For both authors, literature may try to rationalize the chaotic unpredictability of human lives, but it won’t succeed — the meaning of life, and the question of how to live, are unsolvable mysteries.

Interesting perspective, Jonathan. I think you’ve articulated one of my favorite aspects of this novel, even though I didn’t know it at the time. The attempt itself is fascinating and worthwhile!

Fitzgerald and Barnes certainly see literature as a means of transcending reality, but not in order to reach some higher plane of understanding. For both authors, literature may try to rationalize the chaotic unpredictability of human lives, but it won’t succeed — the meaning of life, and the question of how to live, are unsolvable mysteries.

Thus both authors set out to present unusual lives, plainly and simply, as they were lived, without judgment or interpretation, to let the reader reach her own conclusions.

On our trips to London, the first full day always ends with a stop at Hatchards on Piccadilly. Since we usually go in the fall, a highlight is always to start out by checking the displays of Booker finalists before moving back into the shop. I always emerge with a bag that contains as much as I can carry on the walk back to Knightsbridge where we stay — that usually means five or six hardcover books, most of which are read before it is time to come home.

So I remember well my excitement when I bought this book in the fall of 2005 — I too am a Barnes’ admirer (although I have to say his work is uneven) and certainly was intrigued by the premise of this book.

Perhaps, I was too excited. The first part of the book — the conflicting tenses — I did find very interesting and rewarding. But I’m afraid as it moved into spiritism I got more and more frustrated. I’m not into spiritism, so that was part of it. And I certainly got the feeling that Barnes had got himself trapped in his conceit and was so wrapped up in that that his interest in serving the reader got lost. (What I like best about Barnes is his social satire and that is pretty much absent in this part of the book.) By the end, I wasn’t disappointed in the book so much as thinking “oh well, that didn’t really work.” Your review does bring all those memories back and I am heartened that you found a meaning to the overall work that I did not. The reminder is enough for me and I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it.

I did think The Sea (also bought on that same visit) was a deserving, if surprise, winner and have reread it since and found it grew in my estimation. While I agree with the assessment that recent Booker winners are pretty pale compared to some previous ones, I would urge Lisa to consider the shortlist each year. In all three of these years, there are some excellent books that did not win — The Secret River and In the Country of Men in 2006; The Reluctant Fundamentalist, On Chesil Beach and Animal’s People in 2007; and The Clothes on Their Backs, The Secret Scripture and Sea of Poppies in 2008. My comment on the 2005 shortlist is that all five books have value — and that is the latest year when that happened.

Now I think I’ll see if I am allowed back near the kitchen. I have decided that my “holiday” book will be Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, a very promising look at “the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York”. I enjoy Wharton a lot — she doesn’t do Europe as well as Henry James does, but I think she does America better. And I am going to intersperse that with a reread of Cynthia Ozick’s Dialogue, her book of four longish short stories from last year, which I highly recommend.

Many thanks for the holiday diversion. I hope your holiday is going well.