Ordinary Thunderstorms

Written by William Boyd ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Published by     (7 Sept. 2009) Genre Contemporary Fiction. Literary Fiction Pages 420 ASIN B002RZZIXK ISBN-10 1408802856 ISBN-13 978-1408802854

The blurb:

Ordinary Thunderstorms

What is the devastating effect on your life when, through no fault of your own, you lose everything - home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone - and you can never get them back? This is what happens to a young man called Adam Kindred, one May evening in Chelsea, London, when a freakish series of malign accidents and a split-second decision turns his life upside down for ever.

The police are searching for him. There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in the huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down - underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing that throng the lowest level of London's population as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he encounters all manner of London's denizens - aristocrats, prostitutes, priests and policewomen amongst them - and version after new version of himself.

William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the scandal of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

Contemporary Fiction    Literary Fiction   

My thoughts:

This is the first time I have read anything by William Boyd. The member who proposed this book is a great fan of Boyd's work, and indeed the blurb is quite intriguing.

This book took me out of my comfort zone. I liked this story, although the writing style did not appeal to me overly.

The story relies on the naivety of Adam Kindred not going to the police immediately about Philip Wang’s murder and then digging himself into bigger and bigger holes.

The timeline felt believable and the characters were well-drawn. I particularly liked Mhouse and got a sense of someone living hand-to-mouth, under the radar as best she could, providing for her son (although I worried she was going to kill him with the cocktail of drugs she was regularly feeding him), and being caught up with the likes of Mohammed & Mr Quality which was dragging her down. However, there is something good about Mhouse too. Her connection to the Church of John Christ where they feed the starving and accept everyone who walks through the door without question, suggests she has a caring side. It seemed odd that Mhouse would rob Adam Kindred and then direct him to her church, but perhaps that is the behaviour of someone desperate and under the wrong influences fighting her natural inclination to help.

I was surprised when Adam Kindred could so easily resort to murder to dispose of his blackmailer by throwing him off Chelsea Bridge, and letting the tide carry him to his death. Kindred was obviously backed so far into a corner that he had no other way out.

Kindred does this after disposing of his friend Vladimir’s body following a drug overdose. It felt as though Kindred was finding he was remorselessly able to things he would never even have contemplated previously. Before his death, Vladimir had assumed the identity of Primo Belem, which Adam then adopts, along with Vladimir's flat and new job as a porter. This job allows him to move around the hospital unnoticed, and uncover the motive for silencing Dr Wang.

The Church of John Christ is an odd one too. I wasn’t sure if it was a place where the vulnerable were indoctrinated, dressed up as a charity soup kitchen, or whether there was some financial scam going on in the background.

When Mhouse's son Ly-on was in the children’s home run by the Church of John Christ, the idea that anyone could take a child out for a day for a payment appalled me. While the organisation would know 'John 1603', they had no idea who he really was or his connection to Ly-on beyond being a friend of Ly-on’s mother.

I felt the ending left us guessing as to what might happen next as there are lots of threads not neatly tied off, which I rather enjoyed.

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