Ordinary Thunderstorms - Story of a Survivalist

The book “Ordinary Thunderstorms” is William Boyd's tenth book. His former books included the Costa Award- winning novel “Restless”. “Ordinary Thunderstorms”was first published in 2009 in Great Britain by the publishing house Bloomsbury. The main plot is about living in a metropolis and a survivalist. This thriller is described by Craig Caine, TLS Books of the Year, as “Thrilling, hilarious, intricately plotted and terrifically readable”.

Being in London for a job interview, the climatologist Adam Kindred gets coincidentally involved with a pharmaceutical company. Suddenly he looses everything at on single blow . From now on he tries to make a life underground, always in hiding because there might still be the possibility to get caught by a hit man or the police. Struggling to survive in a twenty-first century Metropolis without leaving any traces, he slowly discovers different quarters,classes and lifestyles. All of them summing up to one big picture: London. As you cannot walk unnoticed around a city forever, Adam gets to know more than just one interesting person. The only question left in the end is whether he will ever find his way back to his old life again.

The author, William Boyd, was first of all inspired by London's river, the Thames. He had read an article about the fact that the water-police fishes fifty to sixty bodies a year out of it. It was not only the river but also the corpses and London itself that led him to write “Ordinary Thunderstorms”.The plot is has not been set in any particular year so one can still put oneself in the character's position. The novel itself is written from various points-of-view. Not only from Adam Kindred's but also from the people that play a rather large role in his underground life. Every single one of these characters are non-static and even their characteristics are outlined perfectly clear. There is not one person similar to another in this book. Boyd keeps adding little details to them and the plot itself which makes it very believable.

Reading “Ordinary Thunderstorms” was very interesting. It did not only have a very entangled plot but it was also interesting to see how the characters interact with one another, not knowing anything about its opponent while you already know what they are like. This does not only include how they talk to each other but also how one person takes the other one in with its looks and everything:

“He looked an innocuous man –

tall, in a dark suit with a thick head of grey hair –

Adam found it hard to stir up any emotion against him”

Another interesting point to me is how easy it is to gain anonymity in today’s world but how hard it is to survive anonymously.

“He had thought about using his card to extract more

extra cash from the many cash machines he passed

but he had sensed instinctively that the only way to

avoid detection in a modern twenty-first-century city

was to take no advantage of the services it offered –

telephonic, financial, social, transportational,

welfare-related and so on.[…]

You became invisible or at least transparent...”

Kindred tries really hard to stay undetected but realises at some point that even he has made a mistake. A mistake that could have a serious aftermath. But it is not only him who wanders around London anonymously. There are about 600 people in London that go missing every year. All these little facts Boyd inserts into his novel make it all the more interesting as it comes closer to reality.

Catching are also the descriptions of London. If you had been there once it is very easy to imagine some of the places even though a few of them are only fiction.

The weakness of the novel is to me that there never seems to be a climax in this book. The plot, as interesting as it may be, does not have a point where it gets more exciting. It is more like narration of someone else's life. Also at some points the story drags on a bit. It appears to get lost a little bit in the details.

In summary, I would highly recommend this book to those who do not only have a favour for thrillers and entangled plots but who are also interested in how to live in a metropolis even if this includes the underground-living. As any other book its weaknesses. But they do not outdo the strengths in any way.

Cornell Schreiber