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My personal favourite from the 2019 Booker Prize list.

You know the experience �� you read a book so immersive, so all-consuming, that you fail to take note of plot devices and character development �� instead, you simply “disappear�� into the novel. By the time you’ve reached the end, you’re not even sure how to review it. You just know you experienced something singular and divine.

At its heart a deceptively simple story �� almost a fable, really �� "Lanny" centres on a young boy in a small English village, in the near present day. Apart from those sketchy details I would recommend going into the novel completely blind, oblivious to plot and premise, in order to savour the wild magic of Porter’s experimental plotting. Do expect George Saunders�� manic facility with language, and Ali Smith’s uncanny ear for dialogue. Do expect equal parts whimsy, tragedy, humour, heartbreak.

Perhaps this book is so difficult to review because it spoke to me on a level beyond language, tackling issues I have been thinking a lot about lately, particularly in its juxtaposition of two worlds �� the corporate-driven world of efficiency and productivity on the one hand, and the enchanted memory of child-like freedom and imagination on the other. In the former, haste is a constant companion and “busy-ness�� reigns supreme. In the latter, time expands the more you slow down. We need to bury that “child�� in order to succeed at “adulting��, to fit in, to make a living. And yet, it is this damage we simultaneously need to keep un-doing, un-learning, in order to return to ourselves. Porter’s fable captures this conflict beautifully.

A book brimming with heart, read it to be humbled, enchanted, moved �� read it to remember.

Mood: Spellbinding
Rating: 10/10

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