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Black Bag
Win a free kindle copy of this book!
5 days and 22:20:06
100 copies available
U.S. only
A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend’s students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn-term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular: can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor’s childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .
A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.
A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.
389 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 267 reviews
July 29, 2026
oh god, I just adored this. I’d read a thousand more pages about Black Bag, then turn back to the beginning and read them all again.
EDIT: and it’s a Booker longlistee!! not to say I’m a tastemaker, but…
EDIT: and it’s a Booker longlistee!! not to say I’m a tastemaker, but…
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
3.5/4
Black Bag is a bizarre but compelling novel that follows an unnamed out of work actor who gets a job where he is required to sit in lectures from inside a black bag. Dr Blend, who employs the actor, insists he remain silent and not move; he must not speak to the students and preferably arrive and leave as black bag.
As the experiment continues the actor becomes more comfortable remaining as black bag outside of the classroom and the results of his non-interactions with others begins to bring about surprising results.
Perhaps to appreciate the weird nature of the book it should be noted that the original black bag experiment was first conducted by Charles Goetzinger in 1967 at Oregon State University.
In the original experiment it was the students reactions that were observed but Luke Kennard has flipped this on its head by being solely interested in the person inside the bag.
Black Bag is strange, surprising, funny in parts, most definitely not like anything I've read before and it makes me want to read more of his work.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Zando for the digital review copy.
Black Bag is a bizarre but compelling novel that follows an unnamed out of work actor who gets a job where he is required to sit in lectures from inside a black bag. Dr Blend, who employs the actor, insists he remain silent and not move; he must not speak to the students and preferably arrive and leave as black bag.
As the experiment continues the actor becomes more comfortable remaining as black bag outside of the classroom and the results of his non-interactions with others begins to bring about surprising results.
Perhaps to appreciate the weird nature of the book it should be noted that the original black bag experiment was first conducted by Charles Goetzinger in 1967 at Oregon State University.
In the original experiment it was the students reactions that were observed but Luke Kennard has flipped this on its head by being solely interested in the person inside the bag.
Black Bag is strange, surprising, funny in parts, most definitely not like anything I've read before and it makes me want to read more of his work.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Zando for the digital review copy.
November 30, 2025
"The world disappointed them, so they disappointed the world."
There’s no sugarcoating this, so I won’t even try. The cover for this is one of the weirdest I have ever seen. We all know my fondness of weird, that meant that this was a no brainer for me. Weird it was but also disappointing.
I wasn’t sure how the author would take a simple idea and turn it into a full fledged novel, but here we are and the outcome wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped. Now, parts of this were absolutely ridiculous and enjoyable. While others were dull and stretched out. Plus that conclusion bored me. I almost given up on this a few times but there was something about this that kept me going. It was a car wreck and you couldn’t help but look at it.
My favorite character was Justine. She was totally wild and I loved her. You never knew what was going to come out of her mouth, plus she was a straight up freak and didn’t care who knew. She was perfect. I swear, her character was the only standout one.
‘Black Bag’ was an interesting tale but about two hundred pages too long. There were a lot of unnecessary situations happening and it just wasn’t interesting. Everything that took place around campus had me intrigued, other than that I wasn’t impressed. It was worth the read once but definitely not an instant classic.
There’s no sugarcoating this, so I won’t even try. The cover for this is one of the weirdest I have ever seen. We all know my fondness of weird, that meant that this was a no brainer for me. Weird it was but also disappointing.
I wasn’t sure how the author would take a simple idea and turn it into a full fledged novel, but here we are and the outcome wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped. Now, parts of this were absolutely ridiculous and enjoyable. While others were dull and stretched out. Plus that conclusion bored me. I almost given up on this a few times but there was something about this that kept me going. It was a car wreck and you couldn’t help but look at it.
My favorite character was Justine. She was totally wild and I loved her. You never knew what was going to come out of her mouth, plus she was a straight up freak and didn’t care who knew. She was perfect. I swear, her character was the only standout one.
‘Black Bag’ was an interesting tale but about two hundred pages too long. There were a lot of unnecessary situations happening and it just wasn’t interesting. Everything that took place around campus had me intrigued, other than that I wasn’t impressed. It was worth the read once but definitely not an instant classic.
July 29, 2026
This is a quirky book with an interesting premise. A desperate actor takes a job offered by a psychology professor. He is required to wear a big black leather bag, sit in the back of the lecture hall, and not speak to anyone. He meets a female professor on campus who uses him for strange sex as part of her “research.” His drug-obsessed friend Claudio, an online influencer and gamer, sees a business opportunity.
The book implicitly asks the reader to do what the students do: fill an opaque object with significance. It works as satire, aimed at aimed at the urge to monetize everything and at male interiority. I laughed a few times, especially at Claudio's scheme. Oh, and there’s a talking dog.
It gives us scene after scene involving the Black Bag, filtered through the unnamed actor's thoughts, as it investigates alienation, loneliness, the role of art, personal identity, and masculinity.
I found it hard to get emotionally invested. The flatness is likely intentional, but intention doesn't make it enjoyable to read. When a book makes the Booker Longlist, I expect something elevated. Here, the most interesting part is the premise.
The book implicitly asks the reader to do what the students do: fill an opaque object with significance. It works as satire, aimed at aimed at the urge to monetize everything and at male interiority. I laughed a few times, especially at Claudio's scheme. Oh, and there’s a talking dog.
It gives us scene after scene involving the Black Bag, filtered through the unnamed actor's thoughts, as it investigates alienation, loneliness, the role of art, personal identity, and masculinity.
I found it hard to get emotionally invested. The flatness is likely intentional, but intention doesn't make it enjoyable to read. When a book makes the Booker Longlist, I expect something elevated. Here, the most interesting part is the premise.
August 4, 2026
Longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize
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 stature preferred certainly no more than 5’8 but shorter if possible (Legs). Fee to be discussed. Contact Dr Paul Blend &c.
Luke Kennard's latest book is, in two different senses, a baggy novel. Our first person narrator introduces himself with:
If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable. You’d give them about five minutes before you excused yourself to get another drink, or moved to a different carriage, or asked to be transferred to an alternative department so you didn’t have to work with them any more. I’m not like that.
He is in fact an actor - although one lacking in much work other than corporate dinner murder-mystery gigs, leading him to apply for a series of unusual jobs including the advert above.
Dr Paul Blend proves to be a university lecturer in psychology and he wants our narrator to help him recreate the black bag experiment from 1967 when a student attended a term of lectures wearing a black bag that completely covered his body other than his bare feat, as the author explains in both an Observer article and the afterword:
The original black bag experiment was conducted by Charles Goetzinger in 1967 at Oregon State University in order to test Robert Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect. He observed that, over the course of the semester, ‘the students’ attitude changed from hostility toward the Black Bag to curiosity and finally to friendship’ (Goetzinger, quoted in Zajonc’s paper, ‘Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure’). In happening across this while researching a poem, I was immediately (which is to say obsessively and exclusively) concerned with Black Bag himself.
Although from my own research into the original sources (summarised here), I'm not convinced this was a deliberate experiment by Goetzinger, rather the idea was the student's who wore the black bag.
The inspiration was actually Yoko Ono and her then husband Anthony Cox and a performance they put on - here in London in 1966
The satirical columnist Art Hoppe from the San Francisco Chronicle in California wrote a column in early 1967 where he presented "the man of the Year Award to the individual who did the most during 1966 to make the world a better place to live" to Anthony Cox, who he credited with starting the Black Bag Movement which professes that "the world would be better off if everyone wore large, black, cloth bags."
And the student took his inspiration from that article which was syndicated in the US press including the The Oregon State Barometer on 5th Jan 1967, and who took to wearing a black bag to lectures, with Goetzinger's permission (and with only Goetzinger knowing his identity). The idea was more around eliminating prejudice and reducing sensory overload than testing Robert Zajonc’s ideas.
Later the reaction of the students to the black bag was picked up by Robert Zajonc as illustrating mere exposure, but it doesn't seem to have been the motivation.
See below for a February 1967 article.
But (reluctantly) back to the novel.
Our narrator finds he is required to simply sit, or initially lie, in lectures, for a total of two hours a week, wearing his all encompassing bag, and interacting with the students as little as possible:
I am in black bag, and I'm lying on a desk at the back of the lecture theater. From the feel of it, I imagine it to be a desk with metal legs, painted a glossy gray, and the surface to be a pine-colored fake wood veneer. But why shouldn't I imagine the room to be far nicer than it may, in fact, be?
And while in the lectures while he listens to Dr Brand, he gradually drifts off, into what he terms 'maladaptive daydreaming', creating an elaborate fantasy of his life in an isolated Swedish town, initially prompted by Blend referring to the Örebro 10-to-18 Study into distance dependence of adolescent friendships).
Dr Blend shows us several slides of decorated bones, some encrusted with jewels, some converted into rudimentary weapons. He says something about Spinoza and ‘the sad passions’. Whenever our power to act is diminished. Fear, hate, envy, shame. He likens this to jouissance in Lacan. Birgitta has always wanted to visit her bedbound sister in the next town. I would like to make this possible but have no means of transport. I have been keeping savings from my salary at the sawmill, dull little silver coins decorated with stags, in a tin can in my locker to pay for her train fare. Mine too, so as to chaperone her. But when I leave work I notice that someone has stolen my can.
Our narrator starts to inhabit the role of black bag, rather than simply spending two hours performing it, and, inter alia, ends up getting sucked, via his best friend, into a crypto-scheme; has a sexual-relationship, while wearing his bag, with another lecturer; encounters a black-bags anonymous society; and has heated conversations with his parent's dogs while depicting them as mute statues.
And this is the problem with the novel - the second baggy element. It's 389 pages long and Kennard keeps throwing in more ideas. The novel covers / satirises, amongst other topics:
- the crisis in masculinity (although that doesn’t seem to have been particularly intended)
- behavioural psychology and its adoption by the marketing industry to manipulate consumers
- university campus architecture (and very disappointingly treats bricolage as a bad thing)
- Twitch streamers
- NFTs
- energy drinks
- managerialism in academia
- sexual politics on campus (and the inversion of the troubled male lecturer-female student affair)
- relationships with parents
- readers' demands for likeable characters
- tech bros and AI
- the demands of lecturing on academics
- artistic identity and the demand for publicity rather than anonymity
and more. And it's just too much - the humour and zest of the first third of the novel starts to wear thin by the end and whole story lines (the female professor in particular) seem unnecessary.
Although its most important message is on the redemptive power of art - and while ultimately, for me, unsuccessful, a novel I'm pleased to see the Booker judges embrace.
To trust in the arts is an act of hubris so self-destructive the gods don’t even bother to punish you for it. It is to become a monstrous politician of an insecure republic, an estate agent of your own soul, a demon of lubricity. There is just a chance, though, the width of a crack in a martini glass, that we need it more than ever.
February 1967 article
Desert Sun, Volume 40, Number 178, 28 February 1967
Student in Black Bag Talks, Loses Mystery
CORVALLIS, Ore. (UPI) - The bare-footed black bag of Speech 113 finally has been accepted at Oregon State University, although he hasn’t contributed much from an oratorical standpoint.
He shows up three times a week, covered from head to ankles with a black cloth sack, and sits Indian fashion in silence on a table, desk, or the floor.
The mysterious student, who moves about with only his bare feet showing, is up to something but nobody seems to know just what. He told newsmen in a brief interview that to reveal his goals would interfer with the results. He said people tend to judge others by their clothes, skin color, features and expressions so he wondered what their judgments would be when these factors were absent.
The man in the black bag arrives and leaves the campus in a car driven by a friend. He said he attends other classes without wearing the bag. But in the speech class of 20 students, his identity is known only to Dr. Charles Goetzinger, professor of the speech class in basic persuasion.
Goetzinger says the strange visitor is not a “plant” or part of a class experiment. The professor explained that a student asked him at the opening of winter term if he could dress in a bag and, “I
was nut enough” to allow it.
The silent student in conservative black got a rough reception at first. Most students tried to ignore him, some were hostile, and one jabbed him with an umbrella.
However, it was impossible to ignore him, and Dr. Goetzinger said students gradually began to accept the “black bag” and even developed a feeling of sympathy. One student admitted becoming angry when another teacher disparaged the mysterious scholar.
“It made me mad,” the student said. “I felt I had to protect him.”
The man of mystery may have shattered some of his purpose when he broke his long silence. For his first assigned three-minute speech in front of the class, he merely stood there. But one day he spoke in generalities about his motives, and the students were disappointed.
“He blew my image of what a mystery should be,” one said. “The challenge was gone.”
But a girl student, in a letter to a newspaper, pretty well summed up the feelings of most of the students in the speech class: “The Bag has motivated us, made us delve, explore, ponder and try to understand what goes on inside us...Above all It has made us leam. It has persuaded us, and drastically changed everyone in the class.”
The judges' commendation
‘How does an aspiring actor survive in contemporary London, where monthly living costs can rise well over a thousand pounds? The obvious solution – be born rich – has eluded Black Bag’s protagonist, a 37-year-old man who cobbles together an artistically and financially unsatisfying life performing in productions that stretch and undermine the meaning of theatre. That is until he gets a job showing up to student psychology lectures dressed in a black bag. Luke Kennard’s of-the-moment satire considers anonymity and disgust, the online rackets of cryptocurrency and energy drinks, and what it means to find love in our unstable times. There’ll be a lot of discussion about what the novel has to say about the state of modern masculinity (fractious; confused) – we also admired its sharply crafted sentences, memorable sex scenes, and humour.’
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 stature preferred certainly no more than 5’8 but shorter if possible (Legs). Fee to be discussed. Contact Dr Paul Blend &c.
Luke Kennard's latest book is, in two different senses, a baggy novel. Our first person narrator introduces himself with:
If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable. You’d give them about five minutes before you excused yourself to get another drink, or moved to a different carriage, or asked to be transferred to an alternative department so you didn’t have to work with them any more. I’m not like that.
He is in fact an actor - although one lacking in much work other than corporate dinner murder-mystery gigs, leading him to apply for a series of unusual jobs including the advert above.
Dr Paul Blend proves to be a university lecturer in psychology and he wants our narrator to help him recreate the black bag experiment from 1967 when a student attended a term of lectures wearing a black bag that completely covered his body other than his bare feat, as the author explains in both an Observer article and the afterword:
The original black bag experiment was conducted by Charles Goetzinger in 1967 at Oregon State University in order to test Robert Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect. He observed that, over the course of the semester, ‘the students’ attitude changed from hostility toward the Black Bag to curiosity and finally to friendship’ (Goetzinger, quoted in Zajonc’s paper, ‘Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure’). In happening across this while researching a poem, I was immediately (which is to say obsessively and exclusively) concerned with Black Bag himself.
Although from my own research into the original sources (summarised here), I'm not convinced this was a deliberate experiment by Goetzinger, rather the idea was the student's who wore the black bag.
The inspiration was actually Yoko Ono and her then husband Anthony Cox and a performance they put on - here in London in 1966
The satirical columnist Art Hoppe from the San Francisco Chronicle in California wrote a column in early 1967 where he presented "the man of the Year Award to the individual who did the most during 1966 to make the world a better place to live" to Anthony Cox, who he credited with starting the Black Bag Movement which professes that "the world would be better off if everyone wore large, black, cloth bags."
And the student took his inspiration from that article which was syndicated in the US press including the The Oregon State Barometer on 5th Jan 1967, and who took to wearing a black bag to lectures, with Goetzinger's permission (and with only Goetzinger knowing his identity). The idea was more around eliminating prejudice and reducing sensory overload than testing Robert Zajonc’s ideas.
Later the reaction of the students to the black bag was picked up by Robert Zajonc as illustrating mere exposure, but it doesn't seem to have been the motivation.
See below for a February 1967 article.
But (reluctantly) back to the novel.
Our narrator finds he is required to simply sit, or initially lie, in lectures, for a total of two hours a week, wearing his all encompassing bag, and interacting with the students as little as possible:
I am in black bag, and I'm lying on a desk at the back of the lecture theater. From the feel of it, I imagine it to be a desk with metal legs, painted a glossy gray, and the surface to be a pine-colored fake wood veneer. But why shouldn't I imagine the room to be far nicer than it may, in fact, be?
And while in the lectures while he listens to Dr Brand, he gradually drifts off, into what he terms 'maladaptive daydreaming', creating an elaborate fantasy of his life in an isolated Swedish town, initially prompted by Blend referring to the Örebro 10-to-18 Study into distance dependence of adolescent friendships).
Dr Blend shows us several slides of decorated bones, some encrusted with jewels, some converted into rudimentary weapons. He says something about Spinoza and ‘the sad passions’. Whenever our power to act is diminished. Fear, hate, envy, shame. He likens this to jouissance in Lacan. Birgitta has always wanted to visit her bedbound sister in the next town. I would like to make this possible but have no means of transport. I have been keeping savings from my salary at the sawmill, dull little silver coins decorated with stags, in a tin can in my locker to pay for her train fare. Mine too, so as to chaperone her. But when I leave work I notice that someone has stolen my can.
Our narrator starts to inhabit the role of black bag, rather than simply spending two hours performing it, and, inter alia, ends up getting sucked, via his best friend, into a crypto-scheme; has a sexual-relationship, while wearing his bag, with another lecturer; encounters a black-bags anonymous society; and has heated conversations with his parent's dogs while depicting them as mute statues.
And this is the problem with the novel - the second baggy element. It's 389 pages long and Kennard keeps throwing in more ideas. The novel covers / satirises, amongst other topics:
- the crisis in masculinity (although that doesn’t seem to have been particularly intended)
- behavioural psychology and its adoption by the marketing industry to manipulate consumers
- university campus architecture (and very disappointingly treats bricolage as a bad thing)
- Twitch streamers
- NFTs
- energy drinks
- managerialism in academia
- sexual politics on campus (and the inversion of the troubled male lecturer-female student affair)
- relationships with parents
- readers' demands for likeable characters
- tech bros and AI
- the demands of lecturing on academics
- artistic identity and the demand for publicity rather than anonymity
and more. And it's just too much - the humour and zest of the first third of the novel starts to wear thin by the end and whole story lines (the female professor in particular) seem unnecessary.
Although its most important message is on the redemptive power of art - and while ultimately, for me, unsuccessful, a novel I'm pleased to see the Booker judges embrace.
To trust in the arts is an act of hubris so self-destructive the gods don’t even bother to punish you for it. It is to become a monstrous politician of an insecure republic, an estate agent of your own soul, a demon of lubricity. There is just a chance, though, the width of a crack in a martini glass, that we need it more than ever.
February 1967 article
Desert Sun, Volume 40, Number 178, 28 February 1967
Student in Black Bag Talks, Loses Mystery
CORVALLIS, Ore. (UPI) - The bare-footed black bag of Speech 113 finally has been accepted at Oregon State University, although he hasn’t contributed much from an oratorical standpoint.
He shows up three times a week, covered from head to ankles with a black cloth sack, and sits Indian fashion in silence on a table, desk, or the floor.
The mysterious student, who moves about with only his bare feet showing, is up to something but nobody seems to know just what. He told newsmen in a brief interview that to reveal his goals would interfer with the results. He said people tend to judge others by their clothes, skin color, features and expressions so he wondered what their judgments would be when these factors were absent.
The man in the black bag arrives and leaves the campus in a car driven by a friend. He said he attends other classes without wearing the bag. But in the speech class of 20 students, his identity is known only to Dr. Charles Goetzinger, professor of the speech class in basic persuasion.
Goetzinger says the strange visitor is not a “plant” or part of a class experiment. The professor explained that a student asked him at the opening of winter term if he could dress in a bag and, “I
was nut enough” to allow it.
The silent student in conservative black got a rough reception at first. Most students tried to ignore him, some were hostile, and one jabbed him with an umbrella.
However, it was impossible to ignore him, and Dr. Goetzinger said students gradually began to accept the “black bag” and even developed a feeling of sympathy. One student admitted becoming angry when another teacher disparaged the mysterious scholar.
“It made me mad,” the student said. “I felt I had to protect him.”
The man of mystery may have shattered some of his purpose when he broke his long silence. For his first assigned three-minute speech in front of the class, he merely stood there. But one day he spoke in generalities about his motives, and the students were disappointed.
“He blew my image of what a mystery should be,” one said. “The challenge was gone.”
But a girl student, in a letter to a newspaper, pretty well summed up the feelings of most of the students in the speech class: “The Bag has motivated us, made us delve, explore, ponder and try to understand what goes on inside us...Above all It has made us leam. It has persuaded us, and drastically changed everyone in the class.”
The judges' commendation
‘How does an aspiring actor survive in contemporary London, where monthly living costs can rise well over a thousand pounds? The obvious solution – be born rich – has eluded Black Bag’s protagonist, a 37-year-old man who cobbles together an artistically and financially unsatisfying life performing in productions that stretch and undermine the meaning of theatre. That is until he gets a job showing up to student psychology lectures dressed in a black bag. Luke Kennard’s of-the-moment satire considers anonymity and disgust, the online rackets of cryptocurrency and energy drinks, and what it means to find love in our unstable times. There’ll be a lot of discussion about what the novel has to say about the state of modern masculinity (fractious; confused) – we also admired its sharply crafted sentences, memorable sex scenes, and humour.’
August 5, 2026
What a strange one. This Booker longlist is wild and I’m here for it. Tempted to start this all over again.
A surreal, wacky, darkly comic, and original examination of masculinity and its place in modern society. I never knew where it was heading. I get the feeling I’ll be thinking about this one for a really long time.
A complaint: it’s too long. Could’ve been tighter with 50-100 less pages.
Full review to come
A surreal, wacky, darkly comic, and original examination of masculinity and its place in modern society. I never knew where it was heading. I get the feeling I’ll be thinking about this one for a really long time.
A complaint: it’s too long. Could’ve been tighter with 50-100 less pages.
Full review to come
August 4, 2026
“Sorry, I say. I got carried away by the pathos.”
There’s somehow a mismatch between the novel’s implied premise and its actual priorities. It made me feel like I was held verbally hostage by an extremely self-focused, internet-shaped, endlessly self-narrating mind emptying their browser history into one long-ass conversation. The humour didn’t work for me either, which made the whole black bag feel less like a meaningful object and more like a marketing hook.
It reminded me of The Vivisectors, and I became even less patient with Kennard’s asides. A fairly well-written novel that kept pretending it was about one thing while revealing, page after page, that it was really about another. The ending was exactly what I expected: more explaining, almost preemptively, lest we misunderstand the (mis)used allegory. The actor/narrator is left mid-sentence, because, well… there was more of the same, I guess…
There’s somehow a mismatch between the novel’s implied premise and its actual priorities. It made me feel like I was held verbally hostage by an extremely self-focused, internet-shaped, endlessly self-narrating mind emptying their browser history into one long-ass conversation. The humour didn’t work for me either, which made the whole black bag feel less like a meaningful object and more like a marketing hook.
It reminded me of The Vivisectors, and I became even less patient with Kennard’s asides. A fairly well-written novel that kept pretending it was about one thing while revealing, page after page, that it was really about another. The ending was exactly what I expected: more explaining, almost preemptively, lest we misunderstand the (mis)used allegory. The actor/narrator is left mid-sentence, because, well… there was more of the same, I guess…
August 2, 2026
I'm not entirely sure what Luke Kennard was trying to do with Black Bag. I'm not sure Luke Kennard was entirely sure what Luke Kennard was trying to do with Black Bag. It's one of those voicey novels that becomes increasingly exhausting -- not, in this case, because the voice itself becomes tiring, but because I felt less and less sure that that voice was being used to talk about anything, other than the typical Urban Male Ennui. I'm sorry: we're supposed to call it the "masculinity crisis" now -- a framing I am also increasingly tired of.
That's ultimately what's at the core of this book, but aside from illustrating that men are in crisis and male friends should tell each other they love each other more (...yes?) -- what else is here? Well, there is a long and baffling sequence where two characters -- an English professor and an actor -- go on a date to see a movie "made entirely by AI." This is in the same book in which NFTs are still a thing -- so what year is it? Anyway, neither of these creative professionals seem terribly bothered by the fact of this AI movie. Kennard also grants his version of Gen AI enormous creativity, with a resulting film that sounds more like the Wachowskis in Jupiter Ascending mode than anything AI could come up with. This plot point is then entirely abandoned.
What does Kennard want readers to think about AI? What does he want them to think about sex or art or, indeed, masculinity? Or does he just want to get a bit wacky with it?
If it's that last: I'm sorry, this book isn't funny enough.
It's also fundamentally not a campus novel, as the copy claims (do words not mean anything?). And I kind of can't believe it's a Booker Prize longlistee. But then: who the fuck knows what any of us are doing anymore, really.
That's ultimately what's at the core of this book, but aside from illustrating that men are in crisis and male friends should tell each other they love each other more (...yes?) -- what else is here? Well, there is a long and baffling sequence where two characters -- an English professor and an actor -- go on a date to see a movie "made entirely by AI." This is in the same book in which NFTs are still a thing -- so what year is it? Anyway, neither of these creative professionals seem terribly bothered by the fact of this AI movie. Kennard also grants his version of Gen AI enormous creativity, with a resulting film that sounds more like the Wachowskis in Jupiter Ascending mode than anything AI could come up with. This plot point is then entirely abandoned.
What does Kennard want readers to think about AI? What does he want them to think about sex or art or, indeed, masculinity? Or does he just want to get a bit wacky with it?
If it's that last: I'm sorry, this book isn't funny enough.
It's also fundamentally not a campus novel, as the copy claims (do words not mean anything?). And I kind of can't believe it's a Booker Prize longlistee. But then: who the fuck knows what any of us are doing anymore, really.
Read
August 2, 2026Strange, fascinating, great prose - I'm going to need to sit with this one for a bit.
March 28, 2026
We are all black bag, and such.
July 25, 2026
Love love love this. It’s kind of like if Kate Bush wrote Fight Club, if you can imagine that. Very human and heartfelt and full of little truths I wanted to turn over in my brain again and again like hard candy on the tongue. Will probably reread one day and enjoy it twice as much, due to the mere exposure effect.
July 29, 2026
400 pages is watering an interesting initial premise right down.
It could have been a good novel at 150 ish.. so much of it feels like filler..
It could have been a good novel at 150 ish.. so much of it feels like filler..
April 9, 2026
A beautifully crafted, strange but not overly so, story. Not for everyone but definitely for me. WOW.
August 3, 2026
I adored this book. Kennard wastes no time establishing his brand of weird and absurd. This is satire, after all. I loved the playful theological questions, philosophical detours, and commentary on masculinity. And Justine! It felt so refreshing reading her character. She was marvelous.
I do think this could have been about 50 pages shorter, but the plot, philosophical explorations, and the emotional core of the story all intertwined so beautifully by the end that I actually cried a little. It reminded me a lot of my experiences reading the last few pages of a Terry Pratchett novel, where seemingly disparate threads suddenly reveal a deeper truth about humanity.
Ultimately, Black Bag is a story about love, friendship, and finding meaning in an increasingly bewildering world. It feels especially timely and I genuinely think we could all benefit from reading this right now.
Huge thanks to the Booker judges for nominating this delightfully chaotic, thought-provoking, and surprisingly heartwarming novel. If it weren't for The Booker longlist, I doubt I would have picked this up on my own.
I do think this could have been about 50 pages shorter, but the plot, philosophical explorations, and the emotional core of the story all intertwined so beautifully by the end that I actually cried a little. It reminded me a lot of my experiences reading the last few pages of a Terry Pratchett novel, where seemingly disparate threads suddenly reveal a deeper truth about humanity.
Ultimately, Black Bag is a story about love, friendship, and finding meaning in an increasingly bewildering world. It feels especially timely and I genuinely think we could all benefit from reading this right now.
Huge thanks to the Booker judges for nominating this delightfully chaotic, thought-provoking, and surprisingly heartwarming novel. If it weren't for The Booker longlist, I doubt I would have picked this up on my own.
May 13, 2026
This is the kinda book that has many, many deep and introspective things to say about society, art, sexuality, identity, the nature of man, and the inherent loneliness of performing a part in our lives everyday, but you're distracted by the fact that there's a man walking around pant-less in a black leather bag. Hate when that happens.
This also reminded me that I still have no idea what tf an NFT is and why anyone would ever be stupid enough to invest in it. Maybe that's why I haven't made it big yet.
This also reminded me that I still have no idea what tf an NFT is and why anyone would ever be stupid enough to invest in it. Maybe that's why I haven't made it big yet.
April 2, 2026
When an unemployed London actor gets recommended to a professor for his latest assignment, the last thing he'd expected was to spend the next few months walking around the university campus dressed in a large black bag. What starts off as an absurd experiment (based on a real one from 1967) turns into a performance and then becomes nothing but dull reality. Wonderful and quirky take on the male ego and all its feral permutations.
April 14, 2026
Thanks to #Netgalley and #ZandoProjects for the book #BlackBag by #LukeKennard. This book is about a struggling actor who is hired to sit in a black bag and not say or interact with the students. It is to see how the students will interact with the bag.
May 9, 2026
unexpectedly kinky in a way i really enjoyed. a good meditation on art and being an artist in 2026 - are we ever really doing things for a greater theme or just for attention? what is the point when nothing we create or do is probably wholly 100% original? how do we justify creation when everything creative has to be churned through capitalism? how do we justify creation when the chance of our work being put through AI slop models is high? is there even a point to doing it anymore?
but also. kind of messy and meandering in a way where ymmv. i was obsessed with this until the 75% mark where it lost me a little. saw a few reviews saying this was "fine until the dog started talking and there was weird sex" which is hilarious bc that all starts like 30 pages in and also was deeply cool and worth picking it up alone for.
but also. kind of messy and meandering in a way where ymmv. i was obsessed with this until the 75% mark where it lost me a little. saw a few reviews saying this was "fine until the dog started talking and there was weird sex" which is hilarious bc that all starts like 30 pages in and also was deeply cool and worth picking it up alone for.
Read
October 8, 2025DNF @ 10%
Setting: UK
Rep: n/a
Sometimes I wish we could read samples on Netgalley as, unless you already know the author, a request is based only on a cover and a description. Based on those this sounded right up my street but I just can't bear the writing style and after 10% I realized I was just annoyed and getting more annoyed and if I push through, chances are I'll regret it.
Setting: UK
Rep: n/a
Sometimes I wish we could read samples on Netgalley as, unless you already know the author, a request is based only on a cover and a description. Based on those this sounded right up my street but I just can't bear the writing style and after 10% I realized I was just annoyed and getting more annoyed and if I push through, chances are I'll regret it.
May 21, 2026
New favourite genre is weird dudes just trying to get by.
Read
July 31, 2026Longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize
If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable. You’d give them about five minutes before you excused yourself to get another drink, or moved to a different carriage, or asked to be transferred to an alternative department so you didn’t have to work with them anymore. I’m not like that. I love life. I love being alive. Sometimes I don’t. That’s not unusual. You don’t always love being alive. Nobody does. (1)
*
It is also why I will speak to you in present tense. The silliest tense. And also the closest we come to talking directly to God. I will have little choice over what I choose to include or omit. I will be completely known. (1)
*
I have measured out my life in coffees I cannot technically afford. (2)
*
Things are looking, how you say, up. (4)
*
The point of any human life is to be found acceptable by as many people as possible. We die for the lack of it. It is equally important to be absolutely yourself. This is something they say about any artist at the top of their game: the thing that’s good about them is that they are absolutely themselves. But as an actor I must be absolutely not myself. A whirling void. (59)
*
Inside black bag I close my eyes.
You cannot try to see yourself the way others do, Birgitta says, putting a slab of marzipan on my tin plate. Isn’t that all we ever do? No, she says. Doing that will make you nuts. Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. (83)
*
There are some very damaged men in technology, of all ages, says Justine, and, I know, it’s hard to picture a smaller violin—but when damaged men have money and influence, that’s a problem for the whole world. (91)
*
They’re men, she says. Caught between thousands of years of abusing their power and a reckoning they bitterly resent and at the same time feel they fully deserve. Makes them a bit fucked up.
It does make us a bit fucked up, I say. (93)
*
I think it’s more about masculinity, I say. Oh, hell yeah, he says. Now we’re in my wheelhouse. Pretty much everything I’ve done for the last twenty years has been about masculinity. On some level. Well listen, you can look me up, okay? When you’re allowed to talk about it. Of course, I say. You promise? I promise. Future Indefinite. Because I like you, man. (214)
*
I want them to look beyond the case studies and embrace the fact that we are the experiment. You know … well, you don’t, that’s why I’m telling you: Retirement feels rather similar to being expelled from a cult, Blend says. Everything you measured your life by is proved to be utterly senseless and haphazard. You went along with a set of precepts because you had little choice in the matter once you’d signed up, and then it’s suddenly over and the prevailing feeling is Well what was all that in aid of? It’s curious. (321)
*
What I want to say is thank you. English people have such a deep-seated suspicion of disingenuousness that we often forego gratitude altogether. It is feasible to go your entire life without ever expressing a single emotion just in case you didn’t mean it. (325)
*
The thing with privilege, says Claudio, is not to take it personally. If you have something other people don’t … It’s probably something other people should have—a safe and stable place to live, smaller class sizes, access to potable water, an opportunity to succeed in your vocation, love, art … It’s not that you’re bad for having those things; anyone other than a monster would want those things to be universal. I think you can acknowledge that without getting defensive. (332)
*
You can do whatever you want! says Claudio, Open a theater! Claudio, opening a theater could bankrupt a small country. There’s a reason the whole patron of the arts thing kind of died out. Overheads! (334)
*
Our only obligation to each other should be a vast, oceanic affection. Our only assumption must be that everybody else’s life is more meaningful than our own. That is the only way to encounter the other. The rest is window dressing. (336)
*
Good luck trying to be a human being. (338)
//////////////////////////
interesting take from someone in M&G on the thread about this book: “It is an interesting take on the crisis of masculinity, or perhaps, more broadly, the crisis of meaning, but it does feel as though the novel keeps adding one or two ideas too many.
It's interesting that Kennard actually said in an interview that there is not really a crisis of masculinity. Instead, there is an old, violent and regressive model of masculinity in its death throes. That, to me, is the more fascinating view. Also interesting is the skepticism of self-help and individual reinvention, and that goes in hand with the commodification portions, which are not a part of the story I've enjoyed all that much. It's all linked, but it also feels that maybe it wasn't always intentional. An example of that is his comments about how he didn't write about the crisis of masculinity, when I feel like that's what a lot of people are focused on.”
If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable. You’d give them about five minutes before you excused yourself to get another drink, or moved to a different carriage, or asked to be transferred to an alternative department so you didn’t have to work with them anymore. I’m not like that. I love life. I love being alive. Sometimes I don’t. That’s not unusual. You don’t always love being alive. Nobody does. (1)
*
It is also why I will speak to you in present tense. The silliest tense. And also the closest we come to talking directly to God. I will have little choice over what I choose to include or omit. I will be completely known. (1)
*
I have measured out my life in coffees I cannot technically afford. (2)
*
Things are looking, how you say, up. (4)
*
The point of any human life is to be found acceptable by as many people as possible. We die for the lack of it. It is equally important to be absolutely yourself. This is something they say about any artist at the top of their game: the thing that’s good about them is that they are absolutely themselves. But as an actor I must be absolutely not myself. A whirling void. (59)
*
Inside black bag I close my eyes.
You cannot try to see yourself the way others do, Birgitta says, putting a slab of marzipan on my tin plate. Isn’t that all we ever do? No, she says. Doing that will make you nuts. Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. (83)
*
There are some very damaged men in technology, of all ages, says Justine, and, I know, it’s hard to picture a smaller violin—but when damaged men have money and influence, that’s a problem for the whole world. (91)
*
They’re men, she says. Caught between thousands of years of abusing their power and a reckoning they bitterly resent and at the same time feel they fully deserve. Makes them a bit fucked up.
It does make us a bit fucked up, I say. (93)
*
I think it’s more about masculinity, I say. Oh, hell yeah, he says. Now we’re in my wheelhouse. Pretty much everything I’ve done for the last twenty years has been about masculinity. On some level. Well listen, you can look me up, okay? When you’re allowed to talk about it. Of course, I say. You promise? I promise. Future Indefinite. Because I like you, man. (214)
*
I want them to look beyond the case studies and embrace the fact that we are the experiment. You know … well, you don’t, that’s why I’m telling you: Retirement feels rather similar to being expelled from a cult, Blend says. Everything you measured your life by is proved to be utterly senseless and haphazard. You went along with a set of precepts because you had little choice in the matter once you’d signed up, and then it’s suddenly over and the prevailing feeling is Well what was all that in aid of? It’s curious. (321)
*
What I want to say is thank you. English people have such a deep-seated suspicion of disingenuousness that we often forego gratitude altogether. It is feasible to go your entire life without ever expressing a single emotion just in case you didn’t mean it. (325)
*
The thing with privilege, says Claudio, is not to take it personally. If you have something other people don’t … It’s probably something other people should have—a safe and stable place to live, smaller class sizes, access to potable water, an opportunity to succeed in your vocation, love, art … It’s not that you’re bad for having those things; anyone other than a monster would want those things to be universal. I think you can acknowledge that without getting defensive. (332)
*
You can do whatever you want! says Claudio, Open a theater! Claudio, opening a theater could bankrupt a small country. There’s a reason the whole patron of the arts thing kind of died out. Overheads! (334)
*
Our only obligation to each other should be a vast, oceanic affection. Our only assumption must be that everybody else’s life is more meaningful than our own. That is the only way to encounter the other. The rest is window dressing. (336)
*
Good luck trying to be a human being. (338)
//////////////////////////
interesting take from someone in M&G on the thread about this book: “It is an interesting take on the crisis of masculinity, or perhaps, more broadly, the crisis of meaning, but it does feel as though the novel keeps adding one or two ideas too many.
It's interesting that Kennard actually said in an interview that there is not really a crisis of masculinity. Instead, there is an old, violent and regressive model of masculinity in its death throes. That, to me, is the more fascinating view. Also interesting is the skepticism of self-help and individual reinvention, and that goes in hand with the commodification portions, which are not a part of the story I've enjoyed all that much. It's all linked, but it also feels that maybe it wasn't always intentional. An example of that is his comments about how he didn't write about the crisis of masculinity, when I feel like that's what a lot of people are focused on.”
August 5, 2026
I greatly admire the bravery to take on such a wacky premise, but I feel like he tried to sustain it for way too long. If this book had been whittled down by about a hundred pages, I probably would have liked it a lot more.
July 31, 2026
2.75/3 stars. It’s rare I say this, but this should have been half the size it was. Gradually got worse. Should have worked for me but for some reason it felt empty.
August 4, 2026
What a weird time.
What’s weirder is my key take away from this novel is knowing the experiment it’s based off of is real and caused a frenzy.
That’s weird man.
What’s weirder is my key take away from this novel is knowing the experiment it’s based off of is real and caused a frenzy.
That’s weird man.
August 2, 2026
Dear 2026 Booker Longlist,
What are we doing?
I’ve yet to be invested.
Send help,
T
2.75 ⭐️
What are we doing?
I’ve yet to be invested.
Send help,
T
2.75 ⭐️
June 5, 2026
Tailed off a bit at the end but 5 stars because it made me laugh so much. Excited to read more of his stuff.
February 11, 2026
This is a rough one, because it has a message and in summary it sounds weird and right up my alley. However, I unfortunately found it rather dull and too long for what it gives back to the reader. This is based on a real psychology experiment, but it felt like either the idea needed to be a novella or that something of more substance needed to be in the prose. A lot of the scenes blended (ha, ironic given the researcher’s name) together and therefore felt repetitive.
I don’t want to only talk negatively, though! The examination of masculinity — specifically the crisis of masculinity — was biting. There were critiques of everything from new school “gamer bros” to old school “refined masculinity” and everything in between. It was full of deep questions about the human condition and how we relax into the comfortable regardless what we personally find comfortable and regardless whether we even wanted that to be “comforting”. I guess I just wish the book’s bones had been filled out differently. It’s not a bad idea, it’s just not executed for me as a reader.
I don’t want to only talk negatively, though! The examination of masculinity — specifically the crisis of masculinity — was biting. There were critiques of everything from new school “gamer bros” to old school “refined masculinity” and everything in between. It was full of deep questions about the human condition and how we relax into the comfortable regardless what we personally find comfortable and regardless whether we even wanted that to be “comforting”. I guess I just wish the book’s bones had been filled out differently. It’s not a bad idea, it’s just not executed for me as a reader.
August 1, 2026
what the helly
review: i did think the premise was interesting, and i credit kennard for exploring it in many different ways. the narrator is enlisted to be part of a social experiment where he walks around in a black bag and to me, this served as a premise to explore our reactions to the question of an unknown / a void. he looks at this through black bag himself (and themselves) in how he enjoys the effacement of the self as an escape from society, also considered through a variety of different lenses like Claudio's use of hallucinogens and black bag's imagination of his alternative Swedish life.
black bag also raises the question of the self and what that constitutes - is he still himself? how much does black bag, as an absence, have a self? there is also some discussion of AI (sort of out of place imo), which also questions selfhood and human construction of meaning with the advent of technological progress.
i suppose this is all linked to a "crisis of meaning", illuminating the pressures of capitalism (where black bag struggles to survive as a jobbing actor) as well as the general crisis of meaninglessness in modern society. i guess it is interesting that by the end of the novel, black bag is rich (by his own standards) and accepted by his peers and society. however, even after being relieved from modern worries and pressures, he is left feeling bereft and empty. the modern crisis of meaning is something deeper and intrinsic, and potentially impossible to fulfill. a hopeful conclusion.
black bag also begs the question of what it means to participate / live in society, and whether one can continue to do so after essentially removing one's "self" from it? this is explored through others' reactions to black bag, from apathy to discomfort to outright hostility. most saliently, this is considered through justine's romantic / sexual relationship with black bag. i guess this poses the interesting question of how can one form an actual relationship with an 'unknown' / 'unknowable' entity. however, i feel like this was largely handled as a kink thing which made it mostly just kind of weird (sorry). lelsewhere, claudio's reaction to black bag is to monetise it, and here i guess late stage capitalism and modern technology / capiralism is scrutinised.
interestingly, the novel seems to be described as exploring a crisis of masculinity. however, i felt that black bag's desires for self-effacement were quite universal and human (cf above), and i feel that the novel did not set up any particular hangups surrounding his masculinity to make it more explicitly or specifically an exploration of that.
overall, i felt the novel was too long - i got tired by 60% through it. i also think it was trying to do too many things and hit too many modern social issues. also some sections were just weird... i didn't get all the bits about the dog and his parents, and all the Swedish life stuff... i mostly skimmed these.
ultimately, an interesting premise but handled in too unwieldly a manner for me personally.
review: i did think the premise was interesting, and i credit kennard for exploring it in many different ways. the narrator is enlisted to be part of a social experiment where he walks around in a black bag and to me, this served as a premise to explore our reactions to the question of an unknown / a void. he looks at this through black bag himself (and themselves) in how he enjoys the effacement of the self as an escape from society, also considered through a variety of different lenses like Claudio's use of hallucinogens and black bag's imagination of his alternative Swedish life.
black bag also raises the question of the self and what that constitutes - is he still himself? how much does black bag, as an absence, have a self? there is also some discussion of AI (sort of out of place imo), which also questions selfhood and human construction of meaning with the advent of technological progress.
i suppose this is all linked to a "crisis of meaning", illuminating the pressures of capitalism (where black bag struggles to survive as a jobbing actor) as well as the general crisis of meaninglessness in modern society. i guess it is interesting that by the end of the novel, black bag is rich (by his own standards) and accepted by his peers and society. however, even after being relieved from modern worries and pressures, he is left feeling bereft and empty. the modern crisis of meaning is something deeper and intrinsic, and potentially impossible to fulfill. a hopeful conclusion.
black bag also begs the question of what it means to participate / live in society, and whether one can continue to do so after essentially removing one's "self" from it? this is explored through others' reactions to black bag, from apathy to discomfort to outright hostility. most saliently, this is considered through justine's romantic / sexual relationship with black bag. i guess this poses the interesting question of how can one form an actual relationship with an 'unknown' / 'unknowable' entity. however, i feel like this was largely handled as a kink thing which made it mostly just kind of weird (sorry). lelsewhere, claudio's reaction to black bag is to monetise it, and here i guess late stage capitalism and modern technology / capiralism is scrutinised.
interestingly, the novel seems to be described as exploring a crisis of masculinity. however, i felt that black bag's desires for self-effacement were quite universal and human (cf above), and i feel that the novel did not set up any particular hangups surrounding his masculinity to make it more explicitly or specifically an exploration of that.
overall, i felt the novel was too long - i got tired by 60% through it. i also think it was trying to do too many things and hit too many modern social issues. also some sections were just weird... i didn't get all the bits about the dog and his parents, and all the Swedish life stuff... i mostly skimmed these.
ultimately, an interesting premise but handled in too unwieldly a manner for me personally.
August 2, 2026
I chose the audiobook for Black Bag, narrated by Luke Kennard himself, and I think it's one of those rare occasions where hearing the author read the work is the definitive experience. His impeccable comic timing, dry delivery, and deadpan wit make it feel at times like an extended stand-up routine, with every awkward pause and absurd observation landing exactly as intended.
Beneath all that laughter, though, is a surprisingly melancholy novel. The comedy becomes a mask for much deeper concerns: loneliness, isolation, the feeling of being invisible, financial insecurity, modern masculinity, artificial intelligence, and the way capitalism can reduce people to interchangeable parts. The absurd premise isn't just there for laughs; it exposes how contemporary life can feel disconnected, like being in a performance, and how desperately people long for genuine human connection and meaning. For the narrator, a struggling actor who dons the black bag, it is the role of a lifetime!
It's a strange, funny, and quietly moving novel for anyone willing to look beyond the jokes. I laughed often, but by the end it is the sadness beneath the humour that will stay with me.
Beneath all that laughter, though, is a surprisingly melancholy novel. The comedy becomes a mask for much deeper concerns: loneliness, isolation, the feeling of being invisible, financial insecurity, modern masculinity, artificial intelligence, and the way capitalism can reduce people to interchangeable parts. The absurd premise isn't just there for laughs; it exposes how contemporary life can feel disconnected, like being in a performance, and how desperately people long for genuine human connection and meaning. For the narrator, a struggling actor who dons the black bag, it is the role of a lifetime!
It's a strange, funny, and quietly moving novel for anyone willing to look beyond the jokes. I laughed often, but by the end it is the sadness beneath the humour that will stay with me.
March 15, 2026
Black Bag by Luke Kennard is a book I can honestly say wasn’t written for a reader like me. I only found it moderately funny I did think once Justine joined the story it would get better and it did a bit but not enough to save it I found hardly anything that was entertaining to me I didn’t like his best friend Claudio but then again there were many things I didn’t like about this book. Someone will like it I did not read it at your own risk. #NetGalley, #TheBlindReviewer, #MyHonestReview,
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