Review Ordinary Thunderstorms

             Review: Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd.

Imagine you walk in a room and what you find is a man, you just had dinner with, with a knife in his back. Out of an reflex you pull the knife out. Problem: Police finds a stabbed guy and on the knife are your fingerprints. What do you do? Surrender to the police and hope that you can prove your innocence. Run away and hide?

Run away and hide!

That is what Adam Kindred does in the novel “Ordinary Thunderstorms” by William Boyd.

Adam Kindred is a climatologist, who is in London for a job interview. He used to live in the USA but a sexual affair with student ruined his marriage and career. During a dinner in restaurant Adam meets the immunologist Philip Wang. Wang works for the pharmaceutical company “Calenture Deutz”. After Wang has left the restaurant Adam notices that Wang forgot his notes on the table. He takes the documents and goes to Wang’s to give them to him. As he steps into the apartment he finds Wang stabbed with a knife and dying on the floor. Adam pulls the knife out of Wang and has now the problem that his fingerprints are on that knife. 

This little decision is the biggest cut in Adam Kindred’s life. Nothing is like before. Everything changes, even his identity.

The first chapter begins with the sentence: “Let us start with the river - all things begin with the river and we shall probably end there, no doubt – but let’s wait and see how we go.”

The river is important for the book. While Adam is homeless he “lives” near it. In addition Rita Nashe (Adam’s love) lives on a houseboat, which obviously is in the river.

But the river is also symbol. Heraklit , an ancient Greek philosopher, well known for his sentence that describes his philosophy “panta rei”, everything flows, says: “You are not able go two times in the same river.” The water that flows in the river changes every second because it flows. That means everything is changing, all the time.

Life can change from one second to an other and this what happens to Adam Kindred.  Later in the book he hunts a seagull for surviving and he adopts the identity of Primo Belem.

“Ordinary Thunderstorms” takes place in London.  A metropolis. A big city like London gives an author many possibilities, which Boyd uses. Adam experiences different social classes. He becomes a member of the church of John Christ. These are things that just possible in a city like London. The city itself is Symbol for life. With all it’s beauty and ugliness.

An other major point of the novel is the anonymity and the question of identity. Is it a good thing that people can become complete “invisible”? In Adam’s case, of course. But think of a society where everyone could just disappear. With anonymity goes the loss of individuality along. So in my view Boyd also criticises the construct metropolis.  

The novel has many characters, in my view too many, that is why they seemed superficial to me. I think the reason for that is the way how Boyd describes them. I could not built a connection to them.

However I think “ordinary thunderstorms” is a good and interesting book, which encourages one to think.

General Information to the author:

William Boyd was born on the 7^th of March 1952 in Accra (Ghana). His parents were Scottish and so is he. Boyd spent most of his early childhood in Ghana and Nigeria. He visited three different universities, amongst others the Oxford University. William Boyd also attended the Nigerian-Biafran War as a teenager. Boyd is a novelist and screenwriter, his most well known novel is “A good man in Africa” which is an ironic satire on the situation of African countries after the period of colonialism. By now he lives in London. “Ordinary Thunderstorms” was published in 2009.

Max Schwenn