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journalism → support → readers
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we → purchase → commission
It’s the fantastically well-written story of a 70-year-old American businessman with advanced dementia flying to Switzerland to end his life in a euthanasia clinic, before he loses his marbles completely.
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he → ’ → marbles
David Hastings has wasted his life on work, not what matters most.
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what → waste → work
He has let everybody down, including the estranged daughter he stops over in London to see.
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he → let → London
“Even before he’d actually lost his mind, he’d lost his mind”, he recognises too late.
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he → lose → mind
None of these novels has as much to say about the way we live, and die, now as Switzy
Switzy, published a fortnight ago, has been called The Death of Ivan Ilyich of the Dignitas era.
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Switzy → have → era
makes scary, dismaying reading but it is quite extraordinarily accomplished
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it → make → reading
: dropping it from contention at this stage is nothing less than idiotic.
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dropping → drop → stage
The Times columnist, Giles Coren, claiming to have read the entire long-list, swore in print last week that Cline simply must win.
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Cline → claim → print
“I will eat Mary Beard, the chairman of the judges, if she doesn’t”, he promised.
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he → eat → judges
He can start right away.
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He → start → ?
A public event, I hope.
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I → hope → ?
The shortlist with a hole in it has three serious contenders, as well as three amiable also-rans.
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it → have → rans
It’s engaging and hugely sympathetic — but its tragic plot, worthy of Thomas Hardy, presumes the most preposterous failure of gaydar, even then.
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plot → ’ → gaydar
The Disappearers by Marlon James, the winner in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, is the 640-page story of a murderous homophobic attack on eight gay actors while they are rehearsing in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, and its long aftermath of sorrow and revenge.
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they → rehearse → sorrow
Reviewers in the States have compared its stature to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison (it’s the only shortlisted novel I have not yet read, I confess).
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I → compare → Faulkner
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
That leaves the only other possible winner as The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
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We → say → Strout
Artie Dam, a much loved, liberal history teacher in his fifties on the coast of Massachusetts, faces his private life coming apart at the same time as the public realm is becoming unintelligible to him.
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realm → love → him
“Why don’t people ever say anything real?” he wonders, reaching sad conclusions about that.
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he → say → that
Understated but unsparing, it’s a gripping read from a 70-year-old serial novelist.
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it → ’ → novelist
One reviewer hailed it “the first great work of fiction about Trump’s presidency”.
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reviewer → hail → presidency
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
The remaining three are all slighter, however likeable.
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three → remain → Kennard
A failing London actor, in his late thirties, takes on a job to appear at an academic’s lectures completely encased in a leather bag (a real life psychological experiment in the 1960s).
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actor → fail → 1960s
Discovering that being “a sentient sex toy” suits him, our shameful narrator has plenty to say about the mishaps of masculinity and ageing millennial creatives.
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narrator → discover → masculinity
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
A Ballard for our times
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We → feed → times
Rebecca Perry’s debut May We Feed the King is a charming, tidy invention, about a dresser of scene sets in historic buildings, commissioned to create a series of tableaux in a medieval palace, who finds herself consumed with imagining the troubled reign of a reluctant monarch.
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herself → feed → monarch
This new twist on the historical novel is deservedly selling well and will be a staple of National Trust shops for decades to come.
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twist → sell → decades
The End of Everything by M John Harrison
The End of Everything by SF veteran M John Harrison, 81, envisages the Kent coast, post-apocalypse.
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End → envisage → coast
People scratch a living beachcombing, coping with hallucinatory alien entities, suddenly erupting into violence.
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People → scratch → violence
It’s good to see that JG Ballard’s influence is still so vital, post-Brexit.
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influence → ’ → ?
The Aporia
