A new novel by Rupert Thomson is always straight to the top of my TBR pile
This one came out about two weeks ago and naturally displaced pretty much everything else
Phillip Notman is a historian, married with a troubled teenage son
On his way home from a conference in Norway, he suffers a massive sensory overload leading to a bout of nausea
This is the spark for a mid life crisis that sees him travelling across Europe in search of his purpose
This may not sound like the most enticing plotline, and I'll be honest, if this was anyone other than Rupert Thomson I might well have put the book back on the shelf when I saw the plot description
However, if Thomson published his shopping list I would probably buy it
This man normally writes the coolest most lucid prose packed with Bon Mots that you'll experience
You're guaranteed a hypnotic read regardless of the storyline
In this one, he's gone all Cormac McCarthy on us and eschewed regular punctuation
Other than question marks, apostrophes and commas, there's none to be seen
Especially full stops
There isn't one in the entire book
As a result, every sentence is its own paragraph
This changes the flow of how you read it in a way I find very difficult to pin down
It works though, and this was an incredible read, leading me into the deepest recesses of Phillips psyche, the lack of punctuation accentuating his broken link with reality as he hops around Europe
When he works out what he thinks his purpose is, this ceases to be a mere travelogue of a middle aged man and turns into something much darker
Phillip is not a likeable character. however his story is compelling due to Thomson's immaculate writing
He is totally self-centred and frustrating- particularly in the way he treats his poor family- but while I could rarely sympathise with him, I needed to know where the story was going next
His breakdown is meticulously documented, like watching a train crash in slow motion
Even his appalling treatment of his family is one more symptom of his increased dislocation
Ironically for a book about dislocation, the sense of location from the various places he visits on his personal odyssey is beautifully done and you can almost smell the various haunts and taste the Ouzo
There isn't much in the way of action, rather action that doesn't happen, but this is a character driven narrative
I loved it
Every word and sentence fragment
Through Phillip's plight we get to see the world anew and so many of its faults
And he might have a genuine point with many of them
How did our reality become what it has?
How can we stay rational beings in an irrational world?
By the end, I might not have agreed with his plans but I understood why he felt the need
And that was quite a disturbing thing to realise
This is in some ways a companion piece with Katherine Carlyle
In both books, the central characters take off on travels to find who they really are
In both books, Thomson is playing stylistic tricks with his prose
And both books feel almost hallucinatory in the details
Available in all good bookshops, grab yourself a copy
