2026 Booker Prize Longlist: Black Bag by Luke Kennard

by jenp27 on September 10, 2026

Next up for panel is Black Bag by Luke Kennard. Four of our panel read this book and here are our reviews…

Luke Kennard is a British poet, novelist, and academic whose work tends to be witty, strange, and a little difficult to pin down. He’s perhaps best known as a poet, and his collection Notes on the Sonnets won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021. He’s also the author of the novels The Transition and The Answer to Everything. His newest novel, Black Bag, landed on the 2026 Booker Prize longlist and brings his playful, slightly surreal style to questions of masculinity, identity, work, and the general weirdness of modern life.

Book Synopsis from Booker website: A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane

A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend’s students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures?

The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor’s childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation…

Tracy’s Thoughts: This was a weird but wonderful book, and I’m still trying to figure out why I loved it so much. Maybe because I could imagine this happening when I was a psych student for my freshman year. Or maybe because there are days I’d love to walk around in a black leather bag myself.

But I think it’s because I enjoyed the writing and the humor, while finding the subtle psychology and character development intriguing.

Writing quality: 5/5
Originality: 4.5/5
Character development: 3.5/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Total: 18/20

Nicole’s Thoughts: This book started quite strong for me. I thought it was a clever, original, fun, funny contemporary fiction and I wondered how it made the longlist. It got there and when it did, for me, the book suffered for it. The humor left, the cleverness was gone. It became about AI, sex, toxic masculinity …. I mean spoiler alert …. at one point there was a conversation about the smell of “emissions” when watching porn vs. without porn. Perhaps that quite tickled the author, it didn’t tickle me or add anything to the book. There was an excellent book in here, but it got bogged down in too many ideas. A bit of editing and 50 pages shorter and it could have been outstanding.

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

Anita’s Thoughts: This novel is the first one (out of 5 read so far) that I feel like I could actually root for to win. First, I should say I listened to most of it, and the audiobook really helped by adding comedic timing to an already very funny book. Most of the way, I thought it was 4 stars because of the wit alone and the haplessness of the protagonist. But then, the last five chapters turned the book on it’s head, and I actually was very touched by it. My one substantial criticism is that I think the editing could have been a bit tighter, but I am willing to forgive a novel that made me laugh and cry.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Total: 16/20

Jen’s Thoughts: There are a lot of books that reflect on, or tackle, contemporary masculinity. This was one of the few books that I thought did so in a deeper, and original way (although I have not finished the list yet). Early on in my graduate school career, my research centered on men, masculinity, and mental health so I have spent a fair amount of intellectual energy on the topic and I often have strong reactions to books that attempt to delve into gender issues but ultimately come across as overly simplistic. Black Bag, despite its tone and narrative style, did delve quite deeply into the issue of masculinity in ways I did not find to be simplistic. I really enjoyed the beginning and end. The middle? Well it seemed to drag on and on and that’s where I took off points. Like most of the list this year, it did not have a very strong plot but I do think it delivered something interesting.

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 5/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 2/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Total: 15/20

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