{"id":11056,"date":"2019-10-12T19:04:43","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T18:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056"},"modified":"2019-10-12T19:04:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T18:04:43","slug":"mlf-2019-booker-prize-shortlist-with-ellah-wakatama-allfrey-martin-harris-centre-111019-reviewed-by-georgia-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056","title":{"rendered":"MLF 2019: Booker Prize Shortlist, with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Martin Harris Centre, 11\/10\/19, reviewed by Georgia Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe suffering of the novelist\u201d: 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bernardine Evaristo, Lucy Ellmann & Chigozie Obioma in conversation with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey<\/strong><\/p>\n

11th<\/sup> October 2019, Martin Harris Centre<\/strong><\/p>\n

An evening with three of the Booker Prize nominees – Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other<\/em>), Lucy Ellmann (Ducks, Newburyport<\/em>) and Chigozie Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities<\/em>) \u2013 asked the audience of the Manchester Literature Festival to question our conception of what a novel might be, introducing us to forms and voices which refused to be confined. The novelists\u2019 conversation with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey guided us through the challenges and experiments of their three shortlisted works.<\/p>\n

Allfrey opens the conversation with the observation that the works share a reimagining of the novel. Bernadine Evaristo describes the purposeful crafting, in Girl, Woman, Other,<\/em> in a form that appears visually closer to poetry than to a novel, using very few full stops and integrating pauses into the prose through the \u201cpatterning\u201d of text on the page. She has used this \u201cfree-flowing experience\u201d of prose \u2013 which she has dubbed \u201cfusion-fiction\u201d \u2013 to create a novel which gives equal weight to her twelve protagonists, allowing their lives to fuse together. This form is integral to the reader\u2019s understanding of her characters – all black, British and female or non-binary \u2013 by creating a \u201ckaleidoscope\u201d which depicts how the characters see themselves and each other.<\/p>\n

Evaristo describes the access to her characters\u2019 psychology this grants as \u201cthe riches of being a fiction writer\u201d, with which Lucy Ellman concurs: \u201cI don\u2019t know why people bother with non-fiction.\u201d Ellman\u2019s novel, Ducks, Newburyport,<\/em> creates a free flow of the thought of a single character through one single sentence, spread over almost a thousand pages. Allfrey asks how she knew this would work; Ellman replies, \u201cI didn\u2019t.\u201d She says that she wanted to portray the \u201cmillion things going on at once\u201d in a human brain, which \u201cwe don\u2019t usually confront\u2026 in a novel\u201d. As she continued to add more to the whirring brain of her protagonist, I was very surprised how long [the novel] got.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Chigozie Obioma rejects the term \u201cnovel\u201d for his own work, An Orchestra of Minorities<\/em>, which he describes as \u201cextremely African\u201d. \u201cA novel is a very Western concept,\u201d he argues, and the arc of a story, moving a character through conflict to resolution, does not fit with an African world view in which \u201cagency is really mucky\u201d. For instance, he says \u2013 half joking, half serious \u2013 that his mother might argue he was destined to be at this event \u201cfrom the inception of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice of Obioma\u2019s work is unique, taking the perspective of the protagonist\u2019s chi, or guardian spirit, which has been reincarnated over many centuries and flits between the protagonist\u2019s present, and an outlook borne of several hundred years of history. Obioma describes how he found that bending and breaking this perspective \u2013 slipping, for instance, between first and second person \u2013 allowed him to \u201cprobe what I call the metaphysics of being\u201d and question why a life takes the route that it does.<\/p>\n

Creating a breadth of perspectives on black, British womanhood was crucial to Evaristo\u2019s desire for her readership to understand \u201cwho some of us might be\u201d in today\u2019s society. She speaks strongly about the \u201cminiscule, often invisible\u201d representation of this group in literature, and applauds the publishing industry for its work to improve this, acknowledged in both storytelling and access to publication. \u201cPeople haven\u2019t even really been curious about who we are,\u201d she says, hoping her book will help to address that. \u201cThis is the book I\u2019ve been waiting thirty years to write.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, at least part of the animus behind Ducks, Newburyport<\/em> was, Ellman says, that \u201cwhat women think is important; it doesn\u2019t get noticed enough. I wanted to give weight to that.\u201d However, we do not have unlimited access: \u201cThere\u2019s no prison, but [the protagonist] is a little repressed: there are places she doesn\u2019t want to go.\u201d Sex, she says is one; grief too, Allfrey asks? \u201cSometimes she indulges it, other times she veers away. Sometimes she is totally disgusted with everyone, as one is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allfrey says that the creation of these forms and voices to suit the story convey to her \u201cthe suffering of the novelist.\u201d The winner of the 2019 Booker Prize will be announced on 14th<\/sup> October 2019. Regardless of winners and losers, readers of these three novels are unlikely to feel that the writers\u2019 suffering was in vain.<\/p>\n

Georgia Way<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe suffering of the novelist\u201d: 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist Bernardine Evaristo, Lucy Ellmann & Chigozie Obioma in conversation with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey 11th October 2019, Martin Harris Centre An evening with three of the Booker Prize nominees – Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other), Lucy Ellmann (Ducks, Newburyport) and Chigozie Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities) \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nMLF 2019: Booker Prize Shortlist, with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Martin Harris Centre, 11\/10\/19, reviewed by Georgia Way - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MLF 2019: Booker Prize Shortlist, with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Martin Harris Centre, 11\/10\/19, reviewed by Georgia Way - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cThe suffering of the novelist\u201d: 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist Bernardine Evaristo, Lucy Ellmann & Chigozie Obioma in conversation with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey 11th October 2019, Martin Harris Centre An evening with three of the Booker Prize nominees – Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other), Lucy Ellmann (Ducks, Newburyport) and Chigozie Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities) \u2013 […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-10-12T18:04:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056\",\"name\":\"MLF 2019: Booker Prize Shortlist, with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Martin Harris Centre, 11\/10\/19, reviewed by Georgia Way - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-10-12T18:04:43+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-10-12T18:04:43+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11056#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"MLF 2019: Booker Prize Shortlist, with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Martin Harris Centre, 11\/10\/19, reviewed by Georgia Way\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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