If words could kill…
Eli Hagin can’t finish anything.

He hates his job, but can’t seem to quit. He doesn’t want to be with his girlfriend, but doesn’t know how to end things with her, either. Eli wants to write a novel, but he’s never taken a story beyond the first chapter.

#SuicideThursday @Will_Carver @OrendaBooks
#RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour #CarverCult

Eli also has trouble separating reality from fiction. When his best friend kills himself, Eli is motivated, for the first time in his life, to finally end something himself, just as Mike did…

Except sessions with his therapist suggest that Eli’s most recent ‘first chapters’ are not as fictitious as he had intended … and a series of text messages that Mike received before his death point to something much, much darker…

My Review

What can I say! I sometimes wonder if I am clever enough to understand Carver’s more recent books. This one in particular had me in a bit of a tizz. It’s taken me ages to write a review.

Suicide Thursday is written like a diary from a number of the character’s points of view. Eli is the main one, but is he a reliable narrator? I don’t think so. Then there’s Mike – I didn’t really understand him or why he was unhappy enough to take his own life. Or to varnish the floor on the day he does it. Jackie is Eli’s girlfriend, but she is also friends with Mike. It’s a bit of a ménage à trois to be honest. Eli has all sorts of problems with Jackie, though I rather liked her. He wants to get rid of her (not literally though in a Carver novel ANYTHING could happen), but can never find the right time, so he keeps stringing her along. He doesn’t really even find her attractive, though they have great sex.

Eli’s main problem though is the first chapter thing. He has so many ideas for a novel – or novels – even the titles and the names of the characters, but he never gets any further. He has a library of first chapters and considers selling them to budding authors. I think it’s a great idea, a bit like a story prompt but more filled out. I’d probably buy one.

Then there is having characters with the same name. In the last book we had the Daves and this time we have the Teds. Is it a thing? Am I missing something? The significance of more than one person with the same name? I get the Daves, but why the Teds?

It’s a brilliant book, but far removed from the ‘norm’ – whatever that is. So if someone asks you what it’s about, just say, ‘Read the book.’

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the
critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series that includes Good
Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death
Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the
mainstream international press. Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award 2020 and Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for Guardian Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by three standalone literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous (both optioned for TV) and The Daves Next Door. He lives in Reading with his family.

Orenda Books is a small independent publishing company specialising in literary fiction with a heavy emphasis on crime/thrillers, and approximately half the list in translation. They’ve been twice shortlisted for the Nick Robinson Best Newcomer Award at the IPG awards, and publisher and owner Karen Sullivan was a Bookseller Rising Star in 2016. In 2018, they were awarded a prestigious Creative Europe grant for their translated books programme. Three authors, including Agnes Ravatn, Matt Wesolowski and Amanda Jennings have been WHSmith Fresh Talent picks, and Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, won an English PEN Translation Award, and adapted for BBC Radio Four ’s Book at Bedtime. Six titles have been short- or long-listed for the CWA Daggers. Launched in 2014 with a mission to bring more international literature to the UK market, Orenda Books publishes a host of debuts, many of which have gone on to sell millions worldwide, and looks for fresh, exciting new voices that push the genre in new directions. Bestselling authors include Ragnar Jonasson, Antti Tuomainen, Gunnar Staalesen, Michael J. Malone, Kjell Ola Dahl, Louise Beech, Johana Gustawsson, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Sarah Stovell.