< OK >
Winner : Man Booker Prize 2007
Yikes! What were they thinking?!
Just not my cup of tea! Think you would have to have masochistic tendencies and a devotion to boredom to enjoy.
It probably is an insightful slice-of-life but the narrative is shallow and padded out with so many aimless sentences. So many aimless sentences littering the pages. Aimless sentences well expressed. Aimless sentences blithering around about not much at all and hinting at maybe something. And aimlessly composing scenes about grandmother Ada’s sex life. Get the idea.
The storyline jerks repetitively up and down the timeline making it fractured rather than a slow reveal. It’s vagueness makes it torturous and tortuous. I cried ENOUGH half way through!
Obviously the judges were into tedious melancholy ... I just feel a bit sad for whoever else was on the Booker prize short list. And I wonder if it was the same panel of judges who had awarded the prize to the similarly boring “The Sea” by John Banville a couple of years earlier.
