ŷ������

Longlisted for the Booker prize 2024. My general feel with the longlist of this year is that the jury picked solid reads, but not many that really blew me away, and this book is an exponent of that.
A well written and at times touching account of the impact of exile and the dangers of a life not lived. Still I found this book more to be admired than loved, despite the quality writing
After a little silence he said “Friend, what a word, most use it over someone they hardly know, but it is a wondrous thing��

Hisham Matar definitely can write and in general I learned a lot from this book. In My Friends a Libyan man looks back to his youth as a student in London, where he and a friend where shot during a demonstration at the embassy (now 40 years ago, this was something I knew nothing about: ). Our main character is very reflective and studies English literature. He struck me as somewhat too dispassionate to really carry the book, which is told in over 100 short chapters which are mainly flashbacks, allegedly coming to his mind as he walks back after a meeting with one of his friends in London in 2016.

London is almost a character in the book, a refuge, but not truly a home for the large diaspora who fled from Libya and its dictatorship. Living in London gives the frequent mentions of Shepherds Bush, Hyde Park, Kensington High Street, Chelsea, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, Notting Hill Gate and all other places a feel of texture, that Benghazi and other sites where the Arab spring play out never get in the book. Due to the murders on critical voices left and right during the 1980s people (including Khaled who narrates the book) self censor to stay safe. Communication with parents is monitored constantly, making it hard to have real conversations and connections with the homefront.

Exile and being unmoored are definitely key themes of the book. Our narrator loses not just the opportunity to visit his aging parents and his sister, but also seems unable to truly connect and take up roots in London with his new friends or potential love interest. He describes the actions of the titular friends, yet never manages to transcends the onlooker role. Even being shot in the demonstration at the start of the book is more circumstance than conviction.

I would have liked to see more of the experience of one of the friends of the main character in Libya during the Arab spring, or even the perspective from his sister. There are monumental things going on but through the lens of the main character we only catch the CNN or Al Jazeera news snippets of it. Again this is perfectly parsimonious with the theme of exile and being an onlooker on ones own life, but it felt dissatisfying. I did find Khaled being there for a friend who was sick touching, even though how this experience in Paris led to encountering a new friend felt a bit bolted on.

Finally I wondered a lot about how privileged Khaled and his circle really where, with travels to Europe, San Francisco, rendezvous in Paris, kids going to boarding schools and work that Khaled allegedly has as a teacher almost never coming back despite lavish parties in Kensington.
While the Gadaffi regime obviously hoarded wealth and extorted the country, Khaled and his group form part of a historical elite in Libya, something which is initially acknowledged when some families in their social circles are called traitors or people who always back the winning side, but which is not really further investigated/reflected upon in the narrative.

Still this is a very interesting, if melancholy coming of age book, with little obvious flaws.

Quotes:
And a face like a landscape liable to bad weather

As foolish to think we are free of history as it would be of gravity.

I didn’t know joy could be so painful

I suddenly felt neither a supporter nor a critic of this, and enjoying my indifference, wondered if perhaps one needed to know something very well before being able to be ambivalent about it, and I realised then that this was why it had become impossible for me to feel ambivalence towards much at all. I suffered an opinion about nearly every detail of my new life.

The question is, my boy, and it has always has been the most important question, how to escape the demands of unreasonable men.

Isn’t it just terrible how life just keeps on?
Just keeps on and on and on and on without a pause.
Terrible and beautiful I said.
Beautiful only sometimes he said

Every tyrant has its end.

It’s hard work hiding things, you have to watch yourself, how you walk even, how you eat and sleep and I am terrible at it, you know it.

God veil our faults

You can not be two people at once

Freedom I told myself is also the freedom not to be suspicious, not to fear, not to envy.

Isn’t it magical to be alive?

Life is a traitor, always waiting to stab you in the back

Love is as much a miracle as it is an education

2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: /review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: /review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: /review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: /review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: /review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...