Despite having written a couple of books before Felaheen, it is undeniably the Arabeque series that launched Jon courtenay Grimwood's career. Since then he has written three books that occupy the borderlands between genre and mainstream thrillers. Stamping Butterflies, 9Tail Fox and now The End of the World Blues all share two particular characteristics.
Firstly, the books are all concerned with the idea of personal identity and how a person can recreate themselves in a new form in a new setting. For example, in the Arabesque series, Ashraf changes from a violent criminal to become a chief of police and pillar or Ottoman society. similarly, 9Tail Fox sees Bobby Zha dies and is reincarnated in a new body in order for him to find out who killed him and why even his family wound up hating him before he died.
Secondly, all three books feature a main contemporary or near-contemporary thriller plot but also has a sci-fi or fantasy sub-plot interwoven throughout it that initially appears unconnected to the main plot but turns out to be linked to it in some clever way.
The End of the World Blues is therefore the third book in a row to deal with these issues and while some might argue that this formula means Grimwood is well within his comfort zone with this novel, I would argue that this book is undeniably his most accomplished use of the formula and that it shows him stretching his wings as a writer and as a storyteller.
The book tells the story of Kit Nouveau. Once the lead singer in a punk band and a sniper in the British Army, Kit starts the book as the owner of a Tokyo biker bar and as the unofficial husband of an eccentric up and coming ceramics artist. However, when the bar explodes and kills his wife, Kit soon finds himself in the middle of a maelstrom as all the family ties of his old lovers and friends suddenly start pulling him in different directions forcing him to flee to London in order to investigate the apparent suicide of an ex-girlfriend and hopefully stop the Yakuza families of his wife and mistress from killing him.
The End of the World Blues is, like Grimwood's previous books, concerned with the idea that while a competent individual (and Grimwood's characters are always supremely competent) can adapt to a new situation so seamlessly that he can appear to create a completely new identity for himself, that individual can never completely escape the problems and entanglements of the person he once was. Grimwood chooses to portray this in two different ways.
Firstly, despite the book focussing entirely on Kit Nouveau's life and his mental state, he ultimately remains aloof and something of an enigma even at the end of the book. Common to all of Grimwood's novels, this approach to characterisation nicely drives home the author's wider point about our sense of self; namely that as people we are constantly evolving and changing. This constant evolution means that no psychoanalyst's reductionism can ever truly capture who we are and as a result no writer should ever completely nail down who his characters are.
Secondly, Kit's life is, like most peoples' defined by the emotional entanglements he drifts into and out of. However, unlike most people's entanglements, all of Kit's seem to involve powerful and ruthless criminal families from his wife's Yakuza family to an old girlfriend's links to a London Irish crime syndicate to the future rulers of a large chunk of Earth that his companion Lady Neku may or may not be related to. The colourful nature of Kit's emotional entanglements also serve to fuel the plot by giving Kit a series of colourful problems to deal with. This clever piece of plot construction means that despite being a thriller, End of the World Blues is ultimately driven by Kit's failed attempts to re-invent himself and escape his old entanglements.
Indeed, the book's plot is practically flawless. Tightly constructed and expertly paced, it pulls the reader onwards and deeper into the world of Kit Nouveau. It is also worth pointing out that unlike other recent British Sci-fi thriller writers, Grimwood can do action scenes incredibly well, he also does mood. Stylistically, the book is a realistic and contemporary spin on the usually heavily stylised Noir genre that seems to perfectly convey the depressed and yet calm mental state of Grimwood's central character. He also cleverly uses the sci-fi subplot involving Lady Neku's family in the future as a kind of stylistic foil against whose vibrant colours and outlandish setting the grim reality of Kit Nouveau's life leaps beautifully into focus.
What is more impressive is that the book doesn't stop there. Despite boasting an engaging and complex plot, subtle and intelligent characterisation and more sub-text than you can shake a stick at (if you can indeed shake a stick at sub-text... sounds a bit like laughing at cheese), End of the World Blues is full of little details and ideas that combine to give the book a real sense of intellectual gravitas. For example, there's the obsession with cats; "Kit" may be short for kitten and "Neku" is a japanese portemanteau word combining elements of "meat" and "cat" but there is also the fact that at key moments in the plot a black cat will suddenly appear. This seems almost like a literary in-joke aimed at Grimwood's fans as it is reminiscent of the foxes from the Arabesque series and 9Tail Fox. Much like the character of Kit himself, these little subtexts hint at there being something more going on here that isn't obvious upon first reading. Maybe Grimwood is extending his point about personal identity from characters to the character of his own books, or maybe it is just a little joke. Either way, it makes a complex and intelligent book seem all the more challenging.
However, despite the book's clear successes, there are a couple of minor problems. Firstly, there's the sensation that we've been here before. Admittedly, the in-jokes make this impression even worse but there's a real sense in which this book is going over ground that has already been covered by the author; the protean nature of the central character, the obsession with identity, the interweaving of mundane and fantastical plot-strands, the blending of thriller with other genres are all going to be familiar to anyone who has read any of Grimwood's other recent novels. This is undeniably the most well-written and accomplished instantiation of the formula but a formula it is nonetheless. This is particularly bothersome seeing as there are places where the formula is clearly holding Girmwood back.
The sections dealing with Lady Neku's family in the distant future are generally quite short but their presence here seems frankly unnecessary given the jarring effect their presence can occasionally have on the flow of the far stronger main plot. Indeed, these sections seem to be included either as a stylistic flourish to bring the tone of the main plot into focus or they serve as a sub-textual flourish designed to bring home the fact that the book is all about Kit Nouveau's sense of self by making us think about whether Neku's family are her inventing a past for herself or her trying to create a new future away from her past. Either way, the future sections lack the weight and quality of plot and characterisation to make them interesting in their own right and as flourishes they are overly long and distracting. Indeed, upon reading this book, one can't help wonder whether Grimwood is trying to abandon genre altogether as if you were to remove the future sections entirely you would be left with a beautifully and intelligently written mainstream thriller.
A quality read from beginning to end, The End of the World Blues is undeniably Jon Courtenay Grimwood's best book to date. It shows a writer who is not only an adept stylist and storyteller but who also has interesting things to say of a more philosophical nature. I would be astonished if this book didn't make the Arthur C. Clarke award short-list and if the US release is well handled, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it make an appearance at next year's Hugo's. This is not only a great book, it also suggests that the writer is capable of even bigger and brighter things.
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