Living with the Truth by Jim Murdoch
Picture, for a moment, Jonathan Payne, probably the last person in the world you would expect to be the lead character in anybody’s novel, a faded old bookseller nearing the end of a wasted life. We meet him alone in his flat in a seaside town in the north of England just waiting on Death to knock at his front door.
But life has something else in store for poor Jonathan. Instead of Death he gets to spend an infuriating two days with the personification of truth who opens Jonathan’s eyes to not only what his life has become but what it might have been. He discovers what he’s missed out on, what other people are really thinking and the true nature of the universe which, as you might imagine, is nothing like he would have ever expected it to be.
By the end of the book, having learned far more about himself than he ever wanted to know, Jonathan discovers that it’s usually never too late to start again. Only sometimes it is.
What Murdoch presents us in Living with the Truth and its follow-up Stranger than Fiction is a mixture of bittersweet comedy, philosophy, science fiction and fantasy; booksellers will struggle to know what shelf to stick this on. He has created in a few deft strokes a completely different take on life as we know it comparable to the writings of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman with a good dollop of Kafka and Dickens mixed in for good luck. Just as Terry Pratchett’s Death gets all the good lines so does Murdoch’s Truth. It’s amazing just how funny telling it as it is can actually be.
This is a character driven work though that focuses on two days in Jonathan’s life but a lot can happen in two days when you have the personification of truth as a companion. The ending is striking and tragic but raises only one really important question: What on earth is Murdoch going to do with his sequel after this ending? Talk about writing yourself into a corner.
The book is listed on Amazon and can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk but the best place to order it is directly from the FV Books site where they have an offer on both books. An eBook version is due out later this year.
Jim-
I love just about any book where the central character is an old bookseller, or where books are at least involved. Thanks for sharing! As I said in my email to you, I’ve added this one to my list. Also, in looking at your other books, I love how all the covers are related. Good job!
~Shannon
LLBR
Thanks for this review, Jim! Sounds very interesting, indeed, and even more exciting that there are two. I really love the cover on this one.
Thank you, Shannon. I intend to use inkblots for all my covers. I’ve always liked where publishers think ahead and plan a collection that looks good sitting on a shelf. I always thought the alternating black-and-white / white-and-black covers that adorned the books of Iain Banks were great, really eye-catching. They did away with them on the last full reprint and they don’t look like anything special now. I’m also big on minimal covers. If you walk into a bookshop there is just too much to look at and then you see a cover with a title, a name and a wee picture on it and you go, “Hello, what have we here?” Job done – the book is in their hand.