Snapshots of a strong and silent type

John Self

John Self is The Critic’s lead fiction critic. He lives in Belfast A WEEK IS A LONG TIME IN POLITICS, but a decade is a blink of the eye in literature. In 2016, the British novelist David Szalay (pronounced Zoll-OY, more or less) had a breakthrough hit with his Booker-shortlisted novel All That Man Is. Szalay had always been a protean writer — his previous books were a satire, a romance and a thriller — but All That Man Is showed new range with its thematically linked scenes of masculinity at different ages, via different characters. So it’s a surprise that his first novel in nine years is, in one sense, more of the same: masculinity at different ages, but this time using the same character throughout. Flesh, as the title suggests,…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025

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