Welcome to the tenth of my ‘Calendar Chaos’ posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2024 book advent – each cover representing a different period of time – and review them for you!
Closing May is THURSDAY and the book is Suicide Thursday by Will Carver.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: A disenchanted man struggles to get beyond the first chapter of the books he’s writing, and to separate fact from fiction in his own life. His friend’s suicide changes everything … The mind-blowing, heart-rending new thriller from cult bestselling author Will Carver.
Eli Hagin can’t finish anything.
He hates his job, but can’t seem to quit. He doesn’t want to be with his girlfriend, but doesn’t know how end things with her, either. Eli wants to write a novel, but he’s never taken a story beyond the first chapter.
Eli also has trouble separating reality from fiction.
When his best friend kills himself, Eli is motivated, for the first time in his life, to finally end something himself, just as Mike did…
Except sessions with his therapist suggest that Eli’s most recent ‘first chapters’ are not as fictitious as he had intended … and a series of text messages that Mike received before his death point to something much, much darker…
Review: From the blurb and other reviews I really thought this book would be right up my street, but unfortunately it wasn’t for me at all. I absolutely admit that the book is technically well-written and skilfully plotted but the stylistic choices the author has made throughout switched me off the story.
For instance, the timeline jumps all over the place. Each section is clearly labelled with where it falls in relation to the titular ‘Suicide Thursday’, so it wasn’t confusing to follow, but every time I started to engage with the story it skipped on to a different character and time, continually frustrating me.
Similarly, I quite enjoy an unreliable narrator usually, but Eli is so unreliable that you simply can’t believe a single word of the story. And even the chapters that are nominally from other character’s perspectives are actually also filtered through Eli’s narrative voice. By the third time of reading a recount of events that abruptly cut off with ‘that didn’t happen’, or ‘but that’s not how it went’, I literally put the book down and screamed in frustration. Once is forgivable, but I don’t want to read a whole swathe about what didn’t happen… I want to know what DID!
In contrast to the dark and unsettling (but interesting) events of the underlying mystery in the plot, we spend a lot of time living through Eli’s bleak, nihilistic drudge through office life and the marginally wider world of his local pub and shops in painfully boring detail. We dwell lovingly on his disdain for everyone around him – rooted in his self-loathing – and listen to lots of his self-indulgent maundering to his imaginary therapist, as he loops around his main obsessions – Mike’s shocking exit, dumping Jackie, and not being able to finish anything.
I get that it’s all incredibly clever and thought-provoking, but I just found it dreary and repetitive. It does perfectly capture the going-nowhere feelings that might push someone to take their own life, incite others to do so, or ignore a “loved” one’s cry for help (none of these characters seem to even like each other!), but in practice it made for an angsty and irritating read. The underlying mystery is a brilliant hook, but it was lost, buried under the self-obsessed ponderings of an unhappy fantasist.
About the author:
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series. He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his two children. Will’s latest title published by Orenda Books, The Beresford came out in July 2021. His previous title Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, while Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Good Samaritans was book of the year in Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Express.
Website: https://willcarver.co.uk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/will_carver/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillCarverAuthor
X/Twitter: https://x.com/will_carver
