The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

The Long Form by Kate Briggs

I had this down as a winner of the Prize as soon as I started reading it. Indeed I wondered if the author did when she started writing it!

I loved this one too. Brainy, meta, stimulating:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Your review was the one that convinced me to pick it up!

As a digital designer, I also enjoyed the visual aspects of the novel.

The geometric components of the mobile that Briggs describes in opening chapters reappear throughout the novel as line diagrams, bookending chapters, and drawing special attention to concepts explored therein.

A chapter on the philosophy of time, for example, ends with a series of triangles that make up an hourglass shape.

And we find out later that these shapes are inspired by the kinetic sculptures of Bruno Munari:

I liked it a lot but felt it lacked real heart - the baby was simply a device, very little resonated with me. It’s very clever meta writing for experimental sake but lacked for me the heart of a Cuddy or Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (or for that matter Amy Arnold’s new book).

Which makes it ideally suited for the prize. It’s a prize about what the novel form can do. Don’t really get how this doesn’t win. Maddie Mortimer put it well:

Written in crystalline prose as tender as it is precise, as clean as it is challenging, this is the most thorough investigation of what the novel, as form, can really do; it asks who or what it is for, how it may or may not interact with our various realities, how it holds time and space and might better equip us to make sense of the world beyond the page.

I really liked it, I dislike children but found the baby unexpectedly fascinating particularly all the information about the ways that babies process their environment. Thought it was an unusual, inventive take on creativity. Although some of the theories/intellectual frameworks were already fairly familiar.

As I said in the speculation thread I prefer a novel that does not just talk about the novel but actually builds a convincing fictional world - too much novel gazing

But yes it’s ideal for this prize I think and was always the most likely winner

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "As I said in the speculation thread I prefer a novel that does not just talk about the novel but actually builds a convincing fictional world - too much novel gazing

But yes it’s ideal for this p..."

In that case I can see why it didn't quite work for you since that's one of the things that it's commenting on, but all novels are essentially making an argument about what a novel is or what a novel can or should do, it's just that this one lays all that bare and questions itself and the form.

I can see Gumble's point - I liked the book but more for technical and literary than emotional reasons.

I'm not sure if people have already seen this but Kate Briggs wrote a fascinating piece in Paris Review about her novel and some of the connections she makes particularly in relation to Woolf - one of my all-time favourite writers. Although I'm not in any concrete sense comparing Briggs with Woolf in terms of style or potential significance it's the willingness of Briggs, like Woolf, to explore the possibilities of the novel that's one of the things I liked about her book:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...

Thanks. Fascinating article.

I didn't plan on reading it any time soon since I suspect I'd have certain issues with it, but as it got on the list here I go...

It could always be worse. It could be about short stories.

The chapters are VERY short.

Hugh wrote: "I can see Gumble's point - I liked the book but more for technical and literary than emotional reasons."

That seems fair enough, I didn't mean to imply that Gumble's response was invalid, sorry if it came across like that, just intended to emphasize what I enjoyed about it. Although I found the relationship between the baby and mother quite touching, maybe because of her distanced approach.

For people inclined toward podcasts, Kate Briggs was featured on the Fitzcarraldo podcast recently: https://soundcloud.com/user-123301267...

Analogy between the baby and the novel is there, right? I'm not seeing things?

In the book? Yes it’s there - in my view a little overdone by the end to the extent I felt the baby was only there as an analogy hence my comment about feeling a lack of emotional rather than intellectual connection.