Title: If I Survive You*
Author: Jonathan Escoffery
Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “[B]e the surface onto which they can project their colonial desires and they’ll take you back to their suite at the Fountainbleau or the Shore Club or the hotel on Fisher Island, where the necessity for security clearances and aquatic transport will transform you from a fling into a captive audience. But at least there will be a bed.” Escoffery, Jonathan. If I Survive You. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022, pg. 154 - 155.
Review: If I Survive You is my first read of my self-imposed challenge to read the Booker 2023 nominees (I’m already so far behind…but at least I’ve read one so far, right?). And honestly, this book helped me off to a good start. It isn’t my favorite read of the year, but it was compelling, it covered a wide range of subjects and emotions, and at the end I was angry - which means that the narrative really got under my skin. That sounds like a good read to me.
So - let’s start with what was working:
If you’ve read any of my reviews or seen my Instagram (shameless self promo, obviously), you’ll know that I LOVE a good multi-POV novel, and this book embodies what works best in multi-POV works. Escoffery manages to weave a narrative in which each character is critical to the other narratives but yet still exist in their own singular (oftentimes lonely) universes as well. Ostensibly, Trelawny is the main character - he is central to multiple chapters while most of the other characters star in only one, and his relationship with each of those other characters tends to become prominent in each of their chapters as well, even if that prominence is subtle.
Trelawny’s character development is another aspect of the book that is working really well. The narrative follows Trelawny from childhood to adulthood, through tumultuous family relationships, to the complicated freedom of college, to homelessness, various careers, and to the verge of homelessness again. Throughout each of those stages, Trelawny is forced to confront his racial identity, and the way that it seems to shift in each epoch of his life. Though this could be a book about the complexities of father-son relationships, the struggles of immigrant families in hostile geographic regions, the lengths to which people will go to find stability, or even what love and friendship looks like when intertwined with questions of race or gender, at its core, this is a novel of exploration - of finding oneself when the entire world seems to be projecting identities onto its main character that never quite resonate with who he sees as himself (even when he’s not quite sure who he is or who he’s meant to be).
Ultimately, the primary aspect of this book that doesn’t seem to be working is the ending. And not even the ending as a whole. The author’s play with time in the final paragraphs is fascinating - how the reader learns Trelawny’s next moves even as he sinks into the couch of the person he’s visiting (a character is central to the final vignette - but frustratingly so) not having yet propelled himself to those moments in the future that the reader is shown. That part of the ending is not working (or rather - was more of a disappointment) was that it ends on a moment of resignation and of angst. The whole book has charted Trelawny’s progress and setbacks as he navigates a world that is unkind, uncaring, and often set up with the expectation that he will fail. And yet, by the end, he’d achieved his goal of teaching (something he was working towards as he continued to be homeless while working in a public housing building), and had a relatively stable living environment (subject only to his father’s indifference and his brother’s cruelty). And yet, SPOILER ALERT, by the final paragraphs, he seems to have lost all of that. And perhaps the ending is, in fact, a sign of Escoffery’s literary genius - an ability to toy with readers’ emotions and to end with the protagonist careening towards an ending that is equal parts (at least according to the narrative) horrid and inevitable.
About that Quote: I think this quote embodies what happens throughout most of the book, and does so in a way that demonstrates the lyrical quality of Escoffery’s work. It encapsulates the racism Trelawny experiences throughout the novel, and also the ingenuity sparked by desperation - he quite literally subjects himself to harm, danger, and humiliation, often for a bed to sleep on. And, especially in his early years as he struggled to define his own racial identity, he was pulled in multiple directions as others assigned him a racial identity.
An (incomplete) list of TWs for If I Survive You: racism, k*nk (often associated with racism), death
Are you reading the Booker nominees this year? And have you read If I Survive You? Share your thoughts below!
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