Black Bag Review: Luke Kennard Reads His Booker-Shortlisted Campus Comedy

Luke Kennard's Booker-shortlisted campus comedy Black Bag runs 9 hours 12 minutes as an audiobook, and Kennard reads it himself. The publisher is John Murray. That pairing — author as narrator of a novel about an actor hired to stay silent — is the kind of joke the book itself would not dare invent.

What is the story?

The unnamed narrator is an out-of-work actor in London. His last job ended three months ago. He is behind on his rent. He has, in his own words, "measured out my life in coffees I cannot technically afford." Then he finds an advert: "Male actor required for psychological enquiry. Non-speaking but discretion and devotion to restrictive performance requirements obligatory."

The job places him at a university, working under a psychology professor named Dr Blend. His task: strip to his underpants and zip himself into a black leather bag fitted with two eyeholes and holes for his feet. He then sits silently during seminars while students contemplate his presence.

Where did the idea come from?

Kennard's premise is not free invention. It draws on a 1967 social experiment at Oregon State University, in which a student attended classes inside a black bag. The test asked whether other students would grow attached to his presence. The novel also nods to Yoko Ono's 1964 conceptual artwork Bag Piece, for which gallery-goers were invited to climb inside a large black bag.

Kennard has form with sources like these: a real experiment about human attachment becomes a comedy about an actor paid to be an object. The borrowing is documented. What the novel does with it is the question.

Does the audiobook work?

Kennard, as reader, mines the surreal conceit for laughs. The protagonist does battle with revolving doors. He tries to pay for coffee using a card taped to the inside of the bag at chest height. The review credits Kennard's delivery with the same qualities as his prose: "a master of comic timing and a mordant bon mot."

The critic's caveat — and it is the review's most pointed observation — is that comedy is the surface, not the substance. Beneath Black Bag's "winningly oddball exterior," the review finds "more sober reflections on human relationships and what it is to be a man." Whether those reflections land as sharply as the gags is left for the listener to judge.

What else is worth a listen?

Two further audiobooks accompany the review:

• Battle Axe: A Memoir — Margaret Hodge, William Collins, 14hr 43min. The veteran Labour politician narrates 50 years in frontline politics: her early career as leader of Islington council, her years as an MP under the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown premierships, and her recent role as the UK's anti-corruption champion. At nearly 15 hours, it demands commitment the blurb alone cannot guarantee.
• I Shoot Rock Stars — Tim Pope, Wildfire, 10hr 6min. Pope, a music video director, recalls the time he dressed Freddie Mercury as a "giant Mediterranean prawn" and filmed the Cure performing inside a wardrobe. Read by the author.

What does Black Bag change for the listener? A Booker-shortlisted novel, read by its author, that treats silence as a job description — nine hours to decide whether the bag contains a comedy or a diagnosis.