A disillusioned nurse suddenly learns how to care.
An injured young sportsman wakes up find that he can see only in black and white.
A desperate old widower takes too many pills and believes that two angels have arrived to usher him through purgatory.
Two agoraphobic men called Dave share the symptoms of a brain tumour, and frequently waken their neighbour with their ongoing rows.
Separate lives, running in parallel, destined to collide and then explode.
Like the suicide bomber, riding the Circle Line, day after day, waiting for the right time to detonate, waiting for answers to his questions: Am I God? Am I dead? Will I blow up this train?
Shocking, intensely emotive and wildly original, Will Carver’s The Daves Next Door is an explosive existential thriller and a piercing examination of what it means to be human … or not.
It's June already which means it's time for this month's First Monday Crime and sadly, it's the final panel before the summer break. However, what a treat awaits you if you head over to Facebook Live at 7:30pm this evening when Jake Kerridge will be moderating an unmissable discussion between Will Carver (The Daves Next Door), Sarah Vaughan (Reputation), Sinead Crowley (The Belladonna Maze) and Victoria Selman (Truly, Darkly, Deeply).
Many thanks to Orenda Books for sending me an advance copy of The Daves Next Door and to Joy Kluver for inviting me to review for First Monday.
How am I ever going to be able to write this review? Will I do this book justice? Is Will Carver a genius? Or a madman? Both? Why am I asking so many questions? Is The Daves Next Door going to be one of my books of the year?
The answer to some of these questions will hopefully soon become apparent but to respond to perhaps the most important – Will Carver is a mad genius who takes everything you thought you knew about what a crime novel should look like and demolishes it. The Daves Next Door has chapters from an omniscient narrator who may be God, a terrorist or both and if that sounds as if it's going to upset a lot of people, you're right. Some readers will hate this book and I'm certain Will Carver will be absolutely fine with that. It's a challenging novel to read and feels rather like being constantly poked with a stick as the God/terrorist/narrator persistently forces us to examine our prejudices and assumptions. There are moments where I briefly felt smug before a devastating aside or observation prompted me to reconsider what I thought I was reading and how that fits with the world we have been conditioned to live in.
These edgy, disturbing chapters hint that a terrorist attack is imminent – an act we have already been told takes place on 21st July 2022 involving numerous targets in London. We also know that some of the attacks were on various Underground lines but as our narrator rides the Circle Line, observing their fellow passengers and debating whether to press the red button (why is it always red?!), it's not obvious whether the bomb will be activated by a brainwashed terrorist, a disappointed God seeking a reset or not at all.
Meanwhile, Vashti is a nurse who like many in her profession has become disillusioned and apathetic but still takes the time to find crutches for a badly injured sportsman who refuses to use a bedpan. It's this relationship that transforms them both and yet there are signs even before that Vashti still cares, she's just too tired to see it. However, it may be that miracles take place here which means the sportsman who wakes to see everything in black and white still views some colour while another patient is there to inspire Vashti too. These scenes are the most hopeful in the book, suggesting that caring and empathy can engender change but elsewhere, events are much bleaker, reflecting the more avaricious, selfish and detached aspects of society.
The saddest figure is arguably Saul, an old man who can't bear life without his beloved wife, Ada. Desperate to feel nothing, he decides to kill himself but is now in the presence of two young people he thinks might be angels. Of course, we soon discover the truth about them and it's much less virtuous. Nathanial and Lailah are patently unlikable characters; or at least we're manipulated to think of them that way, and again we're compelled to review and modify our presumptions about them. However, as much as Saul's situation evokes our sympathies, his story might not be the most tragic after all and that dubious honour could go to the eponymous Daves of the title. What is real and what is imagined, conjectured or accepted fluctuates constantly during the course of the book and while we discover that Dave possibly has a brain tumour, we are also told that he drinks heavily and lies.
As the storyline alternates between these characters and the endless questions of our potentially unreliable, definitely equivocating narrator, it becomes inevitable that they will somehow be drawn together and the result is a novel that can be accurately described as being both nihilistic and compassionate. The Daves Next Door isn't a book about terrorism; it doesn't preach nor does it offer any consoling platitudes or meaningless consolations but it does demand thoughtful, honest contemplation from its readers. Until now Nothing Important Happened Today has been my favourite of Will Carver's books but this is now a very strong rival. Expertly treading a line between the metaphorical and the literal, it examines humanity as only the most outstanding books can. The Daves Next Door is an exceptional novel; this is risk-taking, provocative fiction at its absolute finest. An unmissable read.
The Daves Next Door will be published by Orenda Books on 21st July 2022. It can be pre-ordered from the publisher's website, from bookshop.org, Hive and Amazon or from your favourite independent bookshop.
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