I shall be bold and announce that this year, for the first time ever, I will agree with the Man Booker judges when, on Tuesday, they decide which book will win the annual literary prize for novels published in English.
I am just that sure about it, and not only because everyone is betting on the same favorite. Front-runners often lose. I stood at the rails and watched Blame defeat Zenyatta in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup race, so I know. But, to stick with the horse-racing analogy, this year American Pharoah brought home the Triple Crown for the first time in 37 years, which could mean this is the year for front-runners. I dare the committee to prove me wrong and pick anything other than “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara.
Although “A Little Life” (Doubleday, $30) is building a reputation for its ability to make grown men weep, I can’t think of a novel in which people interact more warmly or smile more frequently. From the start, Yanagihara’s unadorned prose about four friends transmits the inevitability of tragedy. Yet the story is carried forward by hope twinned with the gradual revelation of the horrors suffered by one character, Jude St. Francis. Yanagihara provides glimpses into the friends’ lives of privilege and unparalleled success, but the story pivots on Jude, who constructs his life around keeping secret the wrenching abuse he suffered as a child.
Why I’m right: It’s reported to be a 2-to-1 favorite, and who doesn’t like a good cry? The characters are likable, the relationships deep and worth exploring, and the plot moving, unflagging and unforgettable.
Why I am probably wrong: It’s a fairy tale of friendship among people who have it all.
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Another pairing of tragedy and the bonds among males, in this case, boys, is my No. 2 pick for the prize, “The Fishermen” (Little, Brown, $26), a first novel by Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma. Four sons in a family of six children form a tight-knit tribe, one another’s constant companions and protectors. The story, told from the perfectly tuned perspective of 9-year-old Benjamin, traces the power of words and fear in a plot that feels like a vivid, slow-motion tumble. When their father has to move for his job, the four brothers take to playing in forbidden territory, a nearby river. They declare themselves “The Fishermen” and create a little song to accompany their labors. Returning from a fishing outing, the boys encounter the local madman who prophesies death to the oldest boy. “You will swim in a river of red but shall never rise from it again,” he shouts. The malignant words burrow into the 14-year-old’s thoughts. In trying to protect himself from the madman’s prediction, he unravels their world.
Why I might be wrong and this could win: It has the power of a tragedy and the vividness of a boy’s voice.
When you’re in the middle of a crisis, there’s no way to figure out its meaning. It’s just happening to you, moment by moment. “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” by Jamaican author Marlon James (Riverhead, $28.95), No. 3 on my Man Booker list, happens to you. It’s an onslaught of violence, unique voices and arresting stories — stories that left me desperately searching for a narrative among its many narrators: There’s a dead politician, a CIA agent, an obnoxious Rolling Stone reporter, Jamaican gangsters — the powerful Papa-Lo and his eventual usurper, Josey Wales, and a woman — about the only woman in the book — who is swept into the storm of violence when she shows up just as Wales and company shoot The Singer. The book is based on several events in Jamaican history, including the shooting of reggae star Bob Marley in 1976. The book is exasperating and confusing, raw and violent, and overrun with wicked, empty people. It’s also breathtaking, daring, and once you finally start sorting things out as the book ends, a bit intoxicating.
Why I might be wrong and this could win: Few writers take such gambles. Fewer still can pull them off.
My No. 4 pick for the prize, “The Year of the Runaways,” by British novelist Sunjeev Sahota (Knopf, $27.95), is about men living on the margins, and one woman, Narindar, whose act of compassion ruptures her previously tranquil life and destroys her faith. The men, Tochi, Randeep, and Avtar, are Indian migrant workers in Sheffield, England. The men run the hopeless treadmill of illegal immigrants, taking underpaid, physically brutal or menial jobs for employers who view them as interchangeable pieces, or even property. The litany of hardships is awful and riveting. Yet the book lacks a sense of intimacy for much of its length and does not find its heart until its final chapters, when Tochi and Narindar are forced together by circumstances, marking an indelible change in both their lives.
Why I might be wrong and this could win: With its well-developed characters with wrenching stories, “The Year of the Runaways” makes an almost political statement about what it means to be a migrant in the West.
I won’t lie. I have no idea what “Satin Island” (Knopf, $24), my No. 5 pick, is about. Author Tom McCarthy, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010 for his novel, “C,” is telling us something about modern life. He says many clever things, and explores several intriguing little obsessions — parachute accidents, oil spills — in so doing, but what it means, I’m not sure. I’m so not sure that I’m going to tell you how the book ends: His character, U. — and there’s really only one character — decides not to take the Staten Island Ferry. If I’ve given away too much, I apologize.
Why I might be wrong and this could win: Many, many people are much smarter than I am and may understand this clearly. It does toss you all kinds of tidbits to think about, and even some moments, for all their strangeness, buzz with insight. Better to be puzzling than boring.
Anne Tyler’s characters don’t change so much as dig themselves deeper in “A Spool of Blue Thread” (Knopf, $25.95), my No. 6 pick for the Man Booker. The story revolves around an unexpected visit by misfit son Denny. He’s skipped years of holiday gatherings and steadily avoided the parents he blames for almost everything as well as the siblings he resents. Now he declares he’s moving in to help the folks, aging Red and Abby. Red recently suffered a heart attack, and Abby’s memory is on the fritz. The problem is, Denny’s brother Stem has already moved in. Family tensions bubble along until they boil over in a fistfight between the brothers. Tyler is a master at finding the unhappy underside of family life and portraying the lovable, or in Denny’s case, the unlovable, loser. Yet somehow all these parental anxieties, sibling resentments and sly observations of both don’t add up to much.
Why I might be wrong and this could win: Tyler is admired as a deft observer of the intricacies of the American family. And, for the past two years, Man Booker judges have picked the book I liked least as the winner. They could do so again.
Jenni Laidman is a frequent Printers Row Journal contributor.