Book: Flesh

[elusivek]

Flesh
David Szalay
Amazon Product Link

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.

A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy.

“Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.

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Trying not spoil this but overall did not quite like the book.

Conversations felt lazy and sometimes I couldn’t follow with the “yeah?”, “Yeah”, “so, yeah”, “yeah?”, “okay” and who’s actually speaking (having to go back and count the actual lines).

First half (roughly) of the book felt like a teenaged boy going on and on and on and on about the ONE thing.

When I thought that ONE thing was over, it pops up again nearing the end of the book. Gee. Is that all what men think about?

And, okay, he did a good thing. Was there an explanation, a reflection, a self-review of why he did that good thing? No. Hey, I’m glad he did that good thing. Would have been nice to get more depth on it though.

And, while there were… not exactly diatribes, but lengthy explanations of what is going on, oh so very abruptly, the book ended. Like, huh?

This is actually the first book I’m reading for a new local book club and surely this will be a good conversation starter.

- - Not included in my Goodreads post: If the book is set in Europe - Hungary and England - why is it that in a part it was using Fahrenheit? Maybe I got an American publication, but yeah. That irked me a bit. It just said (paraphrasing) "It's 75" and I was like.... 75C and he's not dead yet? And after a moment I figured it's 75F and had to google what's the equivalent in C. --

Comments

[jo]

That book just won the Booker prize. I've not read it, but I did read this article about it in the Guardian this morning. Might provide more fodder for your book club discussion: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/17/david-szalay-booker-prize-novel-crisis-masculinity-debate

[elusivek]

That’s actually the reason this book got to be our first book to read. While our first meetup will be in December, our WhatsApp chat group is already being…. Pretty chatty haha.

[gilda_elise]

The book sort of sounds like it's chronicling the life of a loser, or am I being too brutal. And, yeah, it's irritating when a writer doesn't do his research (as in using fahrenheit in Europe.)

[jo]

it's irritating when a writer doesn't do his research (as in using fahrenheit in Europe.)

I doubt that's the issue in this case since the author, while born in Canada, grew up and lived mostly in Europe. He's spent most of his time in Hungary, and now lives in Austria. So he would be very aware of what system is used where. Most likely, as Elusivek noted, she has a US edition of the novel in which they would hae edited the text for an American readership.