Suzanne Perez

Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

When you started your social media outreach during the pandemic, I understand, did you ever think that you would get the kind of audience that you have now, the kind of reach that that has?

Thank you very much, Michael.

It's the season for catching up on award-winning books, so this week I decided to check out David Soloy's novel Flesh, which is the recipient of this year's Booker Prize.

The Canadian-born Hungarian-British writer was shortlisted for the Booker nearly a decade ago for his novel All That Man Is, but Flesh is my first experience with Soloy's writing.

And my, what an experience it is!

Flash follows the life of one Hungarian man, István, from adolescence to old age.

It's told in a sparse, episodic style that booker Judge Roddy Doyle called singular and extraordinary.

It's certainly unlike anything I've read before, and I found it off-putting for several chapters, until a dramatic plot twist grabbed my attention and propelled me through the rest of the novel.

The style and subject matter will not be for everyone, but I can understand the critical acclaim.

Flesh opens when main character Istvan is 15, and he and his mother move to a new town.

Not an easy age to do that, Istvan observes, and that turns out to be the case.

We begin the novel with a huge void in Istvan's history.

What happened during his early childhood?

Why did his mother bring him here?

And those blank spaces set a tone for the story to come.

Within just a few pages, Istvan begins doing chores for an older woman neighbor who grooms him into a sexual relationship.

To call the teen passive or uncommunicative would be a gross understatement, but minimal is the mood here, as István's statements seldom go beyond, yeah, no, or I don't know.

A Wall Street Journal reviewer said the sparse prose leads to an almost comically minimalist dialogue, in which István conducts entire conversations, saying little except, okay.

It came off as downright annoying to this reader until I realized that Soloy seemed to be establishing the foundation for a character who is detached from his own emotions and desires, and even from his physical body.