Ordinary Thunderstorms Book

Good Reads now makes recommendations, amazon makes recommendations, my friends here guide my impulses of what to put on my wishlist, I have a shelf of unread books that is quietly groaning under the weight of past purchases, and yet, and yet.....
Certain elements come together: I've just sold two books - never mind that, in the past weeks, five have come in for the two going out - it's November and I'm feeling end-of-the-yearish, days-drawing-in-ish, and even if I do buy a lot of my books online, I would never want to forgo the pleasure of going into a bookshop, and, as it happens, the place where I give English classes on a Wednesday morning boasts a 19th century barn that was, in its time, a home, a post office, a local lending library, and is now a lovely little bookshop:


Does this happen to you? You buy a book (OK, three) online, but then it takes three, four days, a week maybe for them to reach you. Yes, there is that wonderful moment when you open the package and feel the heft of the pages and imagine the joy they will bring you. But somehow the mood has passed slightly: they go onto the TBR shelf, and wait. Patiently. Maybe months, maybe years. But when you go into a bookshop and just pick up something on a whim; it's the only thing in the shop that really draws your eye, it's the very thing you need at this particular moment and you take it home and start reading straight away - that is sheer joy.

That's how Ordinary Thunderstorms came to me. The right thing at the right time. After one real heavyweight, with two non-fiction on the go, I needed something fast and furious that at the same time would not make me feel guilty for totally wasting my time. Mr Boyd's thriller fits the bill as no other could. It's perfectly calibrated to wind up the tension at the exact moment where momentum slows, it is satisfyingly familiar and yet surprising at one and the same time, the puzzle is solved in roughly the form that you would have hoped for, but the detail is ultra-modern, using internet forums and suspicion of insider trading to push the plot to its conclusion. And Mr Boyd gives little knowing nods to the reader, and uses words that pull you up for a moment - borborygmus? - and is playful, he's obviously having fun writing this. There is the odd slight implausibility, but utterly forgivable in view of the pleasure afforded. Mr Boyd manages to fulfill all the expectations you have of a thriller in an admirably original way. Ian McEwan, eat your heart out.