To start, a quick explanation of what
winning the, slightly dubious-sounding honour of ‘The
Lost Booker’, means. The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special
edition of the Man Booker
Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970. Books published in 1970 were not
eligible for the Man Booker Prize as that year the rules changed from the prize
being awarded to books published in the previous year, to being awarded to
books published the same year as the award, from 1971.
So J.G. Farrell, was to win for a second time in a rather roundabout
way, for a book actually published before his first Man Booker prize-winning
novel of 1973 ‘The Siege of Krishnapur’ and the prize was awarded post-humously
30 years after Farrell’s death.
I have to say that I was slightly wary of
this book, as I was critical of Farrell’s previous offering, especially as my
criticism wasn’t due to storyline but more his technical ability. However, I am, thankfully, more favourably
inclined towards this novel. It
was a rather strange story, strangely engaging and entertaining. It depicts the ‘Majestic Hotel’ in a
fictional town in Ireland, and follows a major who, on discharge from the
British Army following WW1, travels over to visit his fiancée, a hasty
engagement made during the days of war.
He arrives at the ramshackle remains of a previously elegant and
luxurious hotel, to meet an odd collection of characters; the old ruling class
family with a collection of old ladies who never left. And there he remains as a witness to the
continued destruction and decay of the hotel, as a metaphor of all that was
changing in the politics of Ireland and the world following the First World War.
I found the descriptions of the dilapidated
hotel, although sometimes toe curling, very atmospheric and the depiction of
the various characters living at and visiting the hotel emotive, sometimes
amusing, sometimes maddening. The
events and interactions within the hotel and the backdrop of political turmoil,
from the Major’s viewpoint were interesting, as an outsider and yet somehow
being complicit by a result of his nationality and class. I couldn’t help but wonder why on earth
he didn’t just abandon the hotel and return to his life, and yet this was
obvious as, similarly to whole generations, he didn’t really have a life to
return to after the war and had been irreversibly changed – resulting in an aimless
association to the hotel and its inhabitants.
This novel is yet again a chapter-free
zone, interspersed with, what I presume to be fictional, newspaper articles
describing events in Ireland and the spreading unrest in the rest of the
British Empire. This context is
further explored by what is described as his ‘Empire Trilogy’, including ‘The
Siege of Krishnapur’ and ‘The Singapore Grip’. As often seems to be the case with this project, the list of
prize-winning novels is only the beginning, or stimulus for reading many other
books. Perhaps by reading the
final book ‘The Singapore Grip’ in the loosely titled trilogy, I will be able
to form a more definite opinion of Farrell as a writer, as at the moment I’m
rather divided. Still, that will
have to wait as there are still a few more Bookers to go…
