Service95 Recommends is the home of the books we love and reviews from our contributors. Flesh by David Szalay asks what it is that makes life worth living?
What We Say: “We first meet 15-year-old István as an isolated and awkward teenager. By the end of this spare and unsettling novel, he is back where he started, as an isolated and melancholy 60-year-old man. As we follow him through the housing estates of Hungary to the battlefields of Iraq and to the pinnacle of London high society, we get a sense less of a man following his destiny, and more of someone watching his own life unfold. Throughout this episodic novel, the prose is contained, the dialogue is restrained, and yet tension looms on every page. It’s like nothing I’ve read before.” – Maria Padget
What They Say: “With exquisite control and precision and insight, David Szalay renders lost men that you cannot forget.” – Rachel Kushner
Available on Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble
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Maria Padget is Book Club Director at Service95
