{"id":170774,"date":"2025-09-26T16:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T16:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170774\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T16:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T16:47:11","slug":"six-novels-mostly-about-middle-age-that-are-anything-but-safe-and-comfortable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170774\/","title":{"rendered":"six novels (mostly) about middle age that are anything but safe and comfortable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Times has described the 2025 Booker Prize shortlist as \u201crevenge of the middle-aged author\u201d<\/a>\u201c. If the phrase sounds derogatory, it isn\u2019t meant that way: the review also describes the shortlist as “novels for grown-ups\u201d, with the prize privileging \u201cmaturity over novelty\u201d and supporting \u201cunpretentious, old-fashioned literary fiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is reinforced by the Booker Prize website, which highlights the previous winner (Kiran Desai) and two previously shortlisted authors (Andrew Miller and David Szalay) on the list, while noting that all six authors have long-established literary careers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A book prize should reward novelty, though \u2013 and the Booker is, after all, a book prize, not an author prize like the Nobel<\/a>. But if novelty isn\u2019t obvious from the authors themselves, it can be detected in their books.<\/p>\n

Their ages should not be a big surprise. Several literary prizes focus on older writers, including the newly launched Pioneer Prize<\/a> for female writers over 60, established by Bernardine Evaristo to \u201cacknowledge and celebrate pioneering British women writers\u201d in all genres. Evaristo notes that the prize intends to correct the problem that \u201colder women writers tend to be overlooked\u201d<\/a> \u2013 91-year-old Maureen Duffy was its first recipient.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Penguin<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps these prizes and Booker nominations respond in part to society\u2019s emphasis on youth, reflected in publishing initiatives such as Granta\u2019s best young novelists<\/a>, Penguin\u2019s authors under 35 to watch<\/a> and previously, The New Yorker\u2019s 20 under 40<\/a> list.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see whether the Booker winner this year reflects the suggested trend of overlooking older women writers, or responds to it. Three of the shortlisted authors are women, and according to my students and the bookies\u2019 odds, Desai\u2019s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Susan Choi\u2019s Flashlight are likely contenders for the prize, with Ben Markovits\u2019 The Rest of Our Lives behind them. <\/p>\n

My students were drawn to the specific historical context of Flashlight, which conveys the lives of several generations of a family beginning in 1940s Japan, then moving through suburban America and North Korea. They valued the less-documented migration story, and suggested the mystery fiction aspect added wide appeal.<\/p>\n

Markovits\u2019 The Rest of Our Lives was seen as a typical Booker shortlist by my students, who identified the extra-marital affair, the road trip across America, and the internal-monologue narration of the eloquent and thoughtful university lecturer protagonist as factors which might make the book very popular.<\/p>\n

Beyond this, the plot shares with Flashlight a fundamental uncertainty, with characters feeling out of place in their own lives. In The Rest of Our Lives, Tom\u2019s life is gradually unbuttoned when he and his wife decide to stay together until their youngest child leaves home, following her affair. Rather than a dramatic upheaval, the narrator decides to undertake a picturesque road trip.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

2025 Booker judges Ayobami Adebayo, Chris Power, Roddy Doyle, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kiley Reid.
\n Neo Gilder \/ Booker Prize Foundation<\/p>\n

An extra-marital affair is also at the centre of Miller\u2019s The Land in Winter<\/a>, in which the harsh winter of 1962-63 in England\u2019s West Country forces two couples to confront their uncomfortable relationship dynamics, when they are forced to stay indoors to avoid the weather.<\/p>\n

Disaster looms in the countryside through unpredictable people like Alison Riley, who is \u201cthe kind of person who might choose to bring the house down simply to find out what kind of noise it made\u201d.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty of individual identity, driven by unconventional and challenging family relationships, is the fundamental connecting factor between all six books, and Katie Kitamura\u2019s Audition<\/a> expresses this most directly.<\/p>\n

Written in two parts, the novel considers the relationship between its protagonist and a younger adult male who may or may not be her son. The novel suggests, as the Booker judges note, that we play roles every day, like the actor protagonist of this novel \u2013 who first rejects the suggestion that the young man is her son, then later changes position to live alongside him as if he were.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the novel that stands out most to me is Szalay\u2019s Flesh<\/a>. While this book likewise conveys the unravelling of life into uncertainty and risk, its plot concerns a 15-year-old boy in a relationship with a woman of his mother\u2019s age. Flesh is written in lengthy dialogue, rendering the story sparse and sharp.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Penguin<\/a><\/p>\n

Having written about both of Desai\u2019s previous novels as a scholar of post-colonial studies, I am eager to read The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia, which was published on the day of the Booker shortlist announcement \u2013 an auspicious sign perhaps.<\/p>\n

Only her third novel in a long career, it is described as a romance. Publishers have recently pointed to an upturn in the popular romance<\/a> genre fiction, including subgenres like romantasy. This might offer favourable conditions for the book \u2013 helped by judge Sarah Jessica Parker\u2019s association with romance, and a new wave of literary romance screen adaptations including Emerald Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights<\/a> and a new Netflix series of Pride and Prejudice<\/a> in 2026.<\/p>\n

The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia begins with a 55-year-old protagonist whose parents control minute details of her life, but is centrally concerned with the epic and transnational love affair of its two eponymous characters.<\/p>\n

The novel maintains Desai\u2019s trend of changing literary direction between novels. Having herself lamented Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard<\/a> as \u201cexoticist\u201d, she responds to that accusation in The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia, where protagonist Sonia is accused of writing \u201corientalist nonsense\u201d. In a Guardian interview<\/a>, Desai explained that the character expresses her own concern about how to write about India for a western readership.<\/p>\n

Desai\u2019s second novel, The Inheritance of Loss<\/a>, was set in the aftermath of violence resulting from the claim for a separate state in post-Partition India. It won the Booker Prize in 2006 when Desai was 35, then the youngest woman to win the award \u2013 in 2013, it went to an even younger Eleanor Catton. This statistic suggests the Booker winner, at least, tends to be an older author.<\/p>\n

The novels in this year\u2019s shortlist all convey the overwhelming impact of uncertainty and change, and privilege introspective responses to disruptions that are sometimes hidden for decades. While (mostly) stories about middle age, they are anything but safe and comfortable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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