis is very interesting and may well be correct. However does a book that is on so many levels a puzzle really work as a novel? I felt the same way when Alan Garner was shortlisted for Treacle Walker a few years back. Beautifully written, and brilliant on landscape and myth. But it’s essentially a riddle which isn’t answered. Garner isn’t particularly interested in character or plot and I think Harrison is the same, in this book anyway. How you react to it depends on your attitude to this kind of construct, and neither book really works for me.

Struggling a bit with the Harrison - I admire it, but I'm slightly too baffled by it. As I get older I find I'm an increasingly literal reader so if it's an allegory about breeding rabbits in the Outer Hebrides, for example, I just see the story and not the rabbits.

I thought the violence was to do with how desensitised everyone had become because of whatever it is that has happened, but do feel it's a bit of a case of a shrug and a 'what do I know?'.