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The Sellout, Paul Beatty

The Reading Group will meet again on Wednesday, 7 December 2016 at the usual time of 7.30pm in Plommer A. We will be discussing The Sellout, by Paul Beatty - this year's Man Booker Prize winner.

From Amazon.co.uk:
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.

Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father’s work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that’s left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.

What’s more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

The book is available in local libraries, and in paperback and Kindle edition from Amazon* and other booksellers.




*Please remember to use the link on the Wolfson Alumni & Development website if you choose to buy from Amazon, as College will benefit from the sale: http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/alumni/amazon/

October review: 'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street', by Hilary Mantel

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Book: Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, Hilary Mantel

Publication date: 1988

WCRG Meeting: 26 October 2016

Rating: 7.5

The Reading Goup met as usual last month to discuss Hilary Mantel’s 1988 novel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. It was a novel that elicited some strong feelings. One member in particular intensely disliked the novel; finding the characters to be insufficiently drawn and the plot extremely confusing. Others tended to agree with these points, but felt that this was part of the point of the novel: to show how the individual gradually fades away in the face of a rigid regime.

There was some discussion of characterisation and one member remarked that the men were depicted in a much less substantial way than the women. Interestingly, given the fact that Mantel was writing about a culture that could be viewed as oppressive to women, it was the women in this novel who seemed to best grasp the human truths and interactions going on below the surface.

The Group also considered how well the air of confusion created by Mantel succeeded in conveying the experience of living under the Saudi regime. One member had a relative who spent time working there and was able to give first hand parallels which convinced us that Mantel had given a convincing account of the facts. Mantel herself lived in Saudi Arabia for a time and this undoubtedly fed her observations of the culture and the experience of living there as a Western woman.

Most of the meeting was spent considering how the novel conveys the frustration and diminution of people like Frances who submit to these kinds of regimes for the sake of money. The uncertainty and paranoia evoked by Mantel may have communicated what such a life would feel like, but it had the knock-on effect of leaving the reader unsure of what was really happening and experiencing one’s own frustration!

By immersing oneself in Frances’ mindscape, the reader begins to doubt his\her understanding of events. One reader remarked how, on her first morning in Saudi Arabia, Andrew says to Frances: ‘you are not a person, you are a woman's. This clearly sets the tone for the novel’s exploration of different forms of imprisonment, both physical and mental.

Some of the Group were dissatisfied with the characterisation, feeling that Mantel was using her characters as ciphers and symbols, rather than depicting living, breathing individuals. There was also a feeling that the novel is rather dated in its views and depiction of Saudi Arabia. It was first published in 1988, just after the film ‘Death of a Princess’ appeared. One hopes that Jeddah is not like that now, although those with knowledge of the region were not so sure of this.

As always, we greatly appreciated the comments sent in by absent members. One of these described the writing as the equivalent of viewing life through a peephole and this would explain some of the ambiguity and disjointedness of the narrative. Another mentioned that Hilary Mantel was just moving from travel writing to fiction when she wrote ‘Eight Months’ and had not really found her stride in this early fiction.

One reader, who particularly admired the novel, described it as ‘a powerful blend of Kafka, Orwell, Hitchcock and Highsmith’, evoking all sorts of parallels and echoes. He emphasised the closed, narrowed landscape of the city without maps and appreciated the ways in which Mantel used images of locked doors and veils to emphasise fear and paranoia.

The novel scored a respectable 7.5.