Bob Gaffey reviews this year’s Booker Prize nominees and predicts this evenings winner
The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades.
Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. It is a prize that transforms the winner’s career.
Anuk Arudpragasam, Damon Galgut, Patricia Lockwood, Nadifa Mohamed, Richard Powers and Maggie Shipstead are today announced have been shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize for Fiction.
The former mayor of Mold, Bob Gaffey has reviewed all six Booker-shortlisted books which have been published on Deeside.com – you can read them all below.
- A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
- Bewilderment by Richard Powers
- No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
- Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
- The Promise by Damon Galgut
Bob is also a keen writer is set to release a book of book reviews during Mold’s first Bookfest in May 2022.
The winner is to be announced tonight. These are his predictions.
“I give GREAT CIRCLE and THE FORTUNE MEN 3 stars which means for me they’re out.”
“There are 3 novels which get 4 stars for me and I’d be happy with any one of them winning.”
“These are : BEWILDERMENT, A PASSAGE NORTH, and THE PROMISE. Which is the one that I think they will go for?”
“If I was marking them out of 100% I would give the first two 74 and the last one 75%.”
“In other words, by the skin of his teeth I think that Galgut’s is marginally better.”
“You enter his world and sometimes you see yourself in it and also some of the people you know.”
“By this I mean their character traits and the things they say.”
“This is obviously a gift for an author to be able to do this.”
“As regards the one I want to win, it’s BEWILDERMENT.”
“This has got a lot going for it, (including Prince William,) as I’ve detailed in its review.”
“It’s a love story between a father, late mother and son towards each other and the environment.”
“One of the reasons is that although it never mentions Trump by name, he’s an important part of the story.”
“The author by analysing him shows him up for what he is.”
“Powers shows Trump to be an extremely dangerous idiot and a total sociopath.”
“Thus ideally the book would win the Booker, a million sales would take place in the USA.”
“This would lead to 2 million Americans reading what their wonderful ex-leader is like and how dangerous he is.”
“Powers makes it clear, how can you vote for Individual 1 who says that the climate crisis is a Chinese hoax?”
“Thus this is the book I hope will win. As regards the book I hope will lose it’s NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS.”
“Lockwood’s project, camouflaged as a novel, is described as an experimental book.”
“This should have been killed in the lab.”
“I found it very superficial and don’t regard it as a novel.”
“At 224 pages I think it’s the shortest book of the 6.”
“Compare this to GREAT CIRCLE with over 600 pages.”
“Her book is so short that there is very little character development which I believe is a crucial part of a novel.”
“This is the book I hope and pray doesn’t win.”
“If Lockwood does win, then obviously I will have to end writing book reviews and go back to my day job.”
About Bob Gaffey
Bob Gaffey was mayor of Mold between 2017 and 2018.
He spent six years as a town councillor in Mold, raising more than £10,000 towards the restoration of Bailey Hill in the town as part of a project to turn the former Norman settlement into an outdoor attraction.
The funds were raised by holding events during his time as mayor in 2017/18.
The former union representative is currently chair of the Wrexham, Denbighshire and Flintshire branch of Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and the Delyn branch of Plaid Cymru.
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