Portrait of an Ordinary Man

This deceptively simple novel explores how much of love, or life, is ever skin-deep

- By MADHULIKA LIDDLE

Nearing the end of David Szalay's Booker-shortlisted novel Flesh, its protagonist István recalls his long-ago adolescence, when the bodily changes he was going through left him " ... afraid and disgusted. And all that burgeoning physicality is held within yourself as a sort of secret, even as it is also the actual surface you present to the world, so that you're left absurdly exposed, unsure whether the world knows everything about you or nothing, because you have no way of knowing whether these experiences that you're having are universal or entirely specific to you.

This is an unusual passage for Flesh. For one, in a book that consists largely of short, precise sentences and often monosyllabic dialogue, it is exceptionally long. Secondly, it is unusually introspective. The bulk of this book is a straightforward story, following István's life from a teenager to later middle age. There is little time or energy spent on philosophies of life, reflections on existence and human nature, and other weighty matters.

The story is one that is echoed in other forms, by other writers. Not quite a 'whole-life' novel a la Jude the Obscure, it yet takes on the ambitious task of delineating most of a life. We meet István for the first time when, as a 15-year-old in Hungary, he is coming to terms with his own sexuality. From that point on,