As always, @kateisreading has lots of wonderful thoughts about the Booker shortlist for 2025. See her musings below, and pop by the bookshop to ask her about them!
It pains me to say that all the novels on the Booker shortlist this year are entirely readable. I can’t be authentically snarky about any of them. It’s so obvious when you are reading seasoned writers at the peak of their career. It’s like slipping into comfortable pyjamas. There’s nothing wrong with a hyped debut, but I do love to see a more mature shortlist. Maybe I’m getting old.
Actually I must be getting old because some of these novels had actual plots and that is usually the kiss of death for me. Not only plots but tangled character dynamics, mother dramas, secret identities, mid-novel twists, blizzards and road trips. Most importantly there are portrayals of real-feeling human relationships without the maddening overexplaining to which less accomplished novels often succumb. There is nuanced social commentary, but laced deftly into the weave of each literary piece rather than clunkily annotating the action.
What pleased me most is that each book is ambitious in its own way, marching to the beat of its own drum. The authors don’t try to be all things to all people because they have their own clarity of vision. It’s hard to pick a standout winner, but there are many standout reading afternoons to be had. Put on the kettle; pick out some pyjamas.
To vastly oversimplify: the life of a Hungarian man who ascends and descends the class ladder
Recommended for: those who are tired of reading novels with unrealistically clever, introspective narrators and just want to witness someone be carried forward by life
Why is it good? Because of its almost startling refusal to obey literary fashions or fancies
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
To vastly oversimplify: two couples living in an English village during a cold winter in the early 1960s
Recommended for: people who are curious about the various modes and efficacies of heating a country cottage, anyone who wants to vicariously attend an alcohol-soaked village Christmas party, morally compromised GPs
Why is it good? Because the characters and their motivations feel earned, and there is a beautifully drawn female friendship at its heart that offsets some of the novel’s darkness
To vastly oversimplify: a slim, bracing novel with a sliding doors moment that refracts a woman’s sense of self
Recommended for: those who can tolerate a level of anxiety-inducing uncertainty that could be a stroke of genius or a shameless avoidance strategy
Why is it good? Because it’s dark and dramatic, and leaves space for endless psychoanalytic interpretation
The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia by Kiran Desai
To vastly oversimplify: a story of displacement and searching
Recommended for: those who want to get stuck into a big, juicy trans-continental novel with a gluttony of chapters that you can happily chew on for hours
Why is it good? Because it tackles nothing less than the grand and granular scope of class in India and America, without neglecting the most individual of yearnings for love and recognition. Plus there is a magic amulet.
To vastly oversimplify: missed connections across time and continents
Recommended for: those fascinated (or soon to be fascinated) with the inter- and post-war relationship between Japan and Korea, and who don’t need characters to be ‘likeable’
Why is it good? Because it is truly different – in pacing and perspective – to so many other multi-generational books that seek to explore the immigrant experience
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
To vastly oversimplify: white middle-aged man has existential crisis and embarks on spontaneous road trip
Recommended for: those who love a good middle America family drama, and who are happy to spend time within the psyche of a partially self-aware husband and father just trying to get on with the business of avoiding his future
Why is it good? Because despite his ill-timed identity as an entitled male, our narrator is ultimately relatable, and the novel leaves space for both sympathy and judgment
Some Unofficial Prizes and Predictions
Longest novel: The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia
Honourable mention for also being quite long: Flashlight
Shortest novel: Audition
Most topical: The Rest of Our Lives
Most tropical: The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia
Least tropical: The Land in Winter
Novel whose protagonist has highest frequency of sexual encounters: Flesh
Most dramatic and confusing scene on a beach: Flashlight
Most driving featured in a novel: Rest of Our Lives, Flesh
Novel ‘novelly’ novel: Rest of Our Lives, The Land in Winter
Least ‘novelly’ novel: Audition
Novel I think should win: The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia, Flesh
Novel that I think will win: The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia, Audition