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David Szalay first came to my attention in 2016 when his short story collection “All That Man Is�� was shortlisted for (and it seems came close to winning) the Booker Prize �� which was a little odd as it seemed that the only people who thoughts it qualified as unified and substantial long-form fiction was the author and (at least some of) the judges. The collection itself had different protagonists who progressed though ages and had themes of European travel, life on the periphery and the crisis of masculinity. His next collection “Turbulence�� was published in 2018 �� a series of linked up vignettes based around European air travel.

This, his latest due to be published in 2025, has many of the same ideas �� vignettes across a life (from age 15 until into the 60s), a theme of modern masculinity, European travel �� but this time in very much a novel format as the vignettes are from the life of the same character István.

An excerpt from the novel �� effectively I believe its third chapter �� was published in the New Yorker in December 2024 and the accompanying interview with Szalay is an excellent summary of the distinctive approach he has taken with: the character of the protagonist of this novel (passive, more a recipient than instigator of actions); the narrative style (deliberately pared back and straightforward); the dialogue (choppy, short interactions often marked by evasion or omission); the lack of interiority of the narrator �� despite being effectively a close third person point of view we know far more about what is happening to his body than what he is thinking or feeling.

Some excerpts from the interview

István does not affect history, history affects István …��. I suppose I’d regard that kind of relationship, of the individual human being to events outside their control, as something universal, and the vital question is how we deal with being on the receiving end of it—how we deal with it practically, emotionally, even spiritually, ultimately. It’s the question raised by classical tragedy …��.. The story is also about numbness, which is also quite difficult to talk about in a compelling way. It has to be achieved by a process of cumulative suggestion. So the narrative style tries to express it. The lack of significant communication between the characters, as well ………�� An inarticulate protagonist—a protagonist who isn’t much given to verbally analyzing his own experience—seemed to provide an opportunity to approach things another way, indirectly or suggestively. What’s not said is as important, in this story and in the novel as a whole, as what is ………��.. István’s relationship to his body is central to the novel, I think. Although the very form of the question—which separates István from his body—to some extent takes us away from the novel’s point of view, which is that István basically is his body. In other words, the novel, and the story published here, try to look at life as, first and foremost, a physical experience. They explore the idea that physical experience is primary, and that most other kinds of experience that we might have follow from that.

The novel opens when István is fifteen and seduced by a forty-something year old neighbour who (at this mother’s request) he helps with her shopping �� an affair described I have to say in far too much detail and which means that the novel for me got off to a very rocky start �� when István starts to talk about love, the neighbour breaks things off leading to a fateful confrontation with her husband.

In the second chapter after István has left a young offenders institution he falls in with a small cross-border smuggling gang, drifts around and then is forced by his mother (setting up a recurring theme that she is the driver for much of his life choices) to get a job and “unable to find anything else, he he joins the army��.

The aforementioned third chapter starts with he and his Hungarian colleagues travelling back from the Iraq war and after some more sexual encounters (another recurring theme) he takes a job at a winery only to end in hospital after he suddenly punches the wall. The Doctor that treats him is an old schoolmate, and as well as the encounter eventually leading to him seeing a therapist about an incident in Iraq where he was unable to save a colleague from an IED and from which he is now suffering PTSD and being successfully prescribed anti-depressants, it also causes him to at least partly develop some ambition (as he contrasts his life choices and current situation with the Doctors).

We then next join him in England �� where he has gone presumably taking advantage of the EU freedom of movement, although even there he is less successful and settled than he had hoped �� drifting into a job as a bouncer at a strip club before a chance encounter with someone being mugged gets him a job working for an agency providing drivers and bodyguards to the rich �� and the start of his own rise (the man he rescued giving him a crash course in to how to blend in among privilege).

The fifth chapter he his now working full time for a super rich (private jet and helicopter, London luxury pad, country estate) couple where he has a brief affair with the couple’s child’s Nanny and a much longer one with the wife, an affair which continues and becomes riskier as the husband undergoes treatment in a private German clinic for advanced cancer.

And this, just over half way through the novel, is where for me the novel rather changes:

Not necessarily for the worse: to be honest the flatness of the prose, the denuded dialogue �� see below, the physicality and masculinity �� while all deliberate �� are almost the opposite of what I want in a novel. In terms of the dialogue, István’s favourite answer is “Okay�� �� a word which appears no less than 340 times in the novel (I would argue once was too many in most novels), here for example is a key encounter with his employer shortly before they start their affair

‘Karl says you were in the army,�� Mrs Nyman says.
‘Y���.��
‘How was that?�� she asks.
‘How was that?�� The traffic is moving again and he has to focus on it for a moment
‘Yes,�� she says.
‘It was . . .�� He wonders what to say, what sort of answer she’s looking for. ‘It was okay,�� he says.
‘It was okay?��
‘Y���.��
‘What does that mean?�� she asks.
‘What does it mean?��
‘Y���.��
‘It means . . . it was okay.��
‘What do you mean okay? What does that actually mean?�� she says. ‘When you say It was okay you’re not actually saying anything are you?��

But also not necessarily for the better: as its almost as though Szalay loses some of his focus/intent and further the story enters the realms of the elite/super rich in a way which takes it away from most lived experience and reminded me of the flaws of Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road �� with which it seems to have a lot of overlap as we end up in a story of István now married to his ex employer turning into (partly of course at his mother’s suggestion) a slightly shady property developer trying to call in political favours and also taking advantage of his step-son (who has never reconciled to his suspected affair and then resented marriage to his now widowed mother) and the trust fund he will receive when twenty five but which his mother can manage before that. This latter detail seems rather far fetched and a terrible car crash, a further affair (with about the only named female other than his mother he has not slept with), a near fatal drug overdose and then the resurfacing of István’s latent violence only stretch this lengthy section to and beyond the point of melodrama

So that it is a relief when we rejoin in the last chapter István back in Hungary, living with his mother, working in a dead end job, having a desultory affair (of course) and saying things are “okay��.

And so is this book �� okay.

My thanks to Vintage, Jonathan Cape for an ARC via NetGalley