Book review by Lula Talini

Book review of William Boyd’s “Ordinary thunderstorms“

William Boyd’s latest novel “Ordinary thunderstorms” is a brilliant book, easily read without being undemanding. He manages to create a fiction so enthralling but so close to real life, one could believe that it is happening right now, somewhere out there. His focus on London is well set, because while reading one gets to know so much about this metropolis, that suddenly the plot can not take place anywhere, but only in a city of millions of people and so much restlessness as this capital.

Presenting every character’s life out of its own, but also out of other character’s view, leaves the reader the choice to sympathize with him or not. And since every social class is represented by at least one protagonist it is simple to identify oneself with the book and enter the story, living it while reading.

Out of unpredictable contretemps a thriller emerges, which banishes the reader. The story begins with the young and successful climatologist Adam Kindred, who at the wrong time is in the wrong place. He is then accused of a murder he did not commit.

Escaping from the police and a hit man, who has been appointed because Adam got too much information about a risky new drug, which is supposed to get on the marked, he submerses changing name and personality. Throughout the story he receives sympathy, warmth and love but also violence, betrayal and ambivalence and in order to survive he is sometimes forced into inhumanity.

The idea of the novel initiated when William Boyd came across an article with the incredible information of 50 to 60 dead bodies hauled out of the tames every year. With “Ordinary Thunderstorms” he succeeds in writing an entertaining thriller as well as describing the numerous facets of a contemporary city. I would recommend this book to everybody, interested in a good fiction and absorbing suspense.