LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Moving from London and Bergen, to Cadiz and Crete before returning to London as it explores a middle-aged man’s visceral existential crisis, Rupert Thomson’s How to Make a Bomb presents an enthralling story of alienation, and feeling fragmented and trapped in a dislocating world: “If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial/Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it”. A world in which, “We were surrounded by things we hadn’t asked for, and didn’t want/Things that upset or damaged us”.
With no full-stops and presented in verse rather than chunked into paragraphs, it’s a brilliant piece of writing that sees historian Philip return from a conference in Bergen with the feeling that “things could come apart quite quickly”. After confessing to his wife that he’s finding reality “unbearable”, he heads to Cadiz, hoping to reconnect with Inés, an academic he struck up a bond with in Bergen.
Realising he “could hardly go back to his old life”, Philip leaves Cadiz for Crete, to stay in the house of a couple he meets in his hotel. On the island, he wrestles with the fact that while he still loves his wife and son, he can’t live his former life, with encounters with villagers and monks also contributing to his fumbling quest to reconfigure himself. And all the while, “loneliness descended on him like a snowfall, delicate and cold”.
As Phillip seems set on a terrible, destructive course of action, How to Make a Bomb hurtles towards a potentially explosive conclusion as it aches with desperation and deluded ideas of finding a solution.
Joanne Owen
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How to Make a Bomb A Novel Synopsis
If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial
Everything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it
Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life.
Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn't end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to bear? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence, or is he utterly self-deluded?
As he tries to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781035908530 |
| Publication date: |
11th April 2024 |
| Author: |
Rupert Thomson |
| Publisher: |
Apollo an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
432 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Rupert Thomson Press Reviews
I devoured [this book] in a single sitting. The sense of dislocation – and location – made it seem like a dream of another life, all of it so lyrical and yet narratively acute. A wonderful achievement. - Jonathan Lethem
Masterfully ambiguous ... How to Make a Bomb raises complicated questions ... but doesn’t neatly wrap them up. Rather, it allows the ideological inquiries at the center of the book to linger and bloom for continued consideration .... How to Make a Bomb provides a powerfully evocative catalyst for thought and feeling -- Matt Bell - New York Times
A riot and very compelling – quite dark, as usual, but funny too … Thomson is an extraordinary writer -- Samantha Morton - Guardian
'A novel that turns a midlife crisis inside out, rewardingly...the result, in Thomson's expert hands, is fast-paced and headlong; the book ends up rewiring the reader's sense of what's banal and what's not. A work about estrangement and solitude that's surprisingly rapid, engaging, light-footed.' - Kirkus Reviews
Author
About Rupert Thomson
Rupert Thomson is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. His memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, won the Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2010. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Guardian, London Review of Books, Granta, and Independent. He lives in London.
Photograph © Robin Farquhar
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