The Transatlantic Book Club discussion

I did not like this one, and found it hard to get through. I thought the premise was interesting and the quality of the writing good, but I found the characters so off-putting that it ended up being a struggle to focus on. It was an odd mixture, really; most popular novels are far worse in terms of how skillfully the prose is handled, but remain compelling because of their plot and/or characters, while a few authors create horrible, repellent characters but keep you going because the writing is simply gorgeous (Oates, Morrison, Flaubert). This seemed to hit a strange boundary between the two for me.

I liked this one quite a lot, although I can understand what you mean about the characters being hard to engage with. I think for me a big part of what drew me along was wanting to see where Thomson was going with the theme (if that's the right word) of how little control people have over their lives ("How much of what we do is automatic?"). I've read one other book by Thomson (The Book of Revelation) and the same theme dominates that book as well, so I imagine it is an area of particular interest for him, as it is for me. I guess this is why I found it really thought provoking.

I saw Barker and Glade as tragic, trapped by their own destiny, for want of a better word. I sympathised with them in so far as I wanted Barker to redeem himself (which I suppose he does in a way) and Glade to grow a spine (unlikely though that increasingly becomes). I wanted these things to happen, and I tried to ignore the fact that they clearly wouldn't.

Jimmy was similar, though I found him even harder to like. He's far easier to blame for his actions. I liked the ending though, the uncertainty of it. Now and then I'll be wondering what might have become of him, which is something I like to get from a novel.

I loved the prose, I thought there was a lot of detail for such a short novel. I expect that the reader could (if they were sad enough and had too much time on their hands) visit all the locations, and retrace the routes between them. I admire this, although it also slightly irritated me because I could feel Thomson looking for places to set the book, maybe sitting across the road in a cafe writing the scene that I was reading. This image kept intruding, which I did not like - as if I was watching a film and the director kept walking into shot.