Posts tagged ‘Booker longlist 2023’

Sep 11

2023 Booker Longlist: Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein 

Our next longlist nominee is Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. Bernstein was born in Montreal and now lives in the Scottish Highlands, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Her first book was a collection of poems titled The Coming Bad Days. Earlier this year she was selected for Grant’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Synopsis from Booker Prize website: A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight.

She notices that the community’s suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. She feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property. Inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill…

You can purchase a copy of the book here

Three of our panelists read the novel. Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.

Sep 4

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2023 Booker Longlist: Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

Next up for our panel is a debut novel, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo.

Synopsis from Booker Prize website: Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world.

Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

You can purchase a copy of the book here

Four of our panelists read this book. Keep reading to find out what they thought.

Aug 31

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2023 Booker Longlist: House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Next up for our panel, we travel to Malaysia with Tan Tan Eng’s The House of Doors

Tan Twan Eng is probably one of the more well known authors on the list. He was born in Penang, Malaysia, and worked as an advocate in one of Kuala Lumpur’s leading law firms before becoming a full-time writer. His prior two novels were also listed as candidates for the Booker Prize. His second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker prize and was named one of the 1001 books to read before you die (a list that brought several of our panelists together).

Synopsis from Booker Prize website: It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer, his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.

Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.

As Willie prepares to face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts – a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction.

The novel will be released in the US on October 17th, 2023 and you can pre-order your copy here

Keep reading to find out how our panelists rated this book.

Aug 23

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2023 Booker Longlist – If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Next up for our panel is a debut novel by Johnathan Escoffery: If I Survive You

Jonathan Escoffery is no stranger to the literary world. His short stories have won several awards including the Plimpton Prize for fiction and 2020 ASME award for fiction. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and American Short Fiction. He has taught creative writing at numerous well-renowned colleges and universities and he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group.

If I Survive You is his debut novel and has received high praise from reviewers and authors across the world.

Synopsis from Booker Prize website: In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.

Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.

As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew – they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?

You can purchase a copy of the book here

Keep reading to find out how our panelists rated this book.

Aug 21

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2023 Booker Longlist – Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry

It’s Booker season and our panel has begun our review of all the longlist books. Over the next month, we will be reviewing each of the 13 nominees. First up for our panel is Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time. Barry’s novels have been nominated several times for the Booker prize. A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture were both shortlisted for the Booker, two others were nominated for the longlist, and he has won numerous other literary prizes.

The Booker panel describes Barry’s latest book as a “beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite what it seems, Sebastian Barry explores what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.” Keep reading to see how our panel rated the book.