The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Neil has asked us to create a thread to discuss the links, connections and coincidences between the books on this year's longlist. Over to you Neil

Thanks, Hugh.

I thought it would be interesting to capture the links, big and small, between the different books.

As a starter:

1. The narrator of The Wall is Joseph Kavanagh i.e. Josef K. 10 minutes... has a Kafka Street.
2. 10 minutes... is about brain activity after the heart stops, a phenomenon also mentioned in Frankissstein.
3. Gumble's Yard has also just posted a note in the GWO discussion about a character unable to watch TV series about female serial killer victims, which is an inversion of the main theme of My Sister...

What else have people noticed?

5 books in the longlist and a big theme which is cropping up is the destruction of the environment:

In Ducks it features
Lost Children Archive as well
Lanny - definitely
I'm seeing it in Frankissstein

Robert wrote: "5 books in the longlist and a big theme which is cropping up is the destruction of the environment:

In Ducks it features
Lost Children Archive as well
Lanny - definitely
I'm seeing it in Frankisss..."
The Wall too

Another big theme is what it means to be human. And what will that mean in the future?

Lanny’s mother is writing “a novel about abuse and revenge ... in which a woman poisons a powerful man” ... sound familiar at all?

And sorry for this but I was really struck by it

In Night Boat To Tangier Maurice’s only meaningful conversation with his father is while they are watching Arsenal versus United at Highbury (as an aside a false memory as the game as described does not exist)

In My Sister The Serial Killer Korede mentions that she found out over a past lunch that Tade is an Arsenal fan

In Orchestra of Minorities the Locals try to relate to Chinoso via Nigerian footballers - Kanu (then an Arsenal player) and Jay Jay Okocha (whose nephew Alex Iwobi is in the current Arsenal team)

Quichotte and Lost Children Archive both have characters met with racism in small town American diners.

Girl Woman Other and The Wall both have mathematical errors by the author.

I used the Kindle “report error” option for the GWO shocker

Margaret Atwood insisted The Heart Goes Last but the whole premise of Shafak’s book is that it doesn’t.

Shafak uses the Proustian idea of memories evoked by taste - something for which Proust used madeleines .... which are baked by the protagonist in Ducks, Newburyport

Lanny (tailing to his Mum) and D/Ali talking to Leila in 10’38” both discuss male clownfish transitioning to females.

The last three Booker novels I’ve read – 10’38’’, Frankissstein, and GWO – contain transgender characters.

Yes which is why I found the clownfish reference in Lanny interesting

The coroner in 10 Mins 38 Secs reflects that the rich can “freeze themselves” after death “in the hope that a hundred years from now they would be revived” - the very subject of the Alcor scenes in Frankisssstein.

The same passage ends (with an ever stronger link to Frankenssstein even including disembodied heads) “God ... must be laughing his head off at a human race capable of .. building artificial intelligence but still uncomfortable with their own mortality and unable to sort out what to do with their dead”

When I googled the research on which LCA is based the real life Alcor facility came up as one of the top search results. Obviously rather crucial to their business model that the brain can survive even when the heart has stopped.

Lost Children Archive mentions a visit the narrator plays to a project where Hispanic immigrant children collectively translate Don Quixote to English and reimagine it as s group of children who migrated from Latin America to the US. Salman Rushdie’s reimagining of Din Quixote in modern day America is of course on the longlist.

As an aside like so much else in LCA the details are largely true and autobiographical

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/op...

10 minutes also continues with the environmental theme

Also in 10 Minutes..., like ducks - two turtles feature.

A little tenuous, but in Orchestra, our hero and his friend go to "the pepper soup place" for beers, and in Ducks, Leo loves pepperpot soup.

The more tenuous the better Hugh - I think those links are more fun than the more obvious thematical ones

Max Porter blurb on the cover of Night Boat to Tangier.

Hugh wrote: "A little tenuous, but in Orchestra, our hero and his friend go to "the pepper soup place" for beers, and in Ducks, Leo loves pepperpot soup."

Give the length and breadth of Ducks, it ought to be possible to find a connection to all the books

Elif Shafak blurbs on Girl Woman Other

There are aggressive roosters in both Ducks and Orchestra (as indeed, there's domestic poultry in both).

Lanny and Lost Children Archive have lost children; in Ducks and LCA we learn about the marriage from the wife’s point of view, not the husband’s; Ducks and MSTSK, the sisters’ relationship is key to the narrator.

In 10 Minutes.. Cinnamon Rolls are given as a treat during a party.
Guess which book starts with a character baking cinnamon rolls for a party ;)

Excellent

Handmaid’s Tale features The Wall.

In Handmaiden’s Tale Aunt Lydia attributes some of the drop off in birth rates which precipitated the Sons of Jacob’s regime to “some women believed there would be no future .... they said there was no sense in breeding” which sounds like the world of The Wall (and it’s breeders) albeit Aunt Lydia’s worldview is that such behaviour is lazy.

GWO also contains a brief speculation about the future of technology and implants, which is a core topic in Frankissstein.

Having seen comments in Ducks discussions about whether the environment should not be seen as a universal concern because the poor and disenfranchised do not have the luxury of choice, it is interesting that Bummi's dream included her army of cleaners restoring the Niger delta!

from Lost Children Archive:
"Ma also told you then that Memphis was once the capital of Ancient Egypt, a beautiful and powerful place by the Nile River..."

from Frankissstein:
"Maybe something about calling this city Memphis - I guess if you name a place after the capital of Egypt, you gonna see some pharaohs - uh-huh?"

In The Wall, water levels have risen, wiping out all the beaches.

But Waterlow Park plays an important role in Ducks.

Excellent.

Shall we close the thread now - I win!

Paul wrote: "Shall we close the thread now - I win!"
Who said it was a competition. And there are still two books that almost nobody has read.

Quichotte has lots of Moby Dick references - the main character is called Ismail and his son observes

“So if the old Cruze is our Pequod then I guess Miss Salma R is the big fish and he, ‘Daddy,’ is my Ahab."

And Ducks Newburyport mentions whales 36 times.

And there so so many cross-overs between Testaments and the other 12 which I am dying to tell, but unfortunately I have signed an NDA. Indeed I may have breached the NDA by telling you that.

And Frankenssstein contains multiple digs at Wales. If it is a competition Paul I think I have just overtaken you.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "And Frankenssstein contains multiple digs at Wales. If it is a competition Paul I think I have just overtaken you."

You are indeed the Spurs to my Arsenal - that was a dybalaolical pun.

Re-reading Night Boat To Tangier. Had forgotten there is mention of Frederique who is "some kind of trans-sex - it was hard to tell which direction from which".

Possibly not the most delicate phrasing, but links to Girl, Woman, Other, Frankissstein, 10 minutes 38...

Stacy's POTUS t-shirt slogan must be inspired by reading p320 of GWO where that word from Mary Poppins appears

The Chi on Orchestra of Minorities is so fond of the phrase ' I have seen it many times" that he uses it many times as a framing device for the narrative - 46 in fact.

Which is reminiscent of the 'the fact that' device from Ducks N, even if he falls 19,350 short in his persistence.

It’s like this ... in The Man Who Saw Everything only manages 20 or so repeats.

These are very helpful for Booker improv. though

Gumble's Yard wrote: "It’s like this ... in The Man Who Saw Everything only manages 20 or so repeats.

These are very helpful for Booker improv. though"

Atwood may be repeating a whole book

I am reading The Handmaid's Tale in preparation for The Testaments. With a few added "the fact that..."'s, this could be from Ducks, Newburyport:

"Household: that is what we are. The Commander is the head of the household. The house is what he holds. To have and to hold, till death us do part.
The hold of a ship. Hollow."

Paul wrote: "In The Wall, water levels have risen, wiping out all the beaches...."

in 10/38 "oceans will surge".

In "The Man Who Saw Everything" one early example of time-shift is when Saul in 1988 (pre Berlin wall fall) cannot understand why a local shop apparently has become a Polish shop.

In "Lanny" the locals (in the village gossip Dead Papa Toothworth overhears) obsess over the now Polish owned village shop.

Ducks, Newburyport has a mountain lion sub plot. The Man Who Saw Everything has a jaguar.

Two surely. One silver, one black.