Flesh by David Szalay
Reviewed by Michael Greenstein
The Meaning of Minimalism
At a London art exhibit the Hungarian protagonist of David Szalay’s latest novel, Flesh, asks a woman about the meaning of the paintings, to which she replies: “I think it sort of invites the viewer to investigate it…. To find their own meaning in it.” Her response applies equally to the reader of this minimalist novel who is forced to investigate the meaning of minimalism. For the most part, Szalay’s paragraphs consist of single terse sentences which undergird his fast-paced narrative, as does his clipped dialogue between characters. In his spare prose the novelist peels away layers of meaning, which the reader then fleshes out.
“In his spare prose the novelist peels away layers of meaning, which the reader then fleshes out.”
The novel comes full circle from the opening portrait of lonely, teenaged István in Hungary to his return to his native country as an adult where his mother dies: “After that he lives alone.” But in between that bookended loneliness, he experiences a life filled with sex, cigarettes, soft porn, and serious accidents. He begins an affair with a neighbour who initiates him into the world of sex when her husband is out of town. Monosyllabic dialogue of “yeah” and “okay” distances lovers from their sexual acts and keeps the reader on edge trying to evaluate the protagonist’s relationships. István and the husband scuffle on the landing of the staircase, and the man falls down the stairs to his death. When the police ask why he didn’t call an ambulance, he replies, “I don’t know,” which is echoed by the policeman, “You don’t know?” The chapter ends on this note of uncertainty: “It’s hard to say what his intention was when he did that, when he pushed the man and he fell down the stairs and hit his head on the metal handrail and then lay on the concrete floor of the half-landing, next to his wife’s plants, and didn’t get up.” Leading up to this concluding sentence are a series of staccato sentences that dramatize the event. István has to spend time as a juvenile delinquent.
István’s intentions aren’t always intentional, for he is a kind of anti-hero in limbo, whether interacting with women or with any semblance of a career. Clipped dialogue captures that sense of questionable innocence, as dialogue pours down the page in columns of conversation between discourse and intercourse:
‘Who?’
‘This girl you kissed.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Do you want to?’
He shrugs.
‘What does that mean?’ she asks.
‘It means –’ He shrugs again.
Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco beckon in the margins of absurdist theatrics, as István prepares to serve in Iraq where he witnesses death and suffers from shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder. In a kind of hypnotic refrain, dialogue always questions meaning itself:
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What d’you mean what do I mean?’
‘It’s a weird question,’ she says.
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah.’
After his tour of duty in Iraq, István works in London as a security guard, a bodyguard who fails to guard his own body. The line of questioning follows him everywhere:
‘Tell me about yourself István,’ she says to him one day.
‘About myself?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want to know?’ he asks.
‘Just something about you,’ she says.
‘Karl says you were in the army.’
‘Yes.’
‘How was that?’ she asks.
‘How was that?’
‘It was okay.’
‘It was okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asks.
‘What does it mean?’
In this circular dialogue, what is the meaning of repetition and questioning with Helen Nyman, his London employer with whom he is having an affair?
This dialogue is followed by another with a male friend as they discuss the nature of his affair:
‘What’s she like?’ Claudiu asks him.
‘She’s okay,’ István says.
‘Okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
The meaning of minimalism resides in the flesh of identities and relationships that skirt between surface and substance. The narrator offers one possible meaning: “So to be with any one person feels like an arbitrary thing, and that arbitrary feeling has started to undermine any lingering sense that there might be a particular person that he’s somehow meant to be with.” Arbitrariness is the flesh of the absurd in meandering meaning. As Mr. Nyman describes his wife’s friend’s art: “It was absurd.” On one level, Flesh is an exercise in the Theatre of the Absurd.
After he loses his wife and son in a car accident in England, he returns to Hungary and looks for a dog to fill his loneliness. There is a crowd of children looking at the puppies. “The children are asking him questions and he’s giving them surly monosyllabic answers between pulls on his cigarette.” Although the man in question refers to the seller of puppies, it could as easily refer to any character in the novel. Like the reader, István is never quite sure of the meaning of words and gestures that surround him like monosyllabic smoke. His last affair ends with “Okay,” “Yeah,” “Yeah” – double positives with negative undertones.
Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.
About the Author
David Szalay is the author of Turbulence, London and the South-East, and All That Man Is. He's been awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Born in Canada, he grew up in London and now lives in Vienna. His most recent novel is Flesh.
About the Reviewer
Michael Greenstein is a retired professor of English (Université de Sherbrooke). He is the author of Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish-Canadian Literature and has published widely on Victorian, Canadian, and American-Jewish literature.
Book Details
On Sale: March 11, 2025
Pages: 368
ISBN: 9780771078033
McClelland & Stewart