Flesh – David Szalay

READ FOR BOOKERTHON

The story of István, a Hungarian teen who lives with his mother and is subjected to a traumatic event. From there we bear witness to a collection of intimate moments set over years, chronicling the demands of life for an everyday person who is unsure what role he is meant to play.

And all that burgeoning physicality is held within yourself as a sort of secret, even as it is also the actual surface that you present to the world, so that you’re left absurdly exposed, unsure whether the world knows everything about you or nothing, because you have no way of knowing whether these experiences that you’re having are universal or entirely specific.

SUZY
● Flesh is the story of a life that has moments of being completely ordinary and then very unusual. It feels hard to explain my thoughts on the book without talking about a defining event that occurs at the very start. It caused me to wonder which of the protagonist’s life choices were in response to this. Essentially, I second-guessed my way through the entire novel.

It’s testament to the skill of the author that as a reader I had an entirely different dialogue running through my head as I processed what was happening on the page. Flesh had moments of hope, but overall was a sad story, and one that I feel richer for having read.

RACHEL
●  Flesh is an existential book that grew on me the more I read it. István demonstrates the male experience via roles he never asked for. He’s meant to be strong, protective, ambitious, loyal, all the usual markers of masculinity, but he doesn’t seem to know what any of that really means and instead is just reactive. He’s manipulated and manipulative, a saviour one moment and careless the next. He’s an interesting case study.

The book is steady, but kind of monotone and flat. That sounds like a criticism but that passivity and numbness is what builds István’s character. Even his constant response of “okay” irritated me at first but then I came to see it was indicative of him as a character and how he chose to pacify without agreeing. I can’t help but compare Flesh to one of the other Booker shortlisters which also attempted to write about the male experience. In doing that I see how accomplished Flesh is, detailing a man’s life lived in the flesh but burdened by external expectations.

Published 2025
Scribner
368 pages