A little hobby of mine is to try to read the shortlist of the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize. It's fun comparng books and pretending for just a moment that I'm a judge. But to save pennies, I use my library a lot, and one novel on my Booker list was very, very, popular; I've only just received it, ages after the Prize Winning Date passed.
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left: Deccan chronicle---British writer Samantha Harvey's space-station novel 'Orbital' wins the Booker Prize for fiction
I'd already chosen my winner, and just for once, that was the actual winner––Samantha Harvey’s Orbital––an intergalactic story set on a space station, but definitely not a sci-fi, rather, it is almost a poem.
Would reading this mega-on-trend book change my mind?
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner was the fattest (over 400 pages), and, like almost all the shortlist, responded to and interrogated current themes, particualry our varied human response to the climate crisis, but Kushner uses the thriller genre to stake her claim in this catagory. And in places, it really was quite thrilling, and in all places pretty un-put-downable.
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| Rachel Kushner |
A jobbing agent with the cover name of Sadie takes a contract with a mysterious employer. She is deliciousy free of moral considerations––she'll sleeping around to get a job done and promises us she'll kill anyone who gets in her way. She is sent to infiltrate Le Moulin, a group of green eco-activists in Guyenne, south-west France, who almost worship an ageing guru called Bruno who lives in cave and believes we should adopt the lifestyle of his favourite of our great ancestors, the Neanderthals.
Sadie is acerbic in her mocking of these people, especially Bruno. Shame, she suggests, that the Neanderthals didn't have a mobile link, as Bruno so obviously has when sending his epistle-like emails. As she hacks his emails, she becomes drawn in, enticed by his ideas of simplicity.
But her mind's still on the job. A farming co-op is staging a protest against a local scheme to turn local fields into a corn-based monoculture and Le Moulin is planning to help them. Sadie secrets a gun to one of the more thuggish members, hoping the death of a Paris polititian will fullfil her brief.
Anthony Cummins in The Guardian loved this book, describing it as hugely enjoyable…espionage drama pulsating with twisty revelation and drip-fed backstory, dealing with anarchy, agriculture and prehistory, it adds a killer plot and expert pacing to the reach and sophistication of her previous work, as well as vital fun.
On the other hand, reviewing all the Bookers in the i Paper, Anna Bonnet's enthusiasm is more muted; Creation Lake was the biggest disappointment on the shortlist for me. It isn’t that it’s a bad book, but though I went in to it prepared to have a lot of fun, overly long passages about the Neanderthals somewhat got in the way. However, it has got some brilliantly dark humour, isn’t short on plot, and has some thoughtful things to say about activism and corporate land grabs. I don’t think it should win, but you can see why Kushner is one of the few women often referred to as a Great American Novelist.
Weirdly, I can see both perspectives, having read the book. While reading, I could not put it down; no wonder the library version was so popular. The final 100 pages, which Cummins describes as…pinballing between peril and farce, are amazingly tense: wall-to-wall entertainment, and a real treat...were a delight to read; hilarious and dramatic, just as he suggests.
But once I'd put the book down, and mused over the length of it, I began to see its flaws.
The final excitments of the last chapters felt over-plotted and a little too slapstick for me.
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The idea that Sadie was influenced by Bruno as she sails away into a James Bond type deserted tropical sunset, is slightly fogged by the amount of money she's extracted from her employer and her continued self-interested stance.
I always feel mean talking about the flaws in other people's novels. What about all those gaping holes in mine? What about the fact I'm never, never, going to be shortlisted for these big prizes? How dare I criticise a Great American Novelist?
I'm going to let Christina Sanders have the last word; her blog describes Creation Lake as a …nearly excellent book, but...Where is the follow through? I am left feeling there was so much excellently laid build up for so little reward. The dirty kitchen doesn’t get another mention, the entrapped men fade away. Not sure what happens to the guy in the cave, who really could be interesting but this is not his story and if you want a story about Neanderthals among us I suggest you read Seventh Son instead.
Well, I'm just reading that, so watch this space for the review!
The other Booker shortlist reviews are here;
https://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-win-booker-everett-and-wood.html
https://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.com/2024/11/how-to-win-booker-prize-held-by-anne.html
https://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.com/2024/11/how-to-win-booker-safekeep-by-yael-van.html
https://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.com/2024/11/how-to-win-booker-prize-orbital-by.html
