‘…life can seem highly ordered
and highly chaotic all at the same time.’
This is such a touching, captivating story with a wonderful narrative voice
in Alex. What a marvellous debut novel – it’s funny, brave, sad and original. Gavin
Extence doesn’t shy away from handling sensitive, difficult subjects and he
does it thoughtfully, with honesty and humour.
The opening is set up to make us wonder at what has gone before, because we
meet seventeen-year-old Alex on his way back into the UK, being stopped at
Dover by a customs officer who finds some interesting items in Alex’s car,
namely 113 grams of marijuana and the ashes of his closest friend, Mr Peterson.
Alex then takes us back, recounting the significant and often highly unusual
events of his life to date, ultimately looping nicely back at the end of the
novel to how he came to be in his present unusual situation. This structure,
the bookending of the novel with the present day, and the past sandwiched
inbetween, makes the read into a pleasing whole.
Alex has never known his father, and his mother has a somewhat unorthodox
career as a clairvoyant, running a shop selling all manner of fortune telling
type goods and offering her fortune telling services there. As Alex relates his
past, we discover that he suffered an injury in a bizarre accident – struck on
the head by a meteorite after it hit his home several years earlier. He has to
learn to live with the medical after-effects of this, suffering seizures, and
the occurrence also prompts an interest in neurology.
We learn of the cruelty of school bullies singling out Alex for all his
differences, and we witness the unlikely yet firm friendship that is formed between
Alex and lonely, widowed Vietnam veteran Isaac Peterson, leading to them
sharing their love of books; reading has helped Alex in the past, he tells us
that when he was physically restricted he could at least allow his brain to
explore; there are several literary references such as to Catch 22, but once he meets Mr Peterson, it is primarily Kurt
Vonnegut’s novels that are discussed (I haven’t read them, and it didn’t affect
my enjoyment, but if you are acquainted with them and/or like them, it will
probably increase yours). Their companionship is at the core of the novel, and
the bond that grows between them is charming and through it Alex learns that ‘what
you think you know about a person is only a fraction of the story.’ They
were both lonely in their own ways before they got to know one another, and
they each bring a great deal of enjoyment into the life of the other. The
journey the two of them embark on is very brave and moving, but you must
discover the details of this yourself by reading the book.
Alex has a keen grasp of scientific matters and is very intelligent and
really thinks things through, making informed decisions, however sometimes he
seems naïve and inexperienced too, and then we remember that he is a teenaged
boy, and that despite his maturity and the wisdom he shows, he is still
learning about the world and about people. I liked the friendship between Alex
and Ellie, and some of the dialogue is really witty and pitch perfect for the
characters involved. Another use of language I loved was the description of the
‘death
rattles’ of the school bus; ‘it would wheeze and shudder like a giant
asthmatic cyborg.’
This is such an involving, enjoyable tale, with a likeable, distinctive
young man as the hero. Once I was drawn into the story, I was reluctant to stop
reading until I had heard Alex’s entire tale. It’s one of those engaging books
that you don’t want to end, and where the narrator is utterly convincing;
rather than feeling as though I was reading the author’s words through Alex, I
felt I was reading Alex’s story – as a character he became very real. This book
will have you thinking about life and death, about luck and fate, and it
reminded me of the enjoyment of reading.
I’ll leave the last word to Alex; ‘I think that telling a story is a way of
trying to make life’s complexity more comprehensible. It’s a way of trying to
separate order from chaos, patterns from pandemonium.’
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
You can find out about @ThingsAlexKnows on twitter.
