{"id":22403,"date":"2017-09-13T12:09:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T16:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=22403"},"modified":"2017-09-13T12:09:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T16:09:18","slug":"the-2017-man-booker-prize-shorlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2017\/09\/13\/the-2017-man-booker-prize-shorlist\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2017 Man Booker Prize Shorlist"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

The 2017 Man Booker Prize Shortlist!<\/h1><\/div>

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The Man Booker Prize shortlist was announced early this morning, whittling down what has been widely considered to be a strong longlist. Over at The Mookse and the Gripes Goodreads group, the discussion has been lively and, for the most part, appreciative. However, several of the groups favorites — Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones<\/em>, Kamila Shamsie’s\u00a0Home Fire<\/em>, and Jon McGregor’s\u00a0Reservoir 13<\/em>, for example —\u00a0did not make the shortlist. To add insult to injury, a few of the ones that did make it were those least liked by that group. Ah well! That’s how these things go! I hope you’ll let us know your thoughts here or over at the group<\/a>, where the discussion lives strong!<\/p>\n

The winner will be announced on October 17.<\/p>\n

The Amazon links below are affiliate links, so a small cut of your purchase comes back to and helps support The Mookse and the Gripes.<\/p>\n

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\"\"4 3 2 1<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Paul Auster<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson\u2019s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson\u2019s pleasures and ache from each Ferguson\u2019s pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson\u2019s life rushes on.<\/p>\n

As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1<\/i> is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.<\/p>\n

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\"\"History of Wolves<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Emily Fridlund<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong.<\/p>\n

And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose but with this new sense of belonging she is also drawn into secrets she doesn\u2019t understand. Over the course of a few days, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death consequences of the things people do\u2014and fail to do\u2014for the people they love.<\/p>\n

Winner of the McGinnis-Ritchie award for its first chapter, Emily Fridlund\u2019s propulsive and gorgeously written History of Wolves<\/i> introduces a new writer of enormous range and talent.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Exit West<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Mohsin Hamid<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

See Paul’s review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet\u2014sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors\u2014doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . .<\/p>\n

Exit West<\/i> follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Elmet<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Fiona Mozley<\/p>\n

Click here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

Daniel is heading north. He is looking for someone. The simplicity of his early life with Daddy and Cathy has turned sour and fearful. They lived apart in the house that Daddy built for them with his bare hands. They foraged and hunted. When they were younger, Daniel and Cathy had gone to school. But they were not like the other children then, and they were even less like them now. Sometimes Daddy disappeared, and would return with a rage in his eyes. But when he was at home he was at peace. He told them that the little copse in Elmet was theirs alone. But that wasn’t true. Local men, greedy and watchful, began to circle like vultures. All the while, the terrible violence in Daddy grew.<\/p>\n

Atmospheric and unsettling, Elmet<\/i> is a lyrical commentary on contemporary society and one family’s precarious place in it, as well as an exploration of how deep the bond between father and child can go.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Lincoln in the Bardo<\/strong><\/em>
\nby George Saunders<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

See Lee’s review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln\u2019s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. \u201cMy poor boy, he was too good for this earth,\u201d the president says at the time. \u201cGod has called him home.\u201d Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state\u2014called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo\u2014a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie\u2019s soul.
\n
\nLincoln in the Bardo<\/i>\u00a0is an astonishing\u00a0feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction\u2019s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we\u00a0know that everything we love must end?<\/p>\n

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\"\"Autumn<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Ali Smith<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to purchase on Amazon.com
\nClick here <\/a>to purchase on Amazon UK<\/p>\n

See Paul’s review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That’s what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016? Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.<\/p>\n

Ali Smith’s new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. It is the first installment of her Seasonal <\/i>quartet\u2014four stand-alone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are)\u2014and it casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of?\u00a0Shakespearean jeu d\u2019esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history making.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where we\u2019re living. Here\u2019s time at its most contemporaneous and its most cyclic.<\/p>\n

From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories, a story about aging and time and love and stories themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The judges have whittled down a strong longlist to form the 2017 Man Booker Prize Shortlist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-22403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Man-booker-prize.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-5Pl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22404,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22403\/revisions\/22404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22403"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}