HUNCHBACK - A Disastrous book that made to booker longlist , thank God it didn't win...

Respect where it’s due: representation matters. And this book does offer that a bit but it also seems more inclined towards shocking the reader than telling an important or moving story. It’s not that it breaks the rules or anything; I’m just genuinely not sure how it made it to the Booker longlist.

What is the goal of the Booker longlist? literary merit, or just a representation ( even if it does not hold merit) ? With all due respect, the book does not deserve the spot.

Hunchback has no story. Literally, no story to speak of. The protagonist suffers from a muscle disorder, lives in a care home, and tweets anonymously. She mentions her struggles, and I have no insensitivity towards them but those are tangled up with a flood of (mostly bizarre) fantasies that make the book feel weird. And I don’t mean weird in a Kafka or Murakami way. I mean weird for the sake of discomfort. It's too graphic & that seems to be the only goal. Not awareness, Not insight. Just discomfort. I was genuinely pissed.

It’s just 95 pages, and I still wanted to DNF it because of the nonsense packed into some of them. Definitely not the kind of quality readers expect from a Booker longlist title.

The only good thing I took away was a renewed appreciation for not taking an abled body for granted. The struggles of the differently abled for even the smallest things are real and eye opening.

But aside from that, the book was utterly ridiculous and I do not recommend it.

#hunchback #bookerlonglist #bookishopinion #weirdbooks #bookerlonglist2025

[ hunchback, booker longlist 2025, Saou Ichikawa ]