Flesh
Over a year ago, I read this news story about two Vermont lawmakers — one of whom, over the course of four months, poured a tiny bit of water in the other’s bag. It’s so juvenile. But it also hearkens a bit to torture à la waterboarding: slow and slithering and sanity-impairing. Anyway, consider me fascinated. It’s serious, but it’s also unserious. And I will admit that a part of me wanted to laugh — because what kind of weirdo takes the time to sneakily drip water in someone else’s belongings?! But then I know I shouldn’t laugh because even though Water = Life (as they say), water can also cause trouble. See: flooding. Good things can also be bad things, so “Everything in Moderation!” (As they also say.)
Small things leading to big things — this was, to me, the way Flesh, 2025’s Booker winner by David Szalay unrolled. And what, in hindsight, my reading experience was like. Drip, drip, drip…and then okay, I get it.
Just a few pages in, István is seduced (this may be too generous a word choice given his age) by his neighbor, an older married woman. She’s deliberate and methodical, and here goes Szalay pushing forward Istvan’s life onto a wildly different trajectory than the lives of his mother and his peers in Hungary. I started this book feeling disengaged (and also that Szalay’s writing style was similar to Paul Lynch’s in Prophet Song…which I was not fond of). But page by page, slowly and methodically, I was drawn in.
As István finds himself literally and figuratively far from his austere childhood — we follow him to adulthood in London and then beyond — it’s difficult for him to ascertain whether or not something’s “good” or “bad.” Everything in moderation?
Flesh is an excellent study on restraint vs indulgence — the novel’s title and all the varied connotations that might come when we picture “flesh” says it all. In fact, Szalay’s writing style — which is often described as “spare” — takes a more indulgent turn when he, later in the novel, places István in scenes with a particular character. I think both are necessary for humans to flourish, but of course the trick is to prevent whatever the equivalent of a water-logged bag is.
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