Tournament of Books First round Summary

Link: The Morning News Tournament of Books.

Well, I came out of round one with a respectable six of eight correct picks. Here are the matchups in round two, starting next week:

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, v. Room, by Emma Donoghue
Matt Dellinger, judge
Matt Dellinger is the author of a book about America's national transportation infrastructure; his links to contemporary fiction are not quite clear to me. I'm interested if my knee-jerk stereotype of him as a clear-headed rational thinker will bias him towards Franzen's realistic novel of society and manners, and against Donoghue's parlor-creepiness. Another part of me thinks that Room's reportedly week second half will doom it against the furious and constantly unrelenting onslaught of Franzen's literary chops, regardless of the judge. You're good, Room, but Freedom has gravitas. Winner: Freedom

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson v. A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
Elif Bautman, judge
Ms. Bautman wrote a book about Russian Literature; she lives in Istanbul, where she reports for the New Yorker. Her international background makes this matchup hard to call. My instincts put Goon Squad, with its compassion for character, originality of ideas and complexity of execution in a far higher league than Finkler. Finkler was okay, but tended toward caricature, and rarely gave insights into its theme - Jewish Identity - instead re-hashing debates that have been going on for centuries. My head says Goon Squad in a walk, but this could be the upset of the round. Winner: Goon Squad

Nox, by Ann Carson v. Next, by James Hynes
John Williams, Judge
Nox beat Lords of Misrule in the first round; this upset people who saw it more as an artifact than a narrative, though its emotional impact is great enough for the right reader that it can upset any book in its path. Next, which I read last week, I found to be of enormous emotional impact at the time, but that impact is fading a bit, although from a novelist's standpoint, its structure and themes are close to perfect. The judge is an old-school book blogger from The Second Pass, so I sense him wishing to restore order to this bracket, and Next's old-fashioned goodness is the perfect book to do that. Winner: Next

Model Home, by Eric Puchner v. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
Kate Ortega, judge
Model Home was the other upset winner of this bracket, powering past the heavily favored (and apparently over-rated) Gary Shteyngart. Aimee Bender squeaked out a victory in a tepid first-round matchup. Both are gimmicky, white-bread melodramas set in SoCal suburbs, and the judge is an editor for the Wall Street Journal. I have no idea how this one will turn out, but my judge-meter says Ortega will take Bender's food-tasting as gateway to adult emotional relationship trick to her heart more than she will than the shenanigans of a bunch of hard-luck west-coasters in Reagan's 80's. Winner: Lemon Cake.