ManBookering discussion

Discussion questions will be updated.

Here's my review from a few days ago... no major spoilers.

As with last year's winner of the Man Booker Prize (Narrow Road to the Deep North), this is a book I would never have picked by myself to read, had it not made it onto this year's Longlist. And I'm not sorry I read it, although it's an odd book that I wasn't sure I was enjoying till over halfway through. Half the book details the struggle of an 80 year old woman slipping into dementia; the other half concerns her grandson's tribulations in the war in Afghanistan. The war sections I found disheartening and dreary, while the sections about Anne were more to my taste. But eventually Luke finds his way back to Scotland and the book comes together admirably and memorably. I doubt it will make it onto the Shortlist, however.

I have also just finished this book. It didn't start well for me and I'm not sure I would have stuck with it except for wanting read the whole of the long list. But, I'm actually glad I did keep going as I think it improved as it progressed. I was interested in the comparison of someone gradually losing their memories with someone who couldn't forget - dementia vs. post-traumatic stress. However, I agree that it seemed to lack a bit of focus and I don't know why there were chapters about Maureen and her family other than to pad out pages.

Well, there's always the possibility that we both missed it!

I didn't even really see the sections dealing with Maureen and her family as a separate jarring storyline, or indeed as padding...I just felt it was fleshing out Maureen's character to let us know why she was taking such care of Anne. Maybe not strictly 'necessary', but I liked them.

Really what made me like this book were the final 30 pages. This is the kind of book that benefits from a second reading. Imo of course.

I really loved this book...

I loved the parts about Anne and Maureen - didn't think the bit about Maureen's family was odd - it made sense to me to give her character more background. I was less keen on the chapters about Luke - in general I'm not keen on books about war anyway.

I wasn't so keen on the way Luke found out about his family history- felt a bit like the character of Sheila was mainly included just to do this - I would have preferred if the details were revealed through Anne more.

Overall though I did quite enjoy it and wouldn't be surprised if it made the shortlist.

I've read some criticisms in Amazon reviews of the inaccuracies of the army bits. I don't know enough about this stuff myself but did that bother anyone else? Personally I read fiction for the story, characters and style and am not so concerned with 100% detail accuracy