A Review of End of the World Blues

It’s very hard to describe what End of the World Blues is about.  There are two stories running parallel to each other – one set in Tokyo and South London in 2018 and the other set on a far future Earth.  The two narratives sort of, kind of, link together, with one character appearing in both.  But really, End of the World Blues is about Kit Nouveau, a man who has always been on the run from his past, a past which is steadily catching up with him.  (Well, of course it is, there’d be no story otherwise).

The other main character is a 15 year old girl who calls herself Lady Neku.  She’s the character who straddles both narratives, a girl from the distant future who finds herself involved with Kit’s problems.  I’d go into more detail, but when it comes to Grimwood I think it’s best to start reading the book with as little information as possible.

You see, what JCM does really well, what makes him a cut above most other SF writers out there, is that he feels no need to tell you, the reader, what the fuck is going on.  He’s anti-exposition, dropping you head first into his world and expecting you to figure it all out for yourself.  This means that for the first fifty pages or so you’re sort of scrabbling around, not entirely sure what actually is going on.  It’s not helped by some clunky writing, such as the first line of page 9:

“Later, Kit Nouveau was to realise that his world unravelled in Tokyo, six months after a cos-play stuffed large amounts of money into a locker that could be opened with a cheap screwdriver, had anyone known what it contained.”

Well, OK, it’s not that clunky, maybe just a bit opaque.  And to be fair to Grimwood, most of the time his writing is slick, so slick your eyes just slide off the page (and not in a bad way).

The fact that I was expected to work things out for myself was a refreshing change of pace.  But as the book went on, as I reached the halfway mark and things only seemed a little clearer, my frustration grew.  Give me some answers, I screamed at Grimwood.  Stop cockteasing me like a stripper who only dresses down to bras and panties (possibly too much information). 

Maybe it was the writing, or maybe it was my superior intelligence, but as each scene continued to tantalise, I realised that things were becoming clearer, that I was starting to see patterns in the murk.  Grimwood had told me what I needed to know, without actually telling me what I needed to know.  Clever writing.  Clever stuff.

But I wasn’t enjoying the book.  Yes, the plotting is really smart.  And yes Grimwood knows how to write a really good sentence.  And yes, I zipped through the last 150 pages where the action picks up and important stuff starts to happen, but I found that I didn’t care that much.  I wanted to finish the book; I wanted to know how it ended, but mostly in a figuring out the puzzle sort of way.

I didn’t care about the characters.  Kit’s OK as a protagonist.  He’s active, he does things, he doesn’t take shit from no-one.  And we find out that he was a sniper in Iraq (something he’s less than proud of).  He should be more interesting, and yet I never found I had a handle on the bloke.  Maybe that’s because Kit himself doesn’t know what he’s about.  He’s a man running a pub in Tokyo, thinking about his ex-girlfriend and married to a woman who favours being strung up by ropes then being touched by her husband (yes, really).  He’s a guy without an identity, looking for a purpose.  And that made it hard for me to connect with Kit.  He never came alive in my mind.

Lady Neku is far more interesting.  Yes, she’s enigmatic and mysterious hiding secrets that she’s not even aware of, but in part she was the main reason I kept reading.  Her story – especially the one in the far distant future – had me wanting more.  And it’s a real shame when she basically disappears in the last 40 or so pages of the novel.

One character that does come alive, and in fact jumps off the page, is Tokyo.  Grimwood obvious love for the culture and the city is more than apparent and gave me a hankering to purchase a ticket and check the place out.  South London is less interesting, though still quite lovely.  In contrast the distant future setting was a bit too much on the weird side for me, too alien.  Which I suppose was the point, a compare and contrast between gritty Japan/London, versus sentient castles and organic technology.

I can see why End of the World Blues was nominated for an Arthur C Clarke.  The plot is beautifully crafted, slowly revealing itself without info-dumping on the reader.  And the writing is sweet, sometimes opaque, but mostly fluid and very readable.

But for all that, End of the World Blues feels like a superbly cooked dinner where the portions are small, barely more than tasters.  Even though Grimwood does bring most of the plot points together by the end, I felt that something was missing, that somehow not everything had been covered.  Both Kit and Lady Neku’s journey, felt unfinished.  And while I know that real life is always about unresolved issues, I do expect more out of my fiction. 

It also occurred to me, that with some minor alterations End of the World Blues could have been a straight novel.  Yes, Lady Neku straddles both stories, but not in a way that feels significant.  Re-write her as a strange Japanese girl looking for a home and you don’t need the sci-fi element at all.