The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

UK Edition
Publication Date: August 10, 2017

Well this one has no Goodreads reviews whatsoever and isn't even out yet. Anyone lucky enough to have an ARC?

I just got this for my Kindle via Amazon.de. Publishing date 27.07.2017. Very nice coincidence with the longlisting...

I see Amazon.co.uk has 10th of August as publishing date though...

Interesting. I looked about an hour ago (amazon.co.uk) and it said release date was 10 August. I look now and you can buy the Kindle version today, but the paper version isn't available until Jan 2018! I think maybe the hardback version is being revised as we speak as it has disappeared from Amazon for now.

I ordered it today from Books Depository UK, but it said it won't ship till 21 Sep 2017; IIRC, one of last year's nominees (I believe it was His Bloody Project) had a two month publication wait when nominated, but they bumped it up when the demand surged for it.

Hmm a somewhat odd description too.

I think amazon has made changes to its site which have caused this problem. I had heard that they are putting the lowest price offer first, even if it's not direct from them. I never buy physical books from amazon, but I use it to check publication dates. It seems that their info on this book has gotten muddled. If you search for it by ISBN 9781473660540, it comes up. They'll lose a few sales, which isn't a bad thing. I buy plenty of kindle books from them, so I'm not a full boycotter.

Just completed this. Review to follow

The 3 stars doesn't suggest it is the Nix-slayer that its inclusion in such illustrious company led us to hope for.

Actually it looks rather like Elmer took the slot that I had hoped was going to The Gallows Pole. Both set in the same area of the Calder Valley.

The quote from Ted Hughes that opens Elmet would fit The Gallows Pole perfectly.

Elmet was the last independent Celtic kingdom in England and originally stretched out over the vale of York … But even into the seventeenth century this narrow cleft and its side-gunnels, under the glaciated moors, were still a ‘badlands’, a sanctuary for refugees from the law.

I narrowly preferred it to The Gallows Pole I think. 3.5 * for me but for now I have rounded it up.

Review here - given most people no little or nothing around the book (and the only review on Goodreads to date is by, I think, someone mentioned in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book) I have tried to convey a sense of the book with lots of quotes and my thoughts on the themes and ideas behind the book

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

There's a two page spread featuring Fiona Mozley in today's London Evening Standard newspaper.
Her interview confirms that she works in a bookshop, presently recommending Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends,and is a strong advocate of physical books and book retailers. She still studies at University (York) - 'the decay in late medieval towns and Eco politics'. She wrote Elmet while living in London.
Mozley is refreshingly open (for now) about her politics and world view (a Jeremy Corbyn supporter and she describes the situation in America (meaning leadership) as "dire").
The triumvirate of Mozley, Ali Smith and Zadie Smith is certainly great evidence that female British writers have a strong collective voice.

I feel bad now for reading it on a kindle version purchased from Amazon. But it's tricky when the other versions aren't published.

My précis of the Mozley interview was not designed to point an accusing finger at you, Gumble.....
My personal sentiments follow ms Moxley though, so she gets an extra star from me for her advocacy of paper (in the same way that you added a star to Margaret Drabble for her actuarial references).

I would agree. My first kindle book for years

Less a star for supporting populist politicians.

Less another mark for actually writing the book on her smartphone

And another for BTL landlord bashing (while admitting to having an unauthorised extra tenant in her property).

Paul wrote: "Less another mark for actually writing the book on her smartphone

And another for BTL landlord bashing (while admitting to having an unauthorised extra tenant in her property)."
Do writers have to behave exactly according to the beliefs of their lead characters?

No - but her's are actually aligned - my tongue-in-cheek point deducted was for not being a great fan of landlords (character and author) - up there with banker bashing on my list of authorial/character sins!

NB For those who don't get a free copy on the tube, the interview we're discussing is here:

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/l...

Elmet is an interesting novel that would probably have slipped by unnoticed had it not been long listed for the Booker Prize.

Set in a seemingly isolated spot of South Yorkshire, once part of the Celtic kingdom of Elmet, we find John Smythe, a bare-knuckle boxer living with his teenage children, Daniel and Cathy, in a self built house in a copse in an ancient forest. John appears to live with little support from the wider world; he forages, hunts and traps, and farms his food. When he works, he is paid in kind. His life is almost mediaeval.

But in this story, narrated by Daniel, modern details creep in. There is the East Coast Main Line that passes nearby; there are cars; a casino; shopping trips to Doncaster. John - or Daddy as Daniel calls him - seems to be a link between the modern land and its history. Famed for his fists throughout Britain and Ireland, John seems to have links to the Irish travelling community although he is clear that he is not a traveller. Quite the opposite, he has found his spot in the woods and wants to stay in it.

The story unfolds piece by piece. We find the family in former times living in a regular house, owned by Granny Morley, on an estate at the edge of a seaside town. We find Daniel and Cathy already being ostracised by their peers in that town. And then we find that the land around their wood is owned and farmed by unscrupulous farmers; many of whom also own the houses and charge rack rents.

Elmet challenges modern values of property, employment and trade. Why shouldn't people like John - and perhaps some of the former coal miners of the area - be able to live according to their own rules? Why should they have to accept the lot that they were born into, paying the price for their ancestors' poor decisions and missed opportunities? And what about if it wasn't ancestors who took the poor decisions but those who find themselves in poverty today? While Elmet doesn't exactly present easy answers, it does tend to be unsympathetic towards landowners.

The main timeline is then interwoven with flash-forward narration as an adult Daniel looks for his missing sister. This successfully adds a bit of intrigue.

So Elmet is an ideas book. Where it doesn't quite succeed is the narrative voice. Daniel switches effortlessly from being monosyllabic and repetitive, an uneducated man trying to convey complex and sensitive emotions with a limited vocabulary - to being some kind of minor poet waxing lyrical at all around him. At one point, he even tells us of all the beautiful things - the stars and the creatures of the night - that he was unable to notice in his haste. Coupled with this, some of the narrative seems to be deliberately opaque - what did happen to Daniel and Cathy's mother? - some of the dialogue is clearly expository - and some people's motives didn't really make much sense. I guess in a stylised novel things didn't really have to add up perfectly, but I think it made the whole feel somewhat inconsistent.

I am glad to have read Elmet, and the positives far outweigh the negatives, but it does feel like it didn't quite land.

I am only half way through but the points you and Gumble make all resonate - nicely summarised.

Yes think my view is in line with Gumble and MisterHobgoblin's.

3 stars for me - although not far short of 4.

It is certainly a more intriguing book that many of the surprise inclusions in past years, so the jury are to be thanked for bringing it to our attention.

The Vivien / Daniel relationship felt a little underexplored to me. Personally I would have preferred if the 2nd half of that book had gone the route of exploring that dynamic in more detailed, than have Daniel's family get into the more political issues of workers and property rights.

But that's my personal preference against political preaching in novels, and let's not get into that after last year's discussions!

Good review Misterhobgoblin. One think I am curious in hour and any one else's thoughts on. Why did John leave it for so many years to move to the wood. It might have seemed more logical to do it when the children were still young and after the incident at school.

The book mentions the trigger was Granny Morley dying. When she was alive he was presumably happy she would protect them to an extent: without her there he needed somewhere where he could be sure they were safe even if he was absent.

The related question, which MisterHobgoblin also highlights, is exactly what was going on with their mother. This is where I had one frustration with the book, Daniel can narrate using Booker longlist worthy prose, but appears to be completely naive for a 15 year old as to what is going on in his life.

I have my reservations. Ms Mozley's comparisons often go the wrong way:

Midges dance among horseflies among thrips. They coalesce to a swirling throng and circle an invisible centre like electrons around a nucleus.

or (worse)

Daddy was blowing clots of blood from his nostrils like a dragon breathing fire.

Towards the climactic and violent end, they become (I assume) unintentionally funny.

Then I found the characters too simplistic. The good brute, the male bullies, the evil landlord. Oliver (the main character and narrator, curiously named only 2/3 through the book) does undergo a development, but it feels construed for effect. His quest for a sexual identity is convoluted with his missing mother, and I find that awkward. The vocabulary of his narration ranges from the infantile to the literate adult, often within sentence.
I am disappointed.

The main character is called Daniel and named in the first chapter. Oliver is his surname and becomes relevant as he is named after his mother not father which changes Mr Price's attitude to him and drives the crucial plot development.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "The main character is called Daniel and named in the first chapter. Oliver is his surname and becomes relevant as he is named after his mother not father which changes Mr Price's attitude to him an..."

Right - my bad

According to Book Depository, the release date for this has been moved up to August 10th.

Waterstones were quoting 10th August earlier today so that sounds right...

Am I the only one who finds it beyond weird that the two outliers in the longlist are both by unknown women authors writing first person narratives about feral teenagers who write way beyond their years and lack of schooling? And in each case the book ends with bad things happening very physically close to the narrator while both are and aren't involved in the bad stuff?

I found this more successful than History of Wolves, though agree with others that the narrator shifts between grammatical errors a lyrical prose in a baffling manner.

The lefty crap about how the government should own everything was childish. Her argument around council housing is that it was wrong to sell to the tenants because they are too...what? ignorant, poor, uneducated...to be trusted to do the correct thing with the property, so of course would sell it to satan, I mean Price. And every single landlord colludes with Price in his evilness? Again, this is a two-dimensional view of economics.

The more I write the less I like the book.

You could argue this is worse on the first point (although overall I preferred it of the two) - History of Wolves is written when the narrator is much much older looking back.

Yes, you have a point on the age of the narrators when 'writing' these.

I had the same criticism of Days Without End, and some one pointed out that the book could have been written much later. I was less convinced there though whereas it's explicit here.

Just finished and very mixed feelings. Bothered by Daniel's switching from "being monosyllabic and repetitive, an uneducated man trying to convey complex and sensitive emotions with a limited vocabulary - to being some kind of minor poet waxing lyrical at all around him" as Mr Hobgoblin so eloquently put it. And by Price being such an evil baddy as to be almost farcical. I was almost waiting for someone to say "He's behind you!".

For me, it's a very strong debut novel, but not a Booker short list novel (possibly not really even a Booker longlist novel).

I am about halfway through so far and enjoying it a lot more than I was expecting to having seen so many negative comments here.

Lascosas - I have some sympathy for your perspective but a lot more for Mozley's - the argument isn't so much that the council housing shouldn't have been sold, but that the funds should have been used to build more affordable housing, and the narrator, his family and his friends clearly have no stake in the wider economy. Yes, it's simplistic and exaggerated, but that is the way many people feel, and there are injustices that can and should be fought. But enough of the politics - isn't this a book forum?

The Guardian has just published an interview with Mozley here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Hugh wrote: "The Guardian has just published an interview with Mozley here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201..."

Mozley was reeling from the discovery she had been longlisted for the Man Booker prize with a book not due for release until November.

How strange! isn't the cut off date October 2017? correct me if I am wrong

Robert wrote: "Hugh wrote: "The Guardian has just published an interview with Mozley here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201..."

Mozley was reeling from th..."

You are right. I smell a conspiracy!

Presumably the publishers entered it, and said they would bring the publication date forward if necessary. They had time to put the "Booker longlisted" bit on the cover too...

A conspiracy would be more exciting.

Although oddly it was already available on Kindle and the publication of the hardback was bought forward. I think the eligibility is actual rather than planned publication.

I have a feeling one of the judges picked up something about this book and "called it in" (they said they did call in a certain number of books).

I just have a feeling (as I think I posted to the ManBookering forum) that this might be the surprise inclusion on the shortlist.

I would like to see it make the shortlist - there may be at least six better books but none of them would benefit as much from the publicity, and it is a very promising debut.

And that's why I think it may be included - this year's His Bloody Project.

But the article says 'book not due for release until September' rather than 'November'?

The one that's been rushed into print is Home Fire, given both the difficulty of getting even a Kindle version till this week and the fact it's in need of a thorough rewrite.

Paul wrote: "But the article says 'book not due for release until September' rather than 'November'?

The one that's been rushed into print is Home Fire, given both the difficulty of getting even a Kindle vers..."

You're right! Definitely a conspiracy because it said November when I read it earlier this morning.

I'm going with conspiracy in preference to typing error.

One last thought on the politics - Elmet may once have included the late Jo Cox's constituency...

Finished this last night and was quite impressed, though the last part was rather more violent and melodramatic than I would have liked. I'm not going to rank it in my top six but I would still be very happy to see it shortlisted.

I thought this novel was great! A strong debut. My paltry GR review:

Every year The Man Booker Longlist usually features a small percentage of well known authors a couple of debuts and a spattering of unknown authors and their second novels. This year the list only featured one debut author who was new to me and that was Fiona Mozley with Elmet.

Daniel and his sister Cathy live with their father in a field in Yorkshire (the Elmet of the title) with a small copse of trees in the background. The father, John leads a violent life however it is in a sort of robin hood way. He'll help the poor but beat up the rich and wicked. Life goes on peacefully until greedy landowner and all round entrepreneur Mr. Price wants his land back, which John retaliates by becoming a spokesperson for worker's rights. This develops into revenge tale of the highest order.

Elmet is a Gothic novel. It is dark, unsettling and it's sinister ending is pulled off with panache. However it is also a political novel, which questions the right of land ownership and worker exploitation, which is a common theme in this year's Man Booker Longlist. Elmet slyly gives a picture of modern day society - one which is being milked dry by the powerful and needs to be overturned. Mozley, through the narrator if the book, Daniel, questions gender and sexuality. Daniel is portrayed as effeminate while his sister flexes the muscles. This is another theme that is dominant in this year's list but I think it works well in this novel.

I always feel that I have to justify my ratings. The reason why I gave Elmet four stars is because I felt that the six interludes could have been a stronger contribution to the novel's plot. Other than that minor gripe, I'm glad I read this novel and I'll definitely read what Mozley will write next.

Matthias wrote: "I have my reservations. Ms Mozley's comparisons often go the wrong way:

Midges dance among horseflies among thrips. They coalesce to a swirling throng and circle an invisible centre like electron..."

I'm only halfway through this one, and while I am engaged and enjoying the storytelling, I have to say that a lot of the metaphors are pretty tortured.

There's also inconsistencies that are minor, but I am noticing them. For example, at one point the book indicates that the family leave the coffee pot on all day and the coffee is bitter and dark and that's how they like it. Then, when they visit the home of Ewart and Martha, Daniel is pouring tons of milk and sugar into it while simultaneously discussing how he can always drink it super hot. I love a well done telling detail, but so far this seems like the author is just trying too hard. Unlike History of Wolves which whatever you want to say about the weird plotting, I think it is hard to take issue with the actual writing itself.

I'm reserving overall judgement however until the end and will report back. Telling a good, fresh story is not nothing, but I expect really good writing first and foremost . . .so far I'm not convinced on this one.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I spent a small fortune to have this shipped over from the UK, lol!

Robert wrote: ".This develops into revenge tale of the highest order.

Elmet is a Gothic novel. It is dark, unsettling and it's sinister ending is pulled off with panache..."

Normally this is the type of book that is right up my alley, so you are giving me hope that by the end my reservations will be left behind!