Things tend to happen to István. The 15-year-old protagonist of Booker-nominated David Szalay’s fifth novel, Flesh, has a habit of becoming embroiled in dramatic events well beyond his control or understanding. Within a few pages of this sure-footed, fast-moving novel, Hungarian schoolboy István is enticed into a sparky sexual relationship with a saucy older neighbour.
He surrenders – initially reluctantly – to the 42-year-old’s appeals, imagines he’s in love, then gets caught up in a violent struggle with the neighbour’s husband which leads to a murder charge. He neither initiated the affair nor deliberately killed the victim but he doesn’t have much to say in his own defence, so it’s a confused shrug and off to a young offenders’ institution for three years. Fifty pages in, he’s out of the institution, and ready to have life happen to him again.
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And so it goes. The young István doesn’t have many ambitions for himself and rarely makes plans. When he’s spurned by the object of his erotic fascination he falls into a funk, takes a look around and decides, off the cuff, to join the army. He’s heard talk of free food and board. He’s stationed in Kuwait during the Iraq war and emerges from his five-year stint a reluctant war hero. He still doesn’t have a clue what he’ll do next.
Though he lives a life of lazy passivity, punctuated with endless cigarette breaks – smoking is one of the few things he does with enthusiasm – István does decide on one change: a move to London. After an act of kindness towards a well-heeled local, István begins to make connections and is offered opportunities to rise up the social ladder until he’s mixing with London’s rich and powerful.
It’s when his place among the upper societal echelons is threatened that the novel’s big questions really raise their head. Can aspiration outrun fate? How do we choose the people in our lives? What makes life worth living?
