2025 Booker Longlist: Flesh by David Szalay

Flesh by David Szalay is the 8th books our panel reviewed. All five judges read this nominee and here are our reviews…

David Szalay is no stranger to the Booker Prize. His fourth novel, All that Man Is, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016 and he has received numerous other awards and accolades. In 2013, he was selected for Granta’s Best of Young Novelists. Born in Canada, educated in England, lived previously in Hungary (the birthplace of his father), he now lives in Vienna. In a Guardian interview he discussed how Flesh was partially inspired by his experiences of “being poised between two places and not feeling 100% at home in either of them.”

Book synopsis from Booker Prize website: Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. Their encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István barely understands, and his life soon spirals out of control.  
   
As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the 21st century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.  
   
Spare and penetrating, Flesh asks profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

Anita’s Thoughts: If the purpose of literature is to illuminate the human condition, I think this novel does that so well by highlighting the type of person that we all know, but no one really wants to feature. The person whose emotional scope is limited and whose self insight is minimal. The type of person who lets life happen. This book is so realistic that it’s painful. But I appreciated the author took the risk to go there.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 4/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Total: 17/20

Nicole’s Thoughts:  I’m not sure what the Booker loves so much about David Szalay. I wasn’t particularly blown away … I want to be blown away by Booker books. I really enjoyed it at first, and it had moments but not enough. It was depressing and downtrodden. Which is OK, I don’t mind a depressing book, but then make me feel something other than just hopeless? I don’t know.

You wanted so much for something good to happen to the main character. There were glimpses of redemption for him. Alas …

(Anita’s review makes me want to like it a bit more because I truly appreciate what she had to say, and she’s right. Kind of reminds me of that House book from last year. Can’t remember the title.)

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Total: 13/20

Lisa’s Thoughts: I found this book compulsively readable. I ran right through it. That said, I finished the book feeling empty and depressed. It tells the story of a man’s life, from his adolescence to older age. He is abused as an adolescent, and ends life alone. He doesn’t seem to have any agency; he just drifts from one experience to another, many of them sexual in nature. The only time he seems to have a spark of life or human feeling is when he is with his son. Some people might say that it is because of the trauma he experiences when he is young, or in the army. Maybe. I acknowledge, whether I like the main character is not the same as whether it is a good book. As I said, it is very readable. But I lost count of the number of times someone in the book said “are you okay?”

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Total: 14/20

Tracy’s Thoughts: Ick. This main character had no redeeming qualities, and represents the worst macho stereotype. If this is what the author intended, great. I just wish I didn’t have to read it. Gonna go scrub my eyeballs again.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 0/2
Total: 14/20

Jen’s Thoughts: I laughed when I read Tracy’s comment on our spreadsheet tracking booker progress, “read and showered.” Certainly, the early chapters are very difficult to read because they present a rather graphic account of grooming and childhood sexual abuse. But these chapters and other sections throughout the book are integral in exploring how sex, physical body, trauma, and masculinity are intertwined. I am not a huge fan of Szalay’s books which is surprising because my early research in graduate school centered on masculinities and the impact of hegemonic masculinity on mental health. Those themes are front and center in this book (as they were in All that Man is). It’s not the writing style I dislike, in fact this book flows beautifully and is skillfully written. I just am tired of thinking about men’s struggles with masculinity at the current moment in our current political climate. The manosophere, Netflix’s brilliant but equally depressing show Adolescence, and the rise of Trump (and Trump style politics), are all examples of related events/situations that have left me feeling bogged down and depressed. Issues around masculinity, transactions power, sexual politics, alienation that are playing out on the world stage are all explored and highlighted in Szalay’s novel. And as such the novel is timely and thought-provoking. But I hated reading it.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 0/2
Total: 14/20

Rankings
1. Endling: 18.8
2. Audition: 17.88
3. Universality: 14.5
4. Flesh: 14.4
5. The South: 14.25
6. Flashlight: 14.2
7. One Boat: 13
8. Love forms: 10.5

Have you read it?  What do you think? Want to try it for yourself? You can purchase your copy here: Flesh