(Reviewed by JD Jung)
“With me inside him, he didn’t feel dislocated like he used to. It was like he was back in tune with the world, experiencing real, solid emotions for the first time in years.”
Joe was walking across the street when he was suddenly hit by a car. Many witnessed this tragic accident including his wife Natalie and Dan, a homeless man. Unfortunately Joe, who was in his thirties, didn’t survive. Or did he in some strange way?
Dan believes that Joe’s consciousness is trapped inside his own body. “Maybe only someone like Dan, detached as he was, could have accommodated Joe’s spirit.” Dan finds his way to Joe’s old house to speak with Natalie. What happens next is a whirlwind of events.
I don’t want to say too much about these events or the plot for that matter, as it will give too much away. It will be nice if the reader experiences the book the way I did without any expectations as to the storyline. All I needed to know was that Nigel Jay Cooper –author of Beat the Rain—wrote the book, and I was on board. Cooper had a lot to live up to, and this book doesn’t disappoint.
The story gets going right away with twists from the beginning and they continue until the end. Though the events are not presented chronologically, Cooper masterfully structures the book in a way that adds to the story. There are so many elements, such as family, love and mental health. What is mental illness verses simply finding unconventional ways to cope? What is love versus control?
“In Natalie’s experience, love is anything but innocent. It’s a captor, a guard, imprisoning you in the clutches of another, knitting the fabric of your own life to somebody else’s, whether you like it or not.”
Then there are the lies…
“But that’s the thing about lies, once they’re out in the world, they develop a life of their own. They keep on growing spiraling and turning. Thorny vines, wrapping themselves around everything good, strangling the life from the most innocent of victims.”
Finally, we question the view of “normal”. Maybe all that anyone wants is to be “ordinary”.
As you can tell from the quotes, Cooper slowly exposes each of these three characters, and we gradually discover the unsettling present and past of each of them.
I recommend The Pursuit of Ordinary to those who want to read anything but the ordinary.
