The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Choice by Neel Mukherjee (Hamish Hamilton)

Shame there wasn’t somewhere here you closely follows the Goldsmiths Prize and got an ARC of this so could have flagged it as a contender. Oh….

Well guilty. But not entirely as charged. I bought this in July as a Booker contender.

I had a paper ARC of this one courtesy of Five Leaves. A bit mixed.

As a Per Petersson fan I liked this bit

He had once read a memorable line in a review of a Per Petterson novel: The only true problem of the realist novel is time.'

Particularly when I thought ‘that rings a bell’, found the review, of I Refuse:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Which is by a reviewer called … Neel Mukherjee!

Bit mixed views with this. Lots to admire and the literary parts resonated although when you criticise big presses and drop in Per Petersson, Sebald and Claire-Louise Bennett you are preaching to the converted. But the three stories felt a bit crudely clued together.

The underlying story of Salim in Part II ie how he came as a refugee to the UK is based on a real testimony Mukherjee was commissioned to tell some years ago - see here:

https://thecommapressblog.wordpress.c...