That clearly makes it a very long adventure novel. Really, if you’re going to write adventure fiction it should be obligatory to read some Edgar Rice Burroughs. He’s not remotely literary, but he does cut to the chase with remarkable efficiency.

I go this far in your quote:

“We rowed in through house-high rocks covered in barbarous plants like halted green explosions.”

For me that was already too much.

David though has a very real point. As an adventure novel (a genre I do sometimes enjoy) then that sort of thing is fine. As a literary novel not so much. The problem this year is novels that don’t aspire to be literary fiction being held out as such.

I note that reading this as an adventure novel David enjoyed it. That makes sense, but as he notes the expectations one would have going in would be wholly different. I’d be looking for dangerous escapades, exotic locations, larger than life characters, I’d be less concerned about finely honed sentences and narrative structures.

So if this weren’t a Booker novel I might buy it and enjoy it just as much as David did. It is though, and it just doesn’t sound like it should be. But then how many of this year’s list do?