The Man Booker Prize 2014 - The shortlist. With Book Review

The shortlist of the Man Booker Prize 2014 for fiction 2014 was announced on 09 September 2014. The panel consisted of not just two women and four men; it represented an ecumenical distribution of nationalities too.

The American authors Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler were selected along with three British writers — Howard Jacobson, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith — and the Australian Richard Flanagan.

The winner of the prize, worth around $80,000 and widely considered the most prestigious literary award in Britain, will be announced on Oct.14.

We had published the long list of thirteen books in an earlier post. In this article we present the six books that have been shortlisted with the opening lines (a book lovers dream)  and a few words on their review.

 “The mouth is a weird place.” 
                        ....From “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour” by Joshua Ferris

A satirical novel about identity theft in the virtual world we live in, how the technology that connects us also isolates us. A Manhattan dentist, realizes that someone is impersonating him online using his name and identity. As the web of lies gets soul frightening, he gets drawn into a vortex of emotions as he finally gets to meet his virtual doppelganger.

An must read on the journey to self awareness.

 “Mornings weren’t good for either of them.” –From “J” by Howard Jacobson

J is a dystopian novel set in a future world still trying to recover from a historical catastrophe that it only half acknowledges and does not officially remember and is always referred to as "what happened, if it happened").

Nothing is banned, just effectively discouraged or reasonably justified. But Esme Nussbaum is seeing the chinks and faulted lines in the society when she was forced to resign from her position. There is a budding romance between Ailinn Solomons and Kevern Cohen , who believe they have been brought together by a higher power . As their daily life draw them into ever-increasing danger, she must do everything to keep them together—whatever the cost; for memories and names have not been purged from the lives without a reason.

A novel which makes one think on the maladies of our current lifestyle, written in his great style.

“Why at the beginning of things is there always light?”
                 ... “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” by Richard Flanagan

A notable tourist attraction in Thailand is the bridge “over the River Kwai”—part of the Death Railway built during World War II by the Japanese using the labor of Allied POWs under atrocious conditions.

In the grim conditions of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his past indiscretions. As he uses all effort to protect men under his command from starvation, from cholera and a grim life, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. Written about war, death, love and evolving as a man from a war hero,this novel should be a good read

“Consider this moral conundrum for a moment, George’s mother says to George who’s sitting in the front passenger seat.” 
                          ......From one version of “How to be Both” by Ali Smith

There are two parts of this book, one with the first half first and the other with the first half second. Would the book have read differently if one took the other part first?

This interesting novel with themes of art, and the digital age, one would feel like being in a time loop which eventually makes you admire the timelessness of everything as it is mirrored back to you.

Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make double layers, the books characters move between art and time effortlessly. There’s a renaissance artist Francesco del Cossa of the 1460s and a child George of the 1960s.

 Two tales as told from view of the two coalesce into a single thread. What is the importance of art, how does it touch our lives?

.

 “A third of the way through the half-mile walk from the landlord’s house to his hut, Nitai Das’s feet begin to sway.” 
                            ...........From “The Lives of Others” by Neel Mukherjee.

Set in Calcutta, 1967-1970, the Ghosh family live in the world where they think they are superior and emotionally cut from all others who are below their status. Empathy is not a practiced virtue here. The grandson, Supratik has become dangerously involved in student political activism. He leaves behind everything with a note, compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him. Meanwhile the small dramas and bourgeois life meanders through its characters, petty issues pitched against the ever changing world outside. The family eyes the changes like an ostrich, as the society around them cracks and the divides widen.

This is a sensitive portrait of daily life of a family as it is challenged by inevitable change: a difference between the have and have not’s, the divide between generations, and the need to bridge them.

“Those who know me now will be surprised to learn that I was a great talker as a child.”

                 ...From “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves”
                                                                               by Karen Joy Fowler

What if you had a behavioral psychologist for a father, who changes your identity as a ‘monkey girl’ compelled to mimic her elder sister, who is actually a chimp raised in a human family?

Then one day you are sent away to your grandparents and return only to realize that your sister has been given away. The normal human emotions of sibling rivalry, the wish to move out of the shadow of the elder sister, Fern, the distractions that eventually is what she misses later, make Rosemary ask a lot of questions to herself, as she dons the garb of silence.

Are our memories real or do we adjust them to suit our stories as we grow up? Is there a balance between memory and fiction, and the perennial question, what makes us human? 

This warm and thought provoking family story would be an explorative journey within oneself. 

Any comment or guess of on who the winner will be is welcome.