Hiya bookish friends! As Booker season comes closer and closer to the end, I figured I would try something a little different. I want to share two, quick, mini reviews every couple weeks until the winner is announced, focusing on the shortlist. (This is also an attempt to trick myself into finishing the shortlist since I absolutely did not succeed in my goal of reading the longlist lol.) So, without further ado, check out my thoughts on James and Orbital.
Title: James
Author: Percival Everett
Rating: 4.5 stars / 5 stars
Favorite Quote: “A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.” Everett, Percival. James. Doubleday, 2024, pg. 176.
Review: Percival Everett’s most recent novel is a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In it, readers are led to follow James, the titular character, known as Jim, the slave, in Twain’s work.
Percival Everett is one of the greatest writers of this generation, and honestly, there isn’t much I can say about this book other than wow. To retell an American “classic” is a major undertaking - to do so and add to it a dimension that the original is lacking, is the means of creating a masterpiece.
Genuinely, the only reason I didn’t give this book 5 stars is because it didn’t quite live up to The Trees, my last Everett read, primarily because The Trees is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
About that Quote: One of Everett’s many talents is that his novels - his fiction - so entirely capture the zeitgeist of the moment in which they exist, while also speaking truth to timeless lessons. After all, many people are willing to overlook the worst parts of the world - the worst elements of leaders, family, friends - to keep the peace - to not look too hard at the harm that is happening around them.
Title: Orbital
Author: Samantha Harvey
Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars
Favorite Quote: “And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that here is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.” Harvey, Samantha. Orbital. Grove Press, 2023, pg. 41.
Review: Though short, Harvey’s contribution to the Booker prize shortlist is an epic of astronomical proportions. (Forgive the pun, it’s late and I’m ready for bed.) In it, a group of astronauts and cosmonauts circle the globe while a different group, one only barely mentioned in the text but still a central focus, travels to the moon.
Perhaps because it is so short, the book shifting from each astronaut and cosmonaut, seems a bit jarring, when the novel also tends to become much more macro (as seen in the above quote). I often found myself lost a bit in the shifts.
About that Quote: This whole book seems to focus on how the internal, micro-cosmic, world and the external, macro-cosmic, world cannot exist apart. This quote seems to exemplify that.
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