This year’s Booker Prize will be announced on November 9th, so I’m just squeezing this review in before then. I’ve now read 4/6 on the shortlist, with no inclination to read Marlon James or Douglas Stuart, so shall leave this year’s prize there, with Emma Cline’s Switzy from the longlist still to read. Follow my links to my reviews of the other three – Strout & Perry, Harrison (& Riley from the longlist).
Out of the four I’ve read, I particularly loved Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King, but would be happy for Strout to win too. As for the Harrison, I said I didn’t expect it to make the shortlist, but did love it in a way. However, there it is, but it does feel as if his novel is representing his body of work a little rather than just that book – it is a novel that will grow on you as you ponder what it says between the lines.
It’s not often that a comic novel makes it onto the Booker longlist, let alone the shortlist – and Kennard’s Black Bag is one such book. I don’t think it’ll win, but I did enjoy it, although it does meander a bit in the middle. It did make me chuckle though, and all comic novels should elicit some form of smile and laughter. Its premise is taken from an actual psychological experiment which was done back in 1967 where a university professor in Oregon paid someone to sit in lectures dressed as a Black Bag and noted how the students’ attitudes changed over the term towards it going from hostile to friendship.
The novel begins with our narrator introducing himself as an actor, getting that out of the way. He’s on his way to meet his best friend Claudio, who he’s known since he was seven. The narrator is broke not having had a job in three months; Claudio, a computer games influencer is flush and buys lunch but is turned down when he offers a loan. Our narrator is determined to find a job, he does have an audition lined up, crossed fingers. He muses, sadly:
There was a time when a genuinely bohemian lifestyle was possible, by which I mean economically feasible. Where it persists now, it is only as cosplay for bored kids with private incomes.
Occasionally a part in a play at a fringe theatre will turn up. He loves plays – good plays, that is, but they’re usually on subsistence wages so he has to balance these jobs with ‘murder-mystery dinner theatre’. When he sees an intriguing advert, he applies:
Male actor required for psychological enquiry. Non-speaking, but discretion and devotion to restrictive performance requirements obligatory. Duration 3-4 months, start asap, pref immediate. No experience in discipline (Psychology) necessary. Short / slight statre preferred certainly no more than 5’8 but shorter if possible (Legs). Fee to be discussed. Contact Dr Paul Blend.
He gets a reply to his email instantly. The next morning he discovers that the job entails zipping himself into a big black leather person-sized bag (it has holes for the feet to go through, some vents, and they add eye-holes), and sitting silently at the back of the lecture hall for a weekly lecture, and ditto for one seminar per week. He takes the job.
Thus begins an interesting period in his life! At first finding it awkward, but then getting into being Black Bag. As Claudio lives minutes from the campus, he gets changed at his flat and wanders down the road to the lecture hall or seminar room. As you’ll expect the students don’t get it at first and are mocking, but soon they’ll come to mostly ignore Black Bag, or even confide in him. In addition to the techician-scale salary he’ll get at the end of the term, Dr Blend gives him cash weekly, and instead of squirrelling it away for his rent money, he buys new curtains for his flat! As for our narrator, he grows to love the anonymity wearing the bag gives him. Only Claudio and Dr Blend know who is inside, and Claudio has a vision (that can get the pressure of being a game-fluencer off him). However, as Black Bag he also attracts the attention of a rather oversexed female lecture, Justine, who does allow him to talk, but isn’t remotely interested in the man inside, and thus Black Bag gets a girlfriend! He has more adventures before Black Bag’s world starts to collapse, but by then he’s getting rather addicted to being rather than acting as Black Bag. I can’t really say more.
Kennard has had great fun with this novel, and along the way he takes in the major themes of identity and masculinity, not to mention becoming a sex object! He does this with wit, there are many chuckle out loud one-liners, but also allows his narrator time to be pensive, and the reader has plenty of sympathy with him. Claudio is a good friend, but the middle where Claudio is trying to monetize Black Bag, and then goes missing for a while was a bit baggy (pun-intended!) and could have been shorter. Justine, I felt, was less believable, but her character had to be a bit outrageous to make the relationship between her and Black Bag work. The first third or so of the novel works really well and the last third descends into a madcap farce – I did love the bit where Black Bag is on a swan pedalo on the river… I’d be very surprised it it did win, but it was enjoyable and it’s alway lovely to see a comic novel make the shortlist.
Source: Own copy. John Murray hardback, 389 pages. BUY at Waterstones or Amazon UK via my affiliate links.