The Society of Others: Summary and book reviews of The Society of Others by William Nicholson, plus links to an excerpt from The Society of Others and a biography of William Nicholson.
The Society of Others
by William Nicholson
Hardcover: Jan 2005,
240 pages.
Paperback: Jan 2006,
240 pages.
In this gripping
fable, a young man on an aimless journey crosses a border into a world of
unexplained threats and terrifying violence.
Drawing readers in with a cool, oddly appealing bluntness, the narrator of The
Society of Others launches a disturbingly surreal tale of his adventures in
an unnamed country somewhere in Eastern Europe. His plan is to hitchhike through
Europe without any destination, but like a character in a Kafka novel, he finds
himself confronting a world that defies rational explanation and descending into
an orgy of violence that threatens to destroy his power to control his identity.
Written with a pace and thrust of a thriller, The Society of Others is a
stunning intellectual adventure, a moral fable bursting with art, poetry, music,
and profound philosophical insight.
The Society of Others is an extraordinary book that can be read on
many levels. A number of reviewers compare it to Kafka's works. There are similarities but also differences, in that Kafka tends to set up impossible
situations (such as a man being transformed into an insect) and then imbues his
stories with such realism and attention to detail that the events become real. Nicholson achieves the same end
result but starts, as it were, from the opposite end - moving from real to
surreal with such aplomb that the reader is likely to cross the border line from
one to the other with, almost, unquestioning acceptance.
The fact that The Society of Others is open to interpretation has led
to mixed reviews. For example, Geoffrey Wansell writing for the Daily Mail
(UK) says, 'it is thrilling in every sense, but it is also hypnotic, fast-moving, and
intellectually challenging, as it twists and turns, leaving you confused,
uncertain, even uncomfortable, and yet utterly hooked. A philosophical master
class, it is quite staggeringly good, whereas the reviewer for Publishers Weekly (who some might feel have missed the point) says, 'the moral of the story—you snots
in the West don't know how good you have it—comes through so early that the
protagonist's final transformation to good, loving citizen and son feels
redundant.
As always, you can read an excerpt for yourself, taken from the first
chapter. However, read in isolation, these first pages don't do justice to the book as a whole. (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Kirkus Reviews
....Nicholson peaks too soon, before the halfway point, and the
thrill is never quite recaptured in the second half, as the hitchhiker makes
discoveries about himself, his profound love for his parents, and the importance
of kindness to strangers. There'll be entertaining cat-and-mouse games with the
secret police, leading to an extravagant Hitchcock-style climax, and a closing
postmodernist twist provides an existential dimension. Highly promising, even if
flawed.
Publishers Weekly
The moral of the story—you snots in the West don't know how good you have
it—comes through so early that the protagonist's final transformation to good,
loving citizen and son feels redundant.
Library Journal - Lawrence Rungren
The novel's dreamlike atmosphere reflects the unnamed narrator's psychological state as he
journeys from isolation and fashionable nihilism to an appreciation of the
importance of human connection. Nicholson, who won an Oscar for his work on the
screenplay for Gladiator, pulls off with aplomb what could have been a rather
didactic exercise.
Booklist - Allison Block
Nicholson weaves social and political commentary into this thought-provoking
page-turner about coming-of-age in a chaotic world. Mordant and wise, though
perhaps too somber for some.
Daily Mail - Geoffrey Wansell
It is thrilling in every sense, but it is also hypnotic, fast-moving, and
intellectually challenging, as it twists and turns, leaving you confused,
uncertain, even uncomfortable, and yet utterly hooked. A philosophical master
class, it is quite staggeringly good.
Piers Paul Read, author of Alive
This is a novel I would dearly love to have written yet one whose message is
an antidote for envy. It is exciting, funny, wise, and beautifully written.
Paul Goat Allen
Readers who enjoy stories that are as entertaining as they are edifying
should definitely seek out this novel -- a philosophical masterwork.
Jill Paton Walsh
This extraordinary book, a sort of wild combination of Kafka and The
Catcher in the Rye, whirls with its catatonically dysfunctional hero into a
maelstrom of violence and danger to learn from oppressed strangers what really
matters in a human life, and to face the most terrifying of interrogators, the
self. The reader will not escape unchanged.
Peter Stanford, author of Heaven: A Guide to the Undiscovered Country
It's a challenge as well as a pleasure, but The Society of Others is a novel that demands attention. William Nicholson is someone we are going to hear a good deal more about.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by sombre Excellent Book I loved this book, it is so contemporary. In a post-religion, post-feminist, post-Marxist, post-political world people are striving for meaning. The author embraces all this and still leaves us optimistic.
Well written and pacy. Flags a little... Read More
Rated of 5
by Milton Laene Araujo A MIND OPENER The Society of Others strangelly opens our mind into realism and existentialism. It is written with such a simplicity, yet it intrigues our knowledge because William Nicholson give us a spy tale and a mystical fable taking us into a journey with no... Read More
William Nicholson is a playwright for
film, TV and stage. His TV credits include Shadowlands (the life of C.S. Lewis)
and Life Story, both of which won
the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year. His
first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was Evening
Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony-award
winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the
screenplay of the film version, which was directed by Richard
Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra
Winger.
Since then he has written more films and
also The Wind On Fire trilogy for
children. The first book in the series, The Wind Singer, won the Nestle
Smarties Prize Gold Award on publication in 2000, and the BBC...
Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, became human and were to fall in love?
Written with the austere clarity that has made Coetzee the winner of
two Booker Prizes and the Nobel Prize, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes the plight of a
country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.
These are 2 of the 8 readalike suggestions for The Society of Others. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
BookBrowse
(732 words).
Kirkus Reviews
Piers Paul Read, author of Alive
of 5
by sombre
of 5
by Milton Laene Araujo
Write your own review!
