Book Review

Book Review

William Boyd - Ordinary Thunderstorms

The novel Ordinary Thunderstorms, written by William Boyd, in the year 2009.

It's story is about Adam, a climatologist, who had a sexual indescretion, which ruined his career and his marriage, is in London for a job interview, at the beginning of the story.

While he's dining alone, he gets into a conversation with Philip Wang, an immunologist who accidently leaves a bunch of paper in the restaurant.

Adam attempts to return them, but he finds his new acquaintance killed, with a knife in his chest.

Adam removes the knife, ensuring that there are fingerprints on the knife as well as on Wang's body.

He is then pursued by Wang's killer, and shortly after also by the police.

After escaping, he settles under the Chelsea bridge, eating seagulls for dinner, and spending the night with other homeless people.

After the first escape, and finding a hiding place, things get really exciting. When Adam has evaded the biggest danger, he makes himself a new identity, and manages to get two new homes, that are at least small improvements compared to the Chelsea Bridge.

First, he moves into a creepy and dangerous housing estate, where he gets to know a prostitute, called Mhouse.

He also gets a second identity, when he takes over the identity of a dead drugdealer, and calls himself Primo Belem.

All the time, when he tries to find out, why Wang has been killed, and what is so important, that they want to kill him too.

It leads Adam to the darkest secrets of the pharmaceutical industry, which has developed a medicine against Asthma, which has been tested on several kids.

This is a novel about the fragility of identity, and the anonymity in a metropolis, packed up in a intersting story of a criminal pharmaceutic industry and a seek and hide with an understanable main character.

William Boyd gives a very detailed look on every part London, from „the Shaft“, a slum on the southern side of the Thames river, to the noble boardrooms.

Boyd gives you a look, to see how easy it is to „vanish“ from a metropolis such as London.

The only thing you have to do, as mentioned in the book is :

„No cheques, no bills, no references, no mobile phone calls – only payphones – no credit cards, only cash – nothing.“

While Adam is in the underground, there is a fast-paced story around him, for example he is hunted by a merciless assassin, who works for Ingram Fryzer, the head of the „Zembla 4“ developing comany, Calenture-Deutz.

This leads to the most impressive quality of the novel, besides the clear and detailed description of the metropolitan anonymity, which is the way, how William Boyd goes through a group of differenc characters.

That is, how Boyd allows the reader, to experience the story from different views.

First we have Adam, but we also see the whole development of the story through Jonjo's ( Ingram Fryzers assassin), a young policewoman's and Fryzer's eyes.

As Boyd says in an interview, the book is mostly made to show the special sides of London, and the diversity of life in a metropolis, and the story about the „Zembla 4“ is only a intersting subplot.

I think that Boyd wanted to have the reader experience more then just one view of London and the different places there.

In my opinion, the book is well written, and the best qualities of the book are the good description of the city of London, and also how you can go underground and vanish from the people who search you, like here the police and Jonjo.

Furthermore, it has a lot of different places and characters, it's not hold into one society class, but you meet characters of every social class.

Its surprising, how well Boyd can describe citylife, also in parts of the city which he is not familiar with, because I think, it is very difficult, to give a realistic image of the slums in London, or the inner life of a rich company like Calenture Deutz, without having been part of it !

I nevertheless think, it's not the most interesting book, because it's repeating itself in the middle part of the book, when Adam finds out more things about „Zembla 4“.

Also, in many ways, it seems not fully realistic, what Adam does, for example, that he does not directly go to the police, when he first escaped Jonjo and the police.

After he escaped, he should have gone there, and explain everything, because the police is not as evil and stupid as it seems to be in the book, in my opinion.

But the story is, as mentioned, not the most important part of Boyd's novel, but the great image of life in a metroplis, and becoming anonymous in a few hours.

Johannes van der Vegt