Paul Beatty - The Sellout

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Utterly brilliant

What a fantastic book!  I don't normally gush quite so much, but I think this is one of the best, most enjoyable and most illuminating things I have read for a long time.

The story is narrated by Bonbon (just one of his names), a black man who owns a small inner-city farm in Dickens, a previously all-black city in suburban LA, which is being taken over by developments and losing its identity.  The outrageous premise is that he tries to restore the identity of Dickens and recover some of the pride and achievements of its black inhabitants by reintroducing segregation (and also keeping a slave…of sorts).  Paul Beatty uses this as a window on attitudes to race from all sides, which is perceptive, thoughtful and often very penetrating – but he does it in a way which made me laugh out loud regularly and also made me very involved with his characters.

The language is brilliant.  Be warned that there is liberal use of the n-word, the f-word and words from most other parts of the alphabet which some readers may find offensive.  I didn't at all; everything was exactly appropriate to the voice of the book and was often very funny in its effect. There is also some deep learning and wisdom here.  I found it extremely readable so that I wanted to get back to it when I wasn't reading, extremely thought-provoking and ultimately extremely wise.  (It reminded me a little in its form of Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy, another brilliant book which uses wit and an outrageous premise to shed light on attitudes to the Holocaust.)

I admit that I was dubious about the idea of opening the Booker Prize to US authors, but it's a delight to find such a wonderfully readable, funny, engaging and profound book on the shortlist and if this should win I will cheer out loud.  Very warmly recommended.