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Jam
As darkness falls on the M25, the flow of traffic comes to a halt. Time passes. More time passes. Then more. Drivers switch off their engines, then get out of their cars. And so the story begins ...In this bold, state-of-the-nation novel, Jake Wallis Simons brings together characters from all walks of life and explores what happens when lives collide on the M25
- GenresBook Club
7 pages, Audio CD
First published March 3, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 1, 2023
Setting: M25 motorway, Greater London; modern day.
As the traffic travelling on the M25 motorway grinds to a halt late one evening, a motley collection of people is thrown together to cope in the face of no movement, no information, no cell signal and no refreshments. As time passes and evening turns into early morning, tensions rise amongst the occupants of several of the vehicles - an Asian lad travelling back from a trial with Chelsea Football Club with two of his friends clashes with a group of neo-Nazis travelling in a van; 'Waitrose Jim', the driver of a food delivery van is put under pressure to open up his van to provide food and drink to people in the queue; a disenchanted couple travelling with their young daughter and one of her friends have a major argument over contacting the friend's parents to tell them about the delay and some drivers develop unexpected relationships....
This was an unusual concept for a story but well-executed and quite believable - I really enjoyed the various characters and their different stories and the way the frustrations of the blockage affected them and their interrelationships. A good read for me - 9/10.
As the traffic travelling on the M25 motorway grinds to a halt late one evening, a motley collection of people is thrown together to cope in the face of no movement, no information, no cell signal and no refreshments. As time passes and evening turns into early morning, tensions rise amongst the occupants of several of the vehicles - an Asian lad travelling back from a trial with Chelsea Football Club with two of his friends clashes with a group of neo-Nazis travelling in a van; 'Waitrose Jim', the driver of a food delivery van is put under pressure to open up his van to provide food and drink to people in the queue; a disenchanted couple travelling with their young daughter and one of her friends have a major argument over contacting the friend's parents to tell them about the delay and some drivers develop unexpected relationships....
This was an unusual concept for a story but well-executed and quite believable - I really enjoyed the various characters and their different stories and the way the frustrations of the blockage affected them and their interrelationships. A good read for me - 9/10.
June 23, 2014
How can you force your characters to interact with each other? How can you bring completely different people into the same scene? How can you raise tension and force them to display their true selves?
Set your novel on the M25 in an overnight traffic jam, of course. In an area with no mobile phone signal.
A wonderfully fresh idea. And one that pays off, in my opinion. Several occupants of vehicles take centre stage in this particular Jam. We get to share their stationary thoughts and conversations, and as they open their doors, their interactions.
There's a wealth of humanity there - a hungover wedding guest looking for Mr Right, an academic off to a conference on insects that could change the world, a bickering couple about to split up, a car full of thugs looking for a fight, students on the way back from a festival, and Waitrose Jim - at the front of a full supermarket delivery van...
Each has a story, and some of them start connecting as these individuals come out from behind their wheels, forced to communicate. Police cars rush past, nobody knows what has happened.
Is this a symbol of technology taking us further away from human conversation? An indictment of contemporary culture? Or just a great set of vignettes set in a stonking great queue? You decide.
I wondered if there would be too many characters to keep track of, but that wasn't the case at all. Each was fascinating as each had a little mileage (get it?) in the telling.
It reminded me of an episode of Doctor Who with a constant traffic queue around a planet, and the setting really does force characters who would never normally all be in a scene together be forced to speak.
Great idea. Lots of short chapters flitting from one to another story kept the 'bigger picture' feel.
It's got a great opening chapter too, reminiscent of Amelie, if you've seen that film.
And it's reminded me to make sure I have water and supplies next time I head out on a motorway journey!
Set your novel on the M25 in an overnight traffic jam, of course. In an area with no mobile phone signal.
A wonderfully fresh idea. And one that pays off, in my opinion. Several occupants of vehicles take centre stage in this particular Jam. We get to share their stationary thoughts and conversations, and as they open their doors, their interactions.
There's a wealth of humanity there - a hungover wedding guest looking for Mr Right, an academic off to a conference on insects that could change the world, a bickering couple about to split up, a car full of thugs looking for a fight, students on the way back from a festival, and Waitrose Jim - at the front of a full supermarket delivery van...
Each has a story, and some of them start connecting as these individuals come out from behind their wheels, forced to communicate. Police cars rush past, nobody knows what has happened.
Is this a symbol of technology taking us further away from human conversation? An indictment of contemporary culture? Or just a great set of vignettes set in a stonking great queue? You decide.
I wondered if there would be too many characters to keep track of, but that wasn't the case at all. Each was fascinating as each had a little mileage (get it?) in the telling.
It reminded me of an episode of Doctor Who with a constant traffic queue around a planet, and the setting really does force characters who would never normally all be in a scene together be forced to speak.
Great idea. Lots of short chapters flitting from one to another story kept the 'bigger picture' feel.
It's got a great opening chapter too, reminiscent of Amelie, if you've seen that film.
And it's reminded me to make sure I have water and supplies next time I head out on a motorway journey!
July 3, 2014
If you've ever been stuck in a traffic jam - and haven't we all - then you'll know the frustration of sitting in one place for hours on end. However Jam is not an ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill traffic jam. It takes place one early evening on the notorious M25 when the traffic grinds to a halt for no apparent reason, and with no apparent end; it just goes on and on and on....
The author brings together several characters, all of whom I found unpleasant, to explore what happens in this claustrophobic situation; there is a bickering couple with two young children in the back- one their own, one a friend's daughter, both of whom, amazingly, seem to sleep throughout the ordeal; the Waitrose delivery driver, put under pressure as the night wears on to open the van and distribute refreshments. There's the car load of hooligans, the young woman on her way home from a wedding and various others - in other words, the usual motley crew.
So - we have characters but no plot, and for a novel of this type with no plot the reader must engage with the characters, which sadly I did not. I started this book thinking it would be a really refreshing idea - and it is, but it just doesn't work for me.
There are several unanswered questions such as - surely somebody, somewhere in the traffic queue would have heard the cause of the jam, with perhaps an expectation of when it might end. Did no-one have a radio? Wouldn't somebody lower down, or higher up, the jam have had a phone connection?
The book is well written but the descriptive writing is a little overblown for my taste - everything is described to the nth degree leaving little to the imagination. I actually thought that maybe this was the author's first novel and so he was out to create an impression, but then I discovered it's his fourth. This does not encourage me to read his earlier offerings.
The author brings together several characters, all of whom I found unpleasant, to explore what happens in this claustrophobic situation; there is a bickering couple with two young children in the back- one their own, one a friend's daughter, both of whom, amazingly, seem to sleep throughout the ordeal; the Waitrose delivery driver, put under pressure as the night wears on to open the van and distribute refreshments. There's the car load of hooligans, the young woman on her way home from a wedding and various others - in other words, the usual motley crew.
So - we have characters but no plot, and for a novel of this type with no plot the reader must engage with the characters, which sadly I did not. I started this book thinking it would be a really refreshing idea - and it is, but it just doesn't work for me.
There are several unanswered questions such as - surely somebody, somewhere in the traffic queue would have heard the cause of the jam, with perhaps an expectation of when it might end. Did no-one have a radio? Wouldn't somebody lower down, or higher up, the jam have had a phone connection?
The book is well written but the descriptive writing is a little overblown for my taste - everything is described to the nth degree leaving little to the imagination. I actually thought that maybe this was the author's first novel and so he was out to create an impression, but then I discovered it's his fourth. This does not encourage me to read his earlier offerings.
April 2, 2014
While a novel set on the M25, the nightmarish orbital motorway that almost encircles London, might sound a little odd, I was immediately hooked. JAM opens as Dusk is falling on London and sweeps over the Capital, picking out people and places within it and providing a snippet of information about their lives.
If, like me, you’ve ever been on a train or bus journey and looked out of the window into the backs of people’s houses or gardens and wondered what their lives were like, or caught yourself doing the same thing about people sharing any other public space with you, then Jake Wallis Simons’ latest novel, JAM, is just the book for you.
Being somewhere with a bunch of total strangers is all very well when it’s for a known limited period of time or you’re just passing through, but JAM looks at what happens when you’re forced to spend time together in a traffic jam on a stretch of motorway in a signal blackspot. How will people thrown together by circumstance, rather than through choice or common interests, react to what’s happened? Will they interact with each other and, if so, how?
JAM is a terrific read: a fascinating, well written and beautifully structured look at a cross section of modern society and human beings in general.
If, like me, you’ve ever been on a train or bus journey and looked out of the window into the backs of people’s houses or gardens and wondered what their lives were like, or caught yourself doing the same thing about people sharing any other public space with you, then Jake Wallis Simons’ latest novel, JAM, is just the book for you.
Being somewhere with a bunch of total strangers is all very well when it’s for a known limited period of time or you’re just passing through, but JAM looks at what happens when you’re forced to spend time together in a traffic jam on a stretch of motorway in a signal blackspot. How will people thrown together by circumstance, rather than through choice or common interests, react to what’s happened? Will they interact with each other and, if so, how?
JAM is a terrific read: a fascinating, well written and beautifully structured look at a cross section of modern society and human beings in general.
August 12, 2014
I was excited to read Jam, intrigued by the premise: a ship of fools plot about a group of disparate unfortunates trapped on the M25, but have to say I was disappointed. The plot is paper thin. No reasons are ever given for the hold-up - presumably an accident up ahead, though it must be many miles up ahead as no one comes to tell the gridlocked multitudes what is happening; no helicopters hover overhead, no police or ambulances are seen racing to the scene on the empty other carriageway. To add to the misery, no one can get a signal on their mobile and the emergency roadside phones are out of order.
In short, you really do have to suspend more than a little disbelief at this predicament the characters find themselves in. In truth, it doesn't matter that much; this is a character led piece, a 'let's chuck these people who would never, in the normal course of things, get to meet, trap them together on a gridlocked motorway for hours and hours and see what happens' literary exercise. Your pleasure in reading Jam is mainly going to depend on how much you like/enjoy/sympathise with the characters, and in my case, I didn't much care for any of them except for Harold; I did like Harold very much, but he was the only one and he wasn't enough on his own to hold my interest.
It's not a terrible book, it's enjoyable enough; a quick and easy read, but there's precious little depth to it and there is no real conclusion; you never do find out what happens to these people once the traffic starts moving, the narrative does not tie up or finish, it merely ends. A good one for the airport or the beach, but not the weightier, meatier tome I was hoping for.
In short, you really do have to suspend more than a little disbelief at this predicament the characters find themselves in. In truth, it doesn't matter that much; this is a character led piece, a 'let's chuck these people who would never, in the normal course of things, get to meet, trap them together on a gridlocked motorway for hours and hours and see what happens' literary exercise. Your pleasure in reading Jam is mainly going to depend on how much you like/enjoy/sympathise with the characters, and in my case, I didn't much care for any of them except for Harold; I did like Harold very much, but he was the only one and he wasn't enough on his own to hold my interest.
It's not a terrible book, it's enjoyable enough; a quick and easy read, but there's precious little depth to it and there is no real conclusion; you never do find out what happens to these people once the traffic starts moving, the narrative does not tie up or finish, it merely ends. A good one for the airport or the beach, but not the weightier, meatier tome I was hoping for.
July 13, 2018
It's most annoying but we have all been in traffic jams at some point in our lives. I could not bare to think if we had to stop over night in our cars until the traffic jam eased.
Jam flings into a traffic jam on the M25 with everyone coming to a grisly halt. Travelers turn off their engines. people get out of their cars.
Tensions start to fill the agitated drivers. No one can see what is happening why they have come to a stand still. People come up with all different sorts of statements. No one knows the truth. . Then the bickering developes as travelers are getting hungry and thirsty. Everyone in the traffic jam on the M25 has been going somewhere without any supplies of food and water. But the last thing anyone thinks of is that you could be stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway and to take refreshments with you.
Jam flings into a traffic jam on the M25 with everyone coming to a grisly halt. Travelers turn off their engines. people get out of their cars.
Tensions start to fill the agitated drivers. No one can see what is happening why they have come to a stand still. People come up with all different sorts of statements. No one knows the truth. . Then the bickering developes as travelers are getting hungry and thirsty. Everyone in the traffic jam on the M25 has been going somewhere without any supplies of food and water. But the last thing anyone thinks of is that you could be stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway and to take refreshments with you.
November 4, 2019
I didn't love Jam. I found most of the female characters lacked depth, character and strength even more than the male characters did. I was infuriated by the female characters seemingly all being weak, put-upon and that they can't get through the book without an existential crisis intrinsically linked to the relationships with men that they're either in, have failed to sustain, or obtain, or are victims to. The only character I had any sympathy with was Natalie and she only found her strength in the last five pages. That was a good part!
There were also large sections interspersed in the book which were about various academic and philosophical subjects. These sections kind of felt like the author's voice was creeping in and lecturing the reader.
The story was mostly not very believable although it was entertaining on the surface. It probably won't spur me to read anything more by the author.
There were also large sections interspersed in the book which were about various academic and philosophical subjects. These sections kind of felt like the author's voice was creeping in and lecturing the reader.
The story was mostly not very believable although it was entertaining on the surface. It probably won't spur me to read anything more by the author.
May 11, 2014
A story about a traffic jam may not sound very interesting but this book had me gripped from very early on. As time passes and there's no sign of the traffic moving or even confirmation of what has caused the hold up, people get more and more stressed, especially as they have no food or drink and absolutely no idea of when they'll be on their way again.
What I loved about the novel was how it brought people together from all walks of life who may otherwise never have met. These include Jim, a grocery delivery van driver who has never married or had children and lives for his work. Also, Max and his wife Ursula who've been having marriage problems and have their young daughter with them in the car as well as her friend. Ursula is panicking as they're trapped in a phone signal black spot so she can't contact the girl's parents to let them know what's happened and that she's okay.We find out about a lot of the characters' backgrounds as well.
A quick and enjoyable read by an author I'd never heard of before Jam but one whose other books I will definitely have to read.
What I loved about the novel was how it brought people together from all walks of life who may otherwise never have met. These include Jim, a grocery delivery van driver who has never married or had children and lives for his work. Also, Max and his wife Ursula who've been having marriage problems and have their young daughter with them in the car as well as her friend. Ursula is panicking as they're trapped in a phone signal black spot so she can't contact the girl's parents to let them know what's happened and that she's okay.We find out about a lot of the characters' backgrounds as well.
A quick and enjoyable read by an author I'd never heard of before Jam but one whose other books I will definitely have to read.
Read
March 23, 2015I borrowed this as a talking book and what a delight it was to have the story read by the author. It really gave an insight as to how he saw each of the characters. I wondered how exciting a traffic jam on London’s M25 could be but we got a little snapshot into people’s lives that I thought could be easily translated into a play. Kind of like The Slap, a bit like Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – everyone’s lives will change after this event.
H.C
H.C
August 13, 2014
Simons has given himself a difficult task: make characters and a storyline compelling enough over the length of a book, all in a traffic jam on the M25. Considering that he does well.
I was particularly impressed with his first passage/chapter which I think is one of the best pieces of writing I've read in a long time.
I finished it which means it was good.
I was particularly impressed with his first passage/chapter which I think is one of the best pieces of writing I've read in a long time.
I finished it which means it was good.
March 16, 2014
I was lucky to review this book,for love reading, , and I loved it! The characters, the storyline,was so different from anything I have read,for a long time. The sense of foreboding, was second to none,, excellent, ,
December 11, 2014
A pre-publication review copy courtesy of lovereading.co.uk
July 27, 2014
proficent
November 17, 2014
Interesting story - relied a bit on stereotyping characters, but compelling novel. Feeling a bit unsatisfied with the non-resolution of the obvious question...
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews