This world is anything but ordinary, and it’s about to change forever…
It’s our world, but decades into the future…
An ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. There are two superpowers and a digital Cold War, but all conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be…
Except for seventeen-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change for him when he enters a tiny café on a cold Tokyo night. A café run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia…
But Neotnia hides a secret of her own – a secret that will turn John’s unhappy life upside down. A secret that will take them from the neon streets of Tokyo to Hiroshima’s tragic past to the snowy mountains of Nagano.
A secret that reveals that this world is anything ordinary – and it’s about to change forever…
I'm delighted to be sharing my book review for Beautiful Shining People today but also need to apologise to Michael Grothaus, Orenda Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for missing my blog tour post, I am so sorry. Thank you for inviting me to take part and for my advance copy of the novel.
I have been hoping for a new book from Michael Grothaus since I read and loved his outstanding debut, Epiphany Jones almost seven years ago and so I'm delighted to confirm that Beautiful Shining People is a stunning novel which more than made up for the wait. It's not as dark as Epiphany Jones but no less perceptive or impactful. Set a few decades into the future, it's not so much science as speculative fiction, but really to try to fit it into any genre category would be a disservice; Michael Grothaus effortlessly melds advanced technology with traditional Japanese spiritual beliefs in a world where the past, present and future are enduringly intertwined.
Most of the storyline takes place in Tokyo and it's difficult to imagine a more fitting setting. We see the city through the eyes of John, a seventeen-year-old American prodigy who has developed a quantum algorithm with limitless possibilities. After fierce interest from the world's big tech companies, he has been brought to Japan by Sony. Alone and in a strange place, he feels as though he's on the cusp of a new world; one he hopes he will eventually allow him to become as close to normal as possible. There's a lonely quality to John, despite his intellect and as the novel progresses, his difficult past is gradually revealed. He's a wonderfully written character and though undoubtedly a product of his time, many of the ordeals he has encountered have been similarly experienced by scores of people throughout history. It's perhaps not surprising, therefore that he should strike up a rapport with the equally as engaging Neotnia, a young waitress he meets in a café. Both have undergone losses which although under different circumstances evidently shape their lives.
Neotnia's fears for her missing father means that despite the boundless care of her boss and friend, former champion sumo wrestler Goeido, she is left with questions she is desperate to know the answers to. Goeido might be a secondary character to the two young protagonists but this complex, imposing giant has his own tragic story and he's an important, superbly rendered figure throughout the book.
John and Neotnia's tentative steps towards friendship and perhaps more, are beautifully realised and Michael Grothaus infuses their relationship with warmth and humour throughout. However, an unexpected discovery tests John in particular and takes them both on a journey which is as much about the soul as it is about where they end up. Despite this being a time when bots have become ubiquitous, whether serving customers in shops and restaurants or providing information to tourists in the streets, where drones fill the sky, cars drive themselves and deepfakes are everywhere, the unbearable tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hasn't been forgotten. The scenes in which the pair visit the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima are among the most emotive in the book, particularly when they discuss the hibakusha – those who survived the bomb blast.
What starts out as a search for the truth becomes something far more frightening and even though Beautiful Shining People imagines what the future might look like, it's all ominously plausible. We already live in a world where the US and China regularly make accusations against one another, where people are constantly manipulated on social media and where artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming an accepted part of our lives. However, for all its prescience and sense of foreboding, at its heart Beautiful Shining People really asks what it means to be human. Often dark yet ultimately passionately life-affirming, this complex, searching tour-de-force is a daring, achingly moving, thoughtful exploration of hopes and dreams, sacrifice and forgiveness, and what is it to love and belong. Exceptional and unmissable.
The blog tour is now over but you can still read the reviews from my fellow bloggers, see the poster below for details.
Beautiful Shining People is published by Orenda Books and can be purchased from their website, bookshop.org, Hive, Waterstones, Kobo, Amazon or from your favourite independent bookseller.
About the Author
His newest novel is BEAUTIFUL SHINING PEOPLE, a speculative story set in Tokyo that explores how the things that cast us as outsiders can be the very things that draw us together, and examines whether there is an inherent meaning in the world to come, or if we must create our own.
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