Soft!

This turned out to live up to the jacket blurbs perfectly. It really was a hypnotic literary thriller that "pulls you in by the ankes", as one reviewer put it. Thomson is an intriguing writer with an unusual style that seems both very conventional and avant-garde at the same time. As he tells his story, he mesmerizes the reader with odd, poetic little descriptions of fairly ordinary things. Soft! tells the tale of a secret, psychological advertising campaign gone awry, but it does not begin that way. It begins as a gritty bit of contemporary English working class realism, as bouncer Barker Dodds, heads for London for a fresh start. A strong, tough, laconic guy, he is no stranger to violence, but does not particularly enjoy it. The story then shifts to an artistic lass named Glade Spencer. She works as a waitress and carries on a long distance affair with a well-off American named Tom. She seems a bit adrift, a bit melancholy. A third major character is then brought into the story - Jimmy, a slick, ambitious, young advertiser. He works with an American boss - Raleigh Conner, another one of Thomson's polished and opaque characters. Jimmy hatches a scheme to try to promote a new, orange soft drink named Soft! by using some highly unorthodox and unethical psychological techniques. These characters eventually find themselves on a collision course. Thomson writes in a cool, detached manner that is nonetheless never boring or lifeless. His characters speak in short snippets of dialogue that advance the plot, and go about their lives in a kind of mysterious fog. The story almost seems to be an excuse for Thomson to present his fascinating little observations and details to the reader. As I read, I often felt that I was watching a hip, artsy European thriller or existential neo-noir, featuring blank-faced actors playing characters whose inner lives would never be revealed to the audience. There is humor here too, but it is a darkly shaded humor, a little painful. This was an addictive and unique read.

This is a fine addition to the Rupert Thomson collection of novels. The interwoven tales of seemingly unconnected characters come together in an enevitable but intrigueing climax. This is a wonderful storyteller, and one book that should be read just on the merit of the writer. You will be amused and consider the dark humor of the novel a fine read.

Three unlikely characters interact in this social satire-- Glade, a passive girl with an American boyfriend; Barker, a bouncer who reads medieval history; and Jimmy, an eager young marketeer. A scheme to sell soda pop via subliminal viral marketing brings these three characters into contact and eventually conflict with evil American corporate men presiding like Mephisto over the whole debacle.Thomson is an extremely good writer. Soft!, unfortunately, was missing something (particularly compared to his other novels-- Five Gates of Hell or The Insult) and I'm not really sure what it was. Glade may be a little too passive for us to care about, or perhaps it's that we get the feeling that he didn't care about the ending as much as he should, or maybe the satire isn't clear enough and we really can't take these characters straight. It's still better than most current novels and certainly not something I regret reading. I don't know-- I'll read it again in a month or two and see if I feel better about it.

"Soft" by Rupert Thomson is a remarkable book. Before you start reading it, breathe deeply. Thomsons always dense, gloomy descriptions can give you a bad feeling, if unprepared. Impressing how easily he changes roles between the 3 different main characters and how his prose understands to mirror the lingering decay and confusion of Glade Spencer, his tragic female hero. It's strirring. Don't start to read this book, when you have to get up early next morning...

Soft is quite simply one of the best English novels of 1998. It is subtle. It is clever. And it could only have been written at the end of the century.But it is not a conventional thriller. It is not a Tom Clancy style `Character A is motivated by factors XYZ and will therefore by the end of the book have murdered Characters BC and D'.It's much, much better than that. It's one of those rare books which reflect the complexities of life. It accepts that people's fates are interlinked but delves darkly into how the small choices we make can have ultimately disastrous consequences. The opening section in particular is one of the finest psychological profiles you will ever read about how the less fortunate in our society are inevitably trapped by circumstances beyond their control. It debunks any idiotic myths that the `proles' know no better and deserve what they get.This is a fantastic study of human beings wanting to do well, yet failing. I'd certainly put Thomson up there as England's answer to Pynchon and De Lillo.