Shirley Kossick The judges in Exclusive Books’s promotional “Boeke Prize” which highlights six novels, have come up with a really strong shortlist this year. It includes Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True (Phoenix), which topped the American bestseller lists in 1998. This gripping story of identical twins is told by Dominick, whose whole life is overshadowed by the schizophrenia of his brother Thomas. Torn between anger and affection, Dominick has to deal with the consequences of Thomas’s unpredictable behaviour. The novel is undeniably interesting but there are many longueurs and at 897 pages it needed some severe editing.
Most charming of the six novels is Chocolat (Black Swan) by Joanne Harris, in which she describes the eruption into an austere French village of Vianne Rocher and her vivacious daughter. Unashamedly sensuous and possibly possessed of magical powers, Vianne shocks the local priest by opening a chocolate shop and waits as the villagers gradually succumb. Niall Williams’s first novel, Four Letters of Love, had a similar sort of charm, so the Boeke choice of his second – As It Is In Heaven (Picador) – kindled high expectations. They were somewhat disappointed, however, by a love story which employs a little too much magic realism and, as the title may suggest, an over-reliance on divine intervention. An Equal Music (Phoenix) by Vikram Seth is mainly about music and love, but also examines various states of mind. Unlike Seth’s masterly A Suitable Boy, with its broad and crowded canvas, here he concentrates on a handful of characters, especially musician Michael, who meets a woman he jilted 10 years earlier, to find their tensions remain unresolved. Subtle, perceptive, but finally unsatisfying, An Equal Music does not quite reach the standard of Seth’s previous work. The two most powerful books on the shortlist are, in my opinion, J M Coetzee’s Disgrace (Vintage) and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (Faber &Faber). Disgrace has been widely acclaimed, making Coetzee the first writer ever to win Britain’s Booker Prize twice. It tells the story of 52-year-old college lecturer David Lurie, whose brief affair with a student leads to the loss of his job. Refusing to show repentance, he retreats to his daughter’s isolated small-holding only to fail again when Lucy is brutally raped by three intruders. A searing examination of contemporary South Africa, Disgrace is a compelling but depressing book from whose bleak vision one tends to recoil. Escapist as this probably is, my vote goes to The Poisonwood Bible, which, though it also has a devastating plot, does end on an affirmative beat. Set in the Belgian Congo, this is the saga of the Price sisters – Rachel, twins Leah and Adah and Ruth May – together with their mother, Orleanna. In 1959 they are dragged from their Georgia home to an isolated mission by their fanatical Baptist father, Nathan, who intends to bring Christianity to Congolese villagers. Kingsolver uses the alternating and wonderfully delineated voices of the five female Prices to tell their story which coincides with the Congo’s painful evolution towards independence. Tragedy rubs shoulders with black humour, both arising from Nathan’s often comic but extremely dangerous misunderstanding of everyone around him. This is a thoroughly absorbing book which manages to combine a family chronicle with the unfolding of history. As Jane Smiley remarked of The Poisonwood Bible, “There are few ambitious, successful and beautiful novels. Lucky for us, we have one now.”