Number 22 - The Winter Chaser by Christopher Holt

This month's book group book. This was a quick read. There were some good ideas, and in places the prose was actually quite good. The opening section was reasonably amusing.

That's the good part over with.

This book was clearly self published and never given to an editor to tidy it up. The layout of the book is dreadful. the grammar throughout is questionable and occasionally completely wrong. The very first paragraph has missing commas.  This was not a good sign and sadly an accurate one.

The good ideas previously mentioned were filched wholesale from many other much better books and authors. For example - one section that was praised at tonight's book group was where the lead character uses a home made electronic gizmo to silence all the noise making devices on a tube train. Ray Bradbury wrote exactly that story in 1953.  Check out The Murderer from his Golden Apples of the Sun collection.
  http://www.sediment.uni-goettingen.de/staff/dunkl/zips/The-Murderer.pdf

The satire on modern times is clunky and heavy-handed.  Although it starts off reasonably amusing, it becomes wearisome. The whole novel is about as subtle as a sledgehammer in the face. He should either have eschewed the humour for a more disturbing take on the idea (which could have worked well) or learned how to write comedy.  Instead he falls squarely between the two stools.

The prose is mainly bland. I've eaten rich tea biscuits that have more intrinsic excitement than Holt manages to inspire for the most part. Where the prose isn't bland, it's mainly pretty bad and ungrammatical. One or two paragraphs here and there demonstrate that there may be a writing ability hidden somewhere in Holt's head, but it's very well hidden indeed.

The author has no idea how to integrate ideas subtly into the narrative. One of the joys of Inspection (the Malerman novel I just finished prior to starting this book) was the way the world the boys inhabited was introduced so brilliantly in the opening chapters.  It was done through the character's actions and inner voices, steadily and cleverly drip-fed into the narrative. Not so in this book.  "Show don't tell" does not apply in this book.  Christopher Holt tends to introduce ideas with the worst expositional dialogue I think I have encountered in many many years.

As for the storyline - what there is of it is vague, unfocused, lacking any kind of pace and entirely predictable. A couple of half decent action scenes apart, the story just meanders around a badly realised version of a possible future Britain.  The title makes no sense whatsoever, as he never actually goes chasing after the source of the Chyll - a mysterious cold snap which descends randomly because of something or other that Holt doesn't really go into any detail about.

Despite the far flung future setting, despite the science fiction devices scattered through the narrative, despite the fact that this is clearly a genre novel, Christopher Holt takes a leaf from Atwood, Ishiguro and McEwan in proclaiming that he has NOT written a science fiction novel. While this is a minor irritant when Margaret, Kazuo and Ian say it, it's bloody annoying here. The three big name genre refuseniks have talent to spare. Their writing is good enough that we can nod and say "yeah, yeah, whatever" and enjoy their books in any case.

Not only has Christopher Holt written a science fiction novel that borrows from Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, Gene Wolfe and countless other SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS, he's done it without a fraction of the talent of any of the people he's borrowed from.

I assume, from the way the story just kind of grinds to a halt, that this is part of a continuing story. Well I for one will certainly not be following up on it.

One last point.  On the badly formatted back cover, it proudly proclaims the book was shortlisted in the novel category for a literature award. I googled the award in question.  It's a very local prize for very local people. Entrants pay a whole £12 to enter their novel on the shortlist.

It's like me calling myself a prize winning playwright.  I genuinely did once win best original play for a play I wrote and starred in.  The fact that it was at a local one act play festival with only two original plays performed (out of 20 plays overall - all the rest were off the shelf plays) - and the other was by a junior group who couldn't remember their lines...

It also claims to have won another award, but this one is so obscure I can't find it on google.

This book is available through Amazon, but save your time and money.