Reviewed by Rebecca Foster
David Szalay is preoccupied with masculinity and migration, which were his main themes in All That Man Is and Turbulence, respectively. Flesh combines the two topics into a dispassionate yet somehow heart-rending portrait of one man equally ensnared by fate and the consequences of his actions – chiefly his lust.
To start with, the chapters seem to be discrete stories, each set at a different time of István’s life and in a new place. István grows up in Hungary. After being involved in a fatal accident as a teenager, he spends time in a young offender facility and then joins the army. During active military service in Iraq, he sees a comrade killed. After the war, he moves to London, where he works as a bouncer and security guard, and then to a Hertfordshire village to be the driver for a rich couple. He becomes the wife Helen’s lover and ends up as her second husband, working in property development and living in luxury. But his happiness can’t last.
Early close shaves with death left István with trauma that he never truly processes, despite later spells in therapy. This will play out in his life as violence against himself and others – although he also happens to save a couple of lives through his actions. It is, perhaps, a case of arrested development. “It’s like he’s waiting for something else to find him. Or not even that. He isn’t really thinking about the future at all,” Szalay writes. István’s stepson seems to cut to the heart of the matter when he taunts him, “You exemplify a primitive form of masculinity.” The lack of a father or father figure in his life will certainly have had a lasting effect.
István can be a frustrating protagonist in that he appears to be completely out of touch with his emotions: his most common words are “Yeah” and “Okay.” (Readers might applaud when Helen says to him at one point, “Stop being so f—ing evasive”.) His taciturnity and noncommittal attitude seem to rub off on other characters as well. In his Booker Prize acceptance speech, Szalay insisted that literature must take risks. I suspect this is what he was talking about: the risk of detachment and unlikability. The flat affect and sparse style are likely to turn some off, but make the novel addictively readable. Like Sally Rooney, Szalay writes in a way so true to human speech and thought that it feels effortless.
The frank discussion of sexuality is also reminiscent of Rooney’s work. István’s desire has often been forbidden for one reason or another. He is seduced by their neighbour, a middle-aged married woman, when he’s just 15. Although theirs is depicted as a consensual relationship, the law wouldn’t view it as such, and the neighbour is taking advantage at the very least. As a young man, István also lusts after his uncle’s stepdaughter; although she’s not technically related to him, there’s an uncomfortable hint of incest nonetheless. And he and Helen fall for each other while she’s still his employer.
The title could refer to any or all of several things: sexuality, weakness, even mortality itself –think of Hamlet and the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” The passage where István accepts that his son is approaching puberty and newly interested in women’s bodies is a key one. He reflects that it’s at this age that one first realises that the body and the self are not one and the same; the body’s desires put it at odds with what one thinks of as the self. Indeed, István seems to be a stranger to himself: a literal foreignness that he has internalised.
Does István get what he deserves? It was hard for me to accept that Szalay could so cruelly strip everything from his protagonist, yet from Greek tragedy onward this is what literature does: show the individual in thrall to external forces that cannot be resisted. Flesh is painful yet satisfying – in a cathartic way. It evokes Thomas Hardy in its tone and Ernest Hemingway in its style. It also builds on the talent that Szalay showed in his previous works. From All That Man Is, he’s honed the “Ages of Man” format and continued exploring what life is about. Like that and Turbulence, Flesh examines dislocation and life’s sudden changes.
If you missed out when Flesh was published last year, or have been unsure if it’s worth reading, I’d encourage you to give it a try. It would make a good book club selection as well in that there are many issues to ponder and a number of characters who are outwardly unpleasant but with whom we have no choice but to sympathise. It’s a razor-sharp image of masculinity in crisis perfect for Ian McEwan and Edward St Aubyn fans. A book for our times and for all times, and so a deserving Booker Prize winner.
Rebecca Foster is a freelance proofreader, literary critic, and judge of the McKitterick Prize (for debut novelists over 40). Most of her writing can be found on her blog, Bookish Beck.
David Szalay, Flesh (Vintage (Penguin): London, 2026). 978-1529932423, 386 pp., paperback.
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