Jude Machin

My 5th of the 6 Booker shortlist. Described as “a warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story” all in one. This just was not for me. It’s about an out of work actor who takes work for a psychology professor at an unnamed university. He must wear nothing but a black leather bag in lectures and seminars and around campus and see what reactions it provokes in the students. Overtime he finds comfort and refuge by wearing the black bag when he’s not working and hiding behind a different personality when he’s wearing it. His friend Claudio see ways to make more money out of the situation selling nonfungible tokens and investment into whatever Black Bag symbolises to eager buyers. Add to that a rather unusual sexual relationship that develops and it’s all just the wrong side of quirky for me. It reminded me of some of the 1960s books I had to read at university like The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. The narrator breaks the fourth wall occasionally and has conversations with his parent’s dog and there really is a lot about what it is like to be a man who struggles with who they are and their role in the world. My least favourite on the list so far.