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.
I'm so thrilled to be hosting the blog tour for The Daves Next Door today. I love this book and reviewed it recently for First Monday Crime. It's my pleasure to be sharing my review again today as well as an extract from the book. Many thanks to Will Carver, Orenda Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me.
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.
I hope that's tempted you to read this brilliant book but to tempt you a little more, read on for an extract.
1
THE DAVES (AND THE NEIGHBOUR)
One of the Daves says that his tongue exploded. That he had an allergic reaction to something. It swelled up in his mouth so much that it just … popped. And he ended up in hospital. That’s when they found it. The tumour on his brain.
Then he says, ‘They reckon I’ve got a twenty-five percent chance. Of living.’
Not a seventy-five percent chance of dying.
He sounds mistakenly optimistic.
But the fact that he sounds like anything other than a drunken muffle leads his neighbour to conclude that this Dave is probably lying.
This Dave stinks of white wine and piss. And surely the inside of his mouth should look like strips of week-old deli meat if something detonated in there recently.
‘Shit, Dave, that’s … What, they can’t treat it?’
What else can you say?
Sorry to hear that.
Still a chance, eh?
Show me your tongue, you damn liar.
The damn liar insists that he’s on some medication that can shrink the thing. That he has to keep going to the hospital for check-ups.
‘That’s probably why you haven’t seen too much of me over the last three or four weeks.’
It’s true. He’s been cooped up inside his flat, trying to drink himself to death. He rents. The tongueless idiot has changed the locks on the front door so the landlord can’t get in. He hasn’t paid his rent for months. Blames it on the tumour. And the tongue thing. That’s why he hasn’t been at work or whatever.
‘Yeah, I might have to stay in hospital for a bit while they do some tests. See if the thing is getting any smaller. You know?
His mouth is disgusting. Teeth like a burnt fence. Thick, white globules of saliva forming in the corners, stretching as he spits out another of his made-up tales. The neighbour can’t stop looking at it, though. Trying to catch a glimpse of the allegedly blown-up flesh inside.
This Dave is on edge. He doesn’t like being outside the flat in case the landlord shows up. But he also has a compulsion to check his letterbox on the ground floor five times a day. No one knows what he is expecting but it must be important. Perhaps a letter from his fictitious doctor about the imaginary tumour.
‘Oh, right. You’d have to stay in there long?’ The neighbour regrets the question immediately. He just wants to leave. Now it’s a conversation.
‘I don’t know. It needs monitoring.’ The Dave stutters. Caught off-guard, he hasn’t prepared this part of the story and has to improvise. Now neither of them wants to be here.
The neighbour nods, politely.
This Dave stares at him for a few seconds then says, ‘Anyway, I just wanted to check the mail. I’m expecting a cheque.’
Damn. The neighbour is intrigued but bites his tongue. His plump, present, intact tongue.
‘Well, I’ll let you get on.’ He wonders whether he should mention the illness, say sorry or something, show some sympathy.
‘Yeah. I’m sure I’ll see you around.’ This Dave smiles, but not an open-mouth smile that would reveal anything mangled behind his decaying incisors.
The neighbour is not sure when he’ll catch another glimpse of this Dave. Maybe he does have a brain tumour. Maybe it will pop like his tongue. The only thing he knows for certain is that the Daves’ door will slam at six-thirty in the morning when he next runs downstairs to check his empty mailbox again.
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.
Don't miss the rest of the blog tour, details are below.
About the Author
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Thanks for the blog tour support x
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