It is probably time for the Booker Panel, or who ever masterminds the prize, to re-stipulate the criteria for the prize. Clearly it is no longer the best novels published within the time frame – October to September in any given year. October because that is when the Frankfurt Bookfair took place, though I have no idea whether that is still going.
If I Survive You is not even a novel, but clearly a series of stand alone short stories with a wraith of a connection. The characters are a linked family saga, Jamaica, and a house in Miami, which like the family is slowly sinking into the ground.
Jonathan Escoffery writes amusingly about colourism: is Trelawny Black? Clearly his skin tone suggests otherwise, he can pass for Hispanic, but doesn’t speak Spanish, his hair crinkles which is a clue. His roots are undoubtedly Jamaican, but he has never been there. Escoffery writes about absent fathers: Trelawny’s father has gone off with his elder brother Delano, a hurricane destroyed the house, they moved and the father did odd jobs while rebuilding the house, then moved in with his eldest son. There is another absent father, even less kind to his abandoned son, Cukie, by leaving him a second time.
The writing is funny in places, dark in others, extreme sometimes and deadly. But that doesn’t amount to a whole narrative. Each “chapter” could be read on its own, they bear little reference to a previous event or character. I am very unimpressed with this book as an example of the best writing this year.
deborahjs 