Ordinary Thunderstorms - combination fast-paced thriller and sprawling Charles Dickens-like London saga.
During an interview, William Boyd recounts Charles Dickens both opened and closed Our Mutual Friend with a scene at a river in London. Ah, London, the British author continues, the most cosmopolitan, diversified city in the world, even outflanking New York; London, a city spread out over many hundreds of square miles - and unlike other cities, London’s vitality and uniqueness is as manifest at its edges as it is at its center.
At the time of the novel's publication in 2010, Mr. Boyd had been living in London for over twenty years. He set out to capture the verve and pulsing rhythms of the city, now his city, in Ordinary Thunderstorms, his tenth novel. And, oh, yes, a London river plays a major part in the story from beginning to end.
What a humdinger. Ordinary Thunderstorms features four interlinking narratives with characters ranging from rich and powerful to off the radar homeless. Readers will come away knowing a fair amount about pharmacology, private security companies, police work, housing projects, religious cults, charities, London hospitals, climatology as well as the Thames and Chelsea Bridge.
The person at the eye of Mr. Boyd's fictional storm is one Adam Kindred, a tall, single, 31-year-old British climatologist returned from the US to London to take a job interview for an attractive university post. But, but, but . . . right on page 10 Adam makes a decision that will forever change his life.
A life changer in Chapter One reminds me of the author who made a specialty of such - none other than Georges Simenon with his 100+ existential roman durs (hard novels).
True to form, William Boyd has Adam Kindred enter the flat of Dr. Philip Wang, an immunologist he met at a restaurant that evening, enter to drop off a file the scientist left behind, only to find Wang slumped on his bed with the handle of a knife protruding from his blood soaked sweater. "Pull it out," Wang says. Playing the part of a true gentleman, Adam obliges. Moments later Wang is dead.
Should Adam call the police? Aaaah! What an impossible twist of cruel fate. With Wang's blood on his fingers and under his fingernails and his fingerprints on the knife, what chance does he stand to prove his innocence? Adam doesn't hang around to find out. Nope. He decides to go underground until the police nail the real killer.
For Adam, going underground to maintain his freedom means shedding all traces of his former self. Thus William Boyd has constructed the ideal framework to explore one of his abiding themes - the nature of identity, its fluidity, its mutability. Who would you be without your name and your role within society? How and where would you live without job or money? Why would you continue your struggle for survival? Adam is about to find out, big time.
Similar to many other first-rate literary novelists, Mr. Boyd judges character to be at the epicenter of a cracking story - hardly a surprise for anybody familiar with the author's other novels - A Good Man in Africa, Brazzaville Beach, Restless, to name just three. The author has woven a phalanx of colorful, memorable women, men and children into his narratives. For Ordinary Thunderstorms, in addition to Adam, here are five of my favorites:
Rita Nashe- Young, attractive policewoman who doesn't take any guff from her fellow men officers. Rita fumes against her superiors when they can't provide her with reasonable answers as to why they let a bloke with no ID and two automatic weapons go, a scruffy, snarly bastard obviously up to no good. For the bulk of the novel, Rita works for the river police, the perfect job for her since she herself has been living on a boat on the Themes with ailing old dad.
Lord Ivo Redcastle - "Ivo, for all his silly debaucheries and pretensions, was still an absurdly handsome man. In fact, Ingram thought, there was something faintly creepy about how handsome he was: the thick, longish black hair swept off his forehead to one side, forever flopping down, the straight nose, the full lips, his height, his leanness - he was almost like a cartoon of a handsome man." These reflections are from his brother-in-law Ingram, a CEO of a large pharmaceutical corporation. Ingram's wife talked him into placing Ivo on the Board of Directors for family's sake. Turns out, not such a good idea.
Mhouse - Adam's rescuer and tormentor, Mhouse peddles her wares as a prostitute on the streets and lives in a housing project filled with junkies, thugs and crooks - lowlife at its lowest. But Mhouse can be so, so sweet, especially to her six-year-old lovable son, Lion.
Jonjo - "Everything in his life had been running fairly smoothly - no complaints, thanks - until Kindred arrived. He had survived the Falklands War, Northern Ireland, Gulf War I, Bosnia, Gulf War II, Iraq and Afghanistan - and only when the Kindred element intruded had everything gone arse-over-tit." Does Jonjo, a muscular hunk with a clef chin, sound like the type of gent to upset or have turned against you? A string of players in the novel find out the hard way.
Gaven Thrale - An old graybeard Adam meets at a church offering free meals for anybody willing to listen to its cult message. When Adam says he's homeless due to a series of nervous breakdowns, Gaven doesn't believe him - he knows, like himself, Adam is a well-educated intellectual forced to go underground to escape the law.
Ordinary Thunderstorms is a page-turner, a novel chock-full of twists and surprises, a novel that makes for an exciting read, a thrilling read. Pick up a copy to find out for yourself just how exciting and thrilling.
Novelist par excellence, William Boyd, born 1952
"He felt strange being back, acknowledging the huge changes his life had undergone since he had first camped out there. So much had happened to him: it was as if he were packing years of living into fraught, dense weeks; determinedly racing through a whole life's catalogue of experiences as fast as possible, as if time were running out."
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