Black Bag by Luke Kennard audiobook review, brilliant Booker-shortlisted campus comedy

The author reveals his mastery of comic timing in his narration of this novel about a cash-strapped actor paid to live inside a black leather bag

T he unnamed narrator of Luke Kennard’s novel is an out-of-work actor living in London. His last job was three months ago, he is behind with his rent and has “measured out my life in coffees I cannot technically afford”. So when he comes across an advert, “Male actor required for psychological enquiry. Non-speaking but discretion and devotion to restrictive performance requirements obligatory”, he offers his services.

The job, he discovers, is at a university working under a psychology professor named Dr Blend. There he must strip to his underpants and zip himself into a black leather bag, in which there are two eyeholes and further holes for his feet. The actor is expected to sit silently in the bag during seminars while students contemplate his presence.

The inspiration for Kennard’s Booker-shortlisted campus comedy is a 1967 social experiment, conducted at Oregon State University, where a student attended classes inside a black bag in a test to see whether other students would grow attached to his presence. It also nods to Yoko Ono’s 1964 conceptual artwork Bag Piece, in which gallery-goers were asked to climb inside a large black bag.

Kennard, who is the reader, mines this surreal conceit for laughs as the protagonist does battle with revolving doors and tries to pay for coffee using a card taped to the inside of the bag at chest height. As with his prose, the author’s delivery reveals him as a master of comic timing and a mordant bon mot . Yet beneath Black Bag’s winningly oddball exterior are more sober reflections on human relationships and what it is to be a man.

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