The Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in the world of English literature. Every year, a team of judges compile a longlist of 12 to 13 novels originally published in English. This list is parred down to a a shortlist of six finalists, and from that a winner is chosen. It’s an annual opportunity for book lovers to celebrate a group of literary luminaries from across the English-speaking world – and, as with most awards, predict and debate who the winner should be.
In celebration of the awards announcement tomorrow, I’ve read (nearly all of) the finalists. Here’s a short review of each one and my opinion of who should win this year’s 2024 Booker Prize.
“James” by Percival Everett
This retelling of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a soulful, thoughtful novel that casts Jim, Huck’s enslaved friend and traveling partner, as the main character. In Twain’s original work, Jim is a sidekick and a caricature. He’s often played for laughs, and his character serves as a means to help Huck grow and develop. Here, Everett develops Jim more fully, giving him a rich inner life with conflict, growth, and change. This Jim is literate, articulate, and concerned about the philosophical nature of slavery. The language here is quick and concise, making this a fun, easy read. Though not explicitly said, there’s an implication that the novel is from Jim’s diary, giving us a very personal sense of his feelings as he makes us way up and down the Mississippi River, seeking both is freedom and a way to save his wife and daughter.
The book itself is fairly short, and the quick chapters and simple, direct prose makes it an easy read. The characters come alive with heart, and there’s a wonderful mixture of humor and sadness. This was the first of the Booker Prize nominees that I read this year, but yet it still remains with me even after this time.
“Orbital” by Samantha Harvey
In writing the book, Harvey says she spent “thousands and thousands of hours” watching footage of space. In reading “Orbital”, it’s easy to forget that Harvey had never been to space herself as her descriptions are so crisp and vivid. Her novel, which follows a group of six astronauts over the course of one day as they orbit around Earth, reads more like a piece of long-form poetry than a proper novel.
For it’s beautiful writing, though, the novel lacks a plot. For the most part, it can be forgiven – there’s a simple joy in appreciating beautiful writing for beautiful writing’s sake, and the subtle, sensitive descriptions of these six people and their thoughts and feelings as spin through space is lovely in its own right. And as the shortest book in the group (my copy is 207 pages set on smaller size paper than the other books), the book knows how to make its point without overstaying its welcome. But I still longed for a plot, or at least some kind of conflict. As it stands, this is a marvelous exercise in how to write description and inner emotion, but the lack of plot left this was at the bottom of the list for me.
“Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner
This was one was another one of my favorites from the shortlist batch. It follows a woman named “Sadie Smith” (it’s never clear if that’s her real name), a kind of freelance undercover agent who is contracted to go undercover and spy on a group of far-right French radicals. The plot is sharp and engaging, the characters are well-drawn, and the dialogue is clever. In a New York Times interview, Kushner described writing of the book as “the most fun I’ve ever had doing anything in my life”, and that really comes through on the page.
Kusher makes excellent use of the first-person perspective, taking the opportunity to develop the narrator “Sadie” into someone that I genuinely enjoyed spending time with. Sadie is cunning, witty, and troubled, and Kusher brings this character to life for us. There’s also a fun slow burn to the espionage plot that kept me reading. However, the chapters in which Kushner cuts to the emails from a Bruno Lacombe can feel tedious at times as he waxes poetic about the evolution of early man. I also felt a bit disappointed by the conclusion.
Overall, though, this was one of my favorites of the batch, and I’d recommend everyone give it a read.
“The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden
This is a good example of why I don’t like to read much about the novels beforehand. I didn’t know what to expect with this one, and had I pre-read beforehand, I might not have been excited for this. But as it is, I found this one to be one of my favorites. Set in the Netherlands in the 1960’s, “The Safekeep” starts as a novel about a lonely young woman, develops into a romance (complete with multiple sultry sex scenes), and eventually winds up to be a novel about isolation, loss, and how define ideas like “family” and “home”. The writing is vivid and concise, and the sentences are packed with description without being overwrought. The character development is excellent, as well. I genuinely enjoyed following the arc of Isabel, the protagonist, as she grows through joy and pain.
From the sophistication here, it’s hard to believe that this is van der Wouden’s debut novel. This was one of my top favorites of the group.
“Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a copy of this book because it hasn’t been released in the United States yet (it doesn’t come out until February 2025). So instead, I’ll offer a review of a nominated book that didn’t make the shortlist.
“Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange
In general, I don’t read much about the novels before I read them as I typically prefer to go in cold. Therefore, I didn’t realize until afterwards that this is a sequel (and also kind of a prequel?) to a 2018 novel. I’d strongly recommend that you read the first one as “Wondering Stars” builds on the characters and events in the first one. Without having read the sequel, it felt at times like I had joined an important conversation halfway through.
Like “Held” (see below), this book is also a century-spanning novel that chronicles multiple generations across time. The novel is a meditation on intergenerational trauma and the struggle of Native Americans, tracing events that run from an American Indian boarding school in the 1860’s up to the battles with drugs and alcohol in modern day Oakland. Like many of the other nominated novels this year, there’s a wide cast of well-written characters, and Orange infuses the book with both humor and sadness.
While this wasn’t my favorite of the batch, I think it deserved a shortlist nomination over some of the others, and it’s exclusion feels like a bit of a snub.
“Held” by Anne Michaels
Among the nominated books, this one was my least favorite. Rather than have a singular plot, the novel is more of a series of vignettes which tell the story of a multigenerational family spanning from World War I to the present day. The writing is beautiful and poetic – I wasn’t surprised to learn that Anne Michaels was the poet laureate of Toronto – and it’s easy to get lost in the language here. The winding nature of the narrative also helps exemplify the writer’s thematic idea about memory and time.
However, I found myself getting frustrated by the lack of a concrete plot. There are a lot of interesting ideas – a World War I vet whose photos show the dead relatives of the photographed, a relationship between a war reporter and a refugee camp worker, and even a cameo from Marie Curie herself. But the constant shifting and movement meant I never got to know any of the characters and made it difficult for any kind of through plot to develop. Despite the beautiful prose, this was my least favorite of the batch.
And the winner should be…?
To be honest, this wasn’t much of a close contest for me. While all of these novels are good in their own ways – I can even appreciate “Held” and “Orbital” despite not personally enjoying them as much – it was “James” that really stuck with me. The adventure, the character’s voice, the sharp prose, and the themes of language and racial identity all came together to make this a compelling novel that impacted me in a way that I didn’t feel the others did. The fact that it’s such a clever inverted retelling of a classic adds a fun layer, but I think this book still would have been my favorite even if it were brand new.
So, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Was my prediction right? Check out the Booker Prize website where you can get more info on the finalist and check out a live feed of the Booker Prize winner being announced. The winner will be announced Tuesday night GMT, so check it out and see if the Booker Prize judges agreed with me.