An affair with your aunt? I never made a beeline for mine

Times

2 days ago

T here are not many Booker-winning novels of this century you would be happy to tip your camera at. I suppose you could try with last year's winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, in which some astronauts do absolutely nothing of interest while circling the Earth at 16,000mph.
If I were Harvey I'd have put a couple of aliens in it, maybe a horrible one hiding in the water tank and another — a friendly one who helps to defeat the one in the water tank — banging on the porthole trying to get in. Or anything, frankly: a line of interesting dialogue, or a compelling character. Perhaps even a story.
And so it has been for most of the century, except for 2014 when the Australian Richard Flanagan took the prize for what was a comparatively conservative work of fiction — and here is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC1/iPlayer) on Sunday nights, the work of Screen Australia and starring Jacob Elordi, who titillated the world in Saltburn and is receiving superlative notices.