REVIEW OF THE SELLOUT-PAUL BEATTY

TOM'S REVIEW

LANGUAGE DISTILLED TO ITS ESSENCE

The most recent get-together of my book club consisted of two Brits and three Yanks and, not surprisingly, opinion of THE SELLOUT divided along national lines.  It took the two Brits half the novel to get the voice of the narrator right in their heads.  One said he began to feel he understood the book when he started channelling Samuel L. Jackson through his mind’s ear. The other said he eventually realised through some osmotic process that the author was in fact deadly facetious.  The Americans, on the other hand, having been born in the Fifties and grown up with the Little Rascals, blaxploitation films and racism, both casual and overt, got this book from the get-go.  And all three agreed THE SELLOUT contains not just some of the sharpest wit and satire but also some of the best pure writing in the history of the American novel. 

When I first heard the Booker Prize had been awarded to an American novel that skewered American race relations, I thought, “Please, not another sledge-hammer-subtle book like VERNON GOD LITTLE about American hypocrisy by someone who knows zip-a-dee-doo-dah about the USofA.” Thank God I was wrong.  And thank God for once for the Booker Prize. Because otherwise I would never have heard of a book that contains not only language distilled to its purest essence but also the most laugh-out-loud lines of any fiction I have ever read.  Yes, it totally helps that I am an American of a certain age and sensibility. And yes, it helps even more that I grew up in Southern California, where the book is set.  I had the undeniable advantage of getting nearly all the inside jokes.  But that does not mean this book is inaccessible to Brits.  If you love the irony and POV of THE SIMPSONS and PULP FICTION, then you should totally love, admire and revere THE SELLOUT.