Literary Award Winners Fiction Book Club discussion

Please comment here on Troubles by J. G. Farrell, winner of the 1970 lost Booker Prize. (A one off award in 2010 to honour books that missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970. In 1971, two years after the prize began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became a prize for the best novel of the year of publication).

Finished. Although it was well written, I did not enjoy reading it. I think the world that is being satirized is too far from my experience to grasp the humor in this book. I actually dreaded settling down at night to read this one.

Whilst not a pleasant read, I found the novel to be a well written, engaging, tragic, comic, satirical, original historical fiction novel. It is set in a large hotel, ‘The Majestic’, in Ireland, during the period 1919 to 1921. A time of unrest, random murders and terrorist outrages.

Brendan Archer, a retired Major, survives World War 1, but is shell shocked. After spending over a year in hospital recovering, he travels to Ireland where his fiancé Angela is waiting for him.

In my W & N Essentials paperback copy (2021), Margaret Drabble writes a good introduction to the novel that should be read after reading the novel! In the introduction Margaret Drabble writes:
‘Farrell had found an important subject, which was to map out the rest of his all too brief career. But he had also found a voice of ironic detachment and an eccentric and colourful style that is utterly unmistakeable. It is at once playful and brutal, offhand and lethal, full of resonating and incongruous imagery and moments of arresting, mock-heroic bathos. Drainpipes bulge, ‘like varicose veins’, the hotel rooms are ‘boiling with cats’, and the fingers of starving and scavenging women are ‘as gnarled as hens’ feet.’

Farrell tragically died by drowning in 1979 at the age of 44.

This was a 5 star read for me. I am so impressed with his writing. The story is tragic, but the writing sublime. I really appreciated the Siege of Krishnapur too and am going to try to read The Singapore Grip this year also.
On another note, the list of award winners that you are going to read the rest of the year looks fabulous and some have been on my to read list for a long time. I will try and join in on a few.
Thanks so much.