It’s one of those books that, once I started reading, I couldn’t put down. And even if I managed to put it down, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was fully immersed.
That said, Flesh breaks many common writing and storytelling rules. For a start, it’s impossible to fully relate to the protagonist István. We rarely glimpse into his inner life. We also never see him explicitly exert any form of agency, except for the final scene, perhaps, in which István has to make a decision that changes the rest of his life. Other than that, his life feels dictated by randomness and impulsive action. He’s a cue ball, being pushed around by the forces of the universe. And if that wasn’t enough, the tone that Szalay uses in Flesh is apathetic, almost boring. The dialogues are short, empty, devoid of depth.
I can see how this might frustrate many readers. Not me, though. I loved every second of it.
Flesh might break many so-called rules. But it does so by design; that is, in a way that serves the story, the themes, the protagonist, the literary world. Yes, it can be difficult to empathize with the protagonist. Yes, the dialogue can seem flat. But that’s the whole point. Underneath Szalay’s simplicity and sparseness hides a lot of depth. The book has an absurdist quality; it reads like a post-modern edition of Camus’ The Stranger.
But what’s Flesh actually about?
In short, the book tells the story of István, who grows up in a Hungarian apartment complex with his mother. He feels lonely. He has trouble making meaningful connections at school. One day, a woman the age of his mother starts seducing him. István, who’s fifteen at this point, feels disgusted by her. Simultaneously, he feels strangely attracted to her.
After some time, the “relationship” breaks off, and István’s life unfolds in myriad ways.
He finds himself committing a crime that could also be interpreted as an accident. Later, he joins the army. He fights in Iraq. Eventually, he moves to London, where, through a series of coincidences, he eventually finds himself as part of the elite socialites.
Each chapter corresponds to a major episode in István’s life, often leaving time gaps of multiple years between chapters. I heard Szalay say in an interview that he wrote the book so that each chapter could stand on its own. Of course, taken together, the chapters result in a larger narrative. But technically, you could read them in a different order, and it would still make sense. They all have their own narrative arc.
The plot is good. I liked it. But what makes Flesh sublime, if you ask me, is the composition. It’s not just what Szalay chooses to tell and how he tells it, but even more so what he chooses not to tell.1
For instance, one of the early chapters is about István’s time in Iraq. We vaguely know that he must be seeing horrible things there. But the chapter itself sets in at the end of his deployment, just before he and his squadron return to Hungary. As so often in Flesh, the storytelling is not about the traumatic event but its aftermath. Which, when you think about it, mirrors how traumatic events actually feel. The incision point of trauma is often singular, yes. But the wounds and scars crisscross through many events to follow.
It’s a prime example of how a storytelling method can reinforce the protagonist’s felt experience and, by extension, the reader’s. In this case, Szalay’s cutting away of key traumatic experiences displays how István (and, let’s be honest, many of us) tend to suppress them. We prefer to shove out of our consciousness what feels uncomfortable. After all, if we began to accept the true horror of some experiences, we wouldn’t be able to keep on living. We simply couldn’t. Besides, we often fail to find the right words to talk about these sorts of experiences — if we even find words in the first place.
This absurd discrepancy between bottled-up hurt and shame, on the one hand, and the inability to share it on the other, is one of the key themes in Flesh. Other stylistic choices further add to this quality of speechlessness. There are one-worded, blunt dialogues, mostly consisting of “yeah”, “sure”, and “okay”. The seemingly flat tone. The snippet-like scenes.
I saw some people interpret these choices as “superficial” or “poorly crafted.” But of course, these choices are precisely how absurdity and alienation can be experienced on the page. This is challenging to achieve, from a literary perspective, and thus an enormous accomplishment. Szalay nails it. He gives shape to the shapelessness of human experience. He manages to display István’s speechlessness at the sight of his own speechlessness.2
Makes you wonder how many more “Istváns” are out there. Makes you wonder if you’re one of them. Or one of your closest friends.
Toward the end, there’s a passage in the book that expresses this whole theme much better than I ever could:
And all that burgeoning physicality is held within yourself as a sort of secret, even as it is also the actual surface that 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.
When you contrast this with a line about István from the first chapter, you get a good feel for why István feels how he feels and does what he does:
He doesn’t know what it’s like for other people.
He only has his own experience.
This is the absurdity of inhabiting a physical body in the modern world: we all make these experiences on sex, emotions, and pain, which we assume others must have as well, but then again, we can never know for certain, because ultimately, we only have our own experience; that’s the only thing we have direct access to, in terms of feeling and sensing.
I can see why people might find the book superficial, flat, or straight-up badly written. This argument will be particularly striking when you take some of the dialogue out of its context. Here’s an example:
“What was that like?”
“It was… okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“How’d you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, it’s all right.”
Undoubtedly, the line Szalay walks between tragedy and ridicule is dangerously thin. However, I think he walks it right. I don’t think these dialogues are flat, nor is the book. It’s precisely because of the seemingly flat and minimalistic packaging, snippet-like scenes, and one-word dialogues that there’s a lot to be discovered underneath the surface. We never get to experience much about István’s inner life, though we occasionally glimpse into his soul.
As long as no one knows about it, it’s like it isn’t really happening. It’s like it exists in the same way that his fantasies exist, as something he’s just imagining.
That’s how it seems to him sometimes.
Ultimately, when I consider what István has been through and that, in spite of these experiences (or rather, because of them), he’s unable to climb out of his pit of “okayness,” I don’t even know what to feel myself. It’s a strange mixture of sadness. And melancholy. And loneliness. Here is a person, shackled to the horror of their experiences yet unable unabilty to retrieve the key to their chains, the key we call language.
So yes, I get that David Szalay’s literary style in Flesh won’t appeal to everyone. But for what it is, for the themes it negotiates, it’s a masterfully crafted book.
1 As a writer, Szalay’s style taught me A LOT on how to select the right material and mood for a scene. Most importantly, I learned that not everything needs to be spelled out. Sometimes, the true impact of a life-changing event is best depicted not by telling the event but by its consequences, the transformed life that follows.
2 It’s fascinating to see how the book’s title was transferred into other languages. In German, for instance, the title is Was nicht gesagt werden kann, meaning That, which cannot be said. It’s a melodramatic title. Too pompous for my taste. However, alongside the original title, Flesh, it really expresses the book’s core.