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OMO
A mysterious woman riding across Britain is the catalyst that causes tribes of wild cyclists to roam the countryside, gathering numbers and momentum. Many give up their names and memories in search of revenge, transcendence, and the essence of the mysterious force that caused it all. Journalists, detectives, and writers struggle to make sense of the global mania as it escalates out of control.
OMO is a book about chaos, the power of the bicycle, and the value of experience over knowledge.
OMO is a book about chaos, the power of the bicycle, and the value of experience over knowledge.
321 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2018
4 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
J.H.M. Okthos
2 books4 followersI was born in London and now live in Eastern Europe. My interests include cycling and fountain pens. I'm a pisces.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 10, 2018
I’ve just finished reading OMO by Johnny Okthos, just finished as in 2 minutes ago. I was going to leave this review until tomorrow, it is late now. But if I do that the subtle subthread of this amazing piece of fiction will have eluded me.
Running right through, over and under this text is this idea that life is more than we think, that possibilities are more accessible than we think, that there is form and there is content but they are seldom the same thing, that things are never as simple as we think and yet at the same time they are, indeed that we ourselves are more than we think. If all that sounds vague and contradictory then I have got close to describing what happens in this book.
This is a book about cycling in the same way that Star Wars was a film about space. This is a book about cycling in the same way that The Old Man And The Sea is a book about fishing. This is a book about cycling in the same way that Breaking Bad was a series about drugs.
This is a book about cycling but it is also about a lot of other things or maybe just one other thing but I cannot name it with words but deep inside of me I know exactly what it is. This is a book that speaks to the ghost in the machine.
So lets stick to the more prosaic stuff. It is about a group of people who go on a bike ride but as they are riding they realise that it is more than a bike ride but they cannot say what it is or how they know. As they cycle along, other people join them, drawn as if by some invisible force. And along the way other stuff happens. That’s as much as I can say without getting it wrong or missing it completely and putting you off.
After the first short paragraph I was hooked and devoured it ravenously, thankfully it is not a short book. It is an easy read but having said that I had to go back over some parts to make sure I never missed anything. There is one bit about borders that is really profound but the words are so simple you could easily read over it and miss what is happening there.
I found the main characters interesting, well drawn and their transformations totally believable. Well written, engaging, I enjoyed being along for the ride.
Declaration of Interest.
Myself and girlfriend once got on our common old bikes that had no gears and went on a bike ride that lasted 5 months, covered 2200 miles, crosses 4 countries and 3 autumns.
Running right through, over and under this text is this idea that life is more than we think, that possibilities are more accessible than we think, that there is form and there is content but they are seldom the same thing, that things are never as simple as we think and yet at the same time they are, indeed that we ourselves are more than we think. If all that sounds vague and contradictory then I have got close to describing what happens in this book.
This is a book about cycling in the same way that Star Wars was a film about space. This is a book about cycling in the same way that The Old Man And The Sea is a book about fishing. This is a book about cycling in the same way that Breaking Bad was a series about drugs.
This is a book about cycling but it is also about a lot of other things or maybe just one other thing but I cannot name it with words but deep inside of me I know exactly what it is. This is a book that speaks to the ghost in the machine.
So lets stick to the more prosaic stuff. It is about a group of people who go on a bike ride but as they are riding they realise that it is more than a bike ride but they cannot say what it is or how they know. As they cycle along, other people join them, drawn as if by some invisible force. And along the way other stuff happens. That’s as much as I can say without getting it wrong or missing it completely and putting you off.
After the first short paragraph I was hooked and devoured it ravenously, thankfully it is not a short book. It is an easy read but having said that I had to go back over some parts to make sure I never missed anything. There is one bit about borders that is really profound but the words are so simple you could easily read over it and miss what is happening there.
I found the main characters interesting, well drawn and their transformations totally believable. Well written, engaging, I enjoyed being along for the ride.
Declaration of Interest.
Myself and girlfriend once got on our common old bikes that had no gears and went on a bike ride that lasted 5 months, covered 2200 miles, crosses 4 countries and 3 autumns.
April 1, 2018
“I think the things we do make us what we are - so the things we use change us,” (31) says Kelly, the instigator of a bike-ride-cum-epic-adventure in J.H.M Okthos’ novel, OMO. In this book, the bike isn’t just an invention or a mode of transportation or form of exercise, but an experience that transforms how those who ride it understand themselves and the world. The story itself is a taste of what it means to engage with the tools at hand.
The book begins with a crash, a collision of bikes and people. Once they’re all upright and acquainted, one of the bikers, Kelly, invites the four others to join her on a trip to Scotland. Each goes his or her separate way, entranced, reliving the incident. They meet up again in Oxford, ready to give up boring jobs, listless routines, and give in to the unknown - on bike. Their group of three heading north quickly becomes ten, then twenty, then hundreds across the globe, until, when it’s front page news for days, it splinters and explodes as the riders disagree what OMO means. OMO, the shape of a bike with a diamond frame between two wheels, becomes the code word for this movement the bike ride has become. Tightly wrought, the structure of the book also follows the OMO shape, beginning with a slow, churning, gathering of riders, followed by jagged, tumultuous middle parts, and ending with a pensive, but inconclusive, denouement, like a wheel that resists inactivity.
OMO is a splendidly ironic conceit; a complex exploration of simple ideas, a narrative about the inadequacy of language and the animalistic nature of very thoughtful humans. The action never stops, even when the group camps at the end of the day, sharing food, smokes and conversation. There are dramas between factions, witch hunts for those suspects of sabotaging the group to the media and otherwise disrupting its purpose, law enforcers and criminals. There are love triangles and unrequited passions, endearing friendships and grudges never resolved. The ride is not a means to an end; it is the monster-force driving its participants into new realms, new ways of being, sometimes in spite of the riders’ intentions.
OMO is the story behind politics. The reader is not outside the action, doomed to fail the book’s ethic: to understand by DOING. Rather, in a brilliant literary perspective on the place of narrative in a world full of opinions, the reader is most like Craig, the rider first introduced, out to beat his own time on the stretch of London road where the crash occurs. He chooses not to join the group to Scotland, but, more than halfway through the book, he returns, reading about the OMO movement in the news and shaking his head. Craig, like readers, bikes along with the others, but at a distance, on his own.
The book begins with a crash, a collision of bikes and people. Once they’re all upright and acquainted, one of the bikers, Kelly, invites the four others to join her on a trip to Scotland. Each goes his or her separate way, entranced, reliving the incident. They meet up again in Oxford, ready to give up boring jobs, listless routines, and give in to the unknown - on bike. Their group of three heading north quickly becomes ten, then twenty, then hundreds across the globe, until, when it’s front page news for days, it splinters and explodes as the riders disagree what OMO means. OMO, the shape of a bike with a diamond frame between two wheels, becomes the code word for this movement the bike ride has become. Tightly wrought, the structure of the book also follows the OMO shape, beginning with a slow, churning, gathering of riders, followed by jagged, tumultuous middle parts, and ending with a pensive, but inconclusive, denouement, like a wheel that resists inactivity.
OMO is a splendidly ironic conceit; a complex exploration of simple ideas, a narrative about the inadequacy of language and the animalistic nature of very thoughtful humans. The action never stops, even when the group camps at the end of the day, sharing food, smokes and conversation. There are dramas between factions, witch hunts for those suspects of sabotaging the group to the media and otherwise disrupting its purpose, law enforcers and criminals. There are love triangles and unrequited passions, endearing friendships and grudges never resolved. The ride is not a means to an end; it is the monster-force driving its participants into new realms, new ways of being, sometimes in spite of the riders’ intentions.
OMO is the story behind politics. The reader is not outside the action, doomed to fail the book’s ethic: to understand by DOING. Rather, in a brilliant literary perspective on the place of narrative in a world full of opinions, the reader is most like Craig, the rider first introduced, out to beat his own time on the stretch of London road where the crash occurs. He chooses not to join the group to Scotland, but, more than halfway through the book, he returns, reading about the OMO movement in the news and shaking his head. Craig, like readers, bikes along with the others, but at a distance, on his own.
July 14, 2018
5 Stars: The Comradery
Within the first few pages of "OMO" by J.H.M. Okthos, the description of a bike rider riding is detailed in a way to learn more about his life before the collision with other bikers and people kept my interest as if I am learning about a subculture, I was puzzled trying to predict the story of "OMO". "OMO" is the shape of a bicycle but in this book, it's more than that, the story moves like when you start peddling, slow gathering characters like it's gathering speed. Interpersonal relationships and politics pick up the pace of the story; characters are acquainted and invited by a free-spirited rider "Kelly" to ride to Scotland.
Kelly may seem like a free-spirited and straightforward, but as the story unfolds she becomes more complex, during an odd conversational exchange with "feminist" Maike, Kelly drops some knowledge as I pictured in my mind Maike looking at Kelly sideways.
“Are you a feminist?” Kelly said light-heartedly, tilting her head to look at her sideways. “Yes. Very much so.” “You’ve got the bike to thank for that.” Maike laughed. “Really?” she said, unconvinced. “Women wore trousers to ride. It was very controversial.” “That’s quite interesting.” “And when they burned an effigy of a woman, right here in this very city, to protest against them studying at the university, it was an effigy of a woman on a bike,” Kelly continued in a harder tone."
J.H.M. Okthos knows how to shift tones between characters and points out our limits of language when it comes to expressing our thoughts and coming off prickly or overeager to please. The journey to Scotland or the OMO movement picks up others like dirt on a wheel, the comradery, the politics of relationships, engaged my reading beyond thinking about bicycling, I reflected on the good and bad times I had in a group setting and how each person had fitted into the situation.
OMO is about finding where you fit in; it can be a movement or a relationship, many of us struggle to express ourselves we end up being misunderstood creating unnecessary friction in a group. I liked that J.H.M. Okthos brilliantly engages in writing about people with depth and imperfections not just adding characters with no importance, a pleasing change of pace for my summer reading.
Within the first few pages of "OMO" by J.H.M. Okthos, the description of a bike rider riding is detailed in a way to learn more about his life before the collision with other bikers and people kept my interest as if I am learning about a subculture, I was puzzled trying to predict the story of "OMO". "OMO" is the shape of a bicycle but in this book, it's more than that, the story moves like when you start peddling, slow gathering characters like it's gathering speed. Interpersonal relationships and politics pick up the pace of the story; characters are acquainted and invited by a free-spirited rider "Kelly" to ride to Scotland.
Kelly may seem like a free-spirited and straightforward, but as the story unfolds she becomes more complex, during an odd conversational exchange with "feminist" Maike, Kelly drops some knowledge as I pictured in my mind Maike looking at Kelly sideways.
“Are you a feminist?” Kelly said light-heartedly, tilting her head to look at her sideways. “Yes. Very much so.” “You’ve got the bike to thank for that.” Maike laughed. “Really?” she said, unconvinced. “Women wore trousers to ride. It was very controversial.” “That’s quite interesting.” “And when they burned an effigy of a woman, right here in this very city, to protest against them studying at the university, it was an effigy of a woman on a bike,” Kelly continued in a harder tone."
J.H.M. Okthos knows how to shift tones between characters and points out our limits of language when it comes to expressing our thoughts and coming off prickly or overeager to please. The journey to Scotland or the OMO movement picks up others like dirt on a wheel, the comradery, the politics of relationships, engaged my reading beyond thinking about bicycling, I reflected on the good and bad times I had in a group setting and how each person had fitted into the situation.
OMO is about finding where you fit in; it can be a movement or a relationship, many of us struggle to express ourselves we end up being misunderstood creating unnecessary friction in a group. I liked that J.H.M. Okthos brilliantly engages in writing about people with depth and imperfections not just adding characters with no importance, a pleasing change of pace for my summer reading.
May 25, 2019
Wow. Read in one go.
A powerful book chosen on a whim that turns out to be all about a whim that turns into a movement then a cult then into something else entirely. I think you should read it. More than just a piece of fiction that happens to centre around cycling.
A powerful book chosen on a whim that turns out to be all about a whim that turns into a movement then a cult then into something else entirely. I think you should read it. More than just a piece of fiction that happens to centre around cycling.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews