End of the World Blues

"And just as Kit decided that perhaps it wasn't worth dying for a postcard of Amsterdam, his world exploded into a hurricane of white lace and scarlet silk, the mugger's gunshot going wide as the cos-play spun between Kit and the weapon, knocking it aside. Silver hair shook free and an ivory hair pin punched home, freezing a facial nerve as it ruptured the mugger's eardrum and entered his brain.

Lady Neku is a girl from a dying earth in the distant future, so far away that she doesn't know how far back in time she has come while running away from something terrible and forgotten. But she is also a teenage girl living on the streets of present day Tokyo, who is mysteriously in possession of a suitcase containing millions of U.S. dollars show more which she stores in railway station lockers. Like Lady Neku, bar owner Kit Nouveau is a runaway, not wanting to face up to his past or his present. He buys Neku a cup of coffee every day as she sits in the street near the Tokyo bar that he owns, and she saves his life when he is mugged in the alley behind his bar.

I have been thinking about how to describe the story without giving too much away, and it is difficult. Apart from the one time that Lady Neku cuts a hole in the air with her knife and disappears through it, nothing overtly unrealistic happens in the parts of the story set in the present day, and it is basically a convoluted tale of gangsters and the need to come to terms with your past. So I will just say that after a couple of narrow escapes from death, Kit Nouveau is advised that it will be safer for him to leave Japan for a while. This coincides with a woman who has always hated him tracking Kit down and asking him to come back to Britain to find the daughter she (or possibly her husband) refuses to believe is dead.

There are many ambiguous deaths in this book; suicides that may be murders or faked; and accidents that may be murders or suicides. Unless I missed something, it is never made clear who hired the original hit man who tried to shoot Kit in the alley. It doesn't seem to have been the Japanese gangsters, so could it have been Kate trying to have him killed but then changing her mind, or was someone else after Kit too? The author doesn't seem to be interested in tying up all the loose ends, so it is left to readers to make up their own minds and the book is none the worse for that. show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/half-life-shelley-jackson-end-of-the-world-blues...

I enjoyed this one too. There are two intertwined plots: an Englishman in Tokyo trying to find out who killed his wife, and a girl from a far future dying earth who has ended up in our time. I got slightly lost in places but I really enjoyed the ride. Jesse Hudson suggests that Grimwood is the 21st century Zelazny; I take the point.

For most people Jon Courtenay Grimwood has slipped under the radar, another one of those writers who are cursed by the moniker "The Author's Author". The book’s cover name-checks Haruki Murakami, possibly due to the Tokyo setting, but people looking for a companion to Kafka On The Shore or Norwegian Wood will be surprised. Whereas Murakami suffers sometimes from cute indulgences and over-writing, there's no such sentimentality here, just an appetizing mix of mystery, foreboding and effortless cool. End Of The World Blues has more of a taste of classic Iain Banks, and the story of gaijin Kit Nouveau is written as an unnerving, sometimes alienating but profoundly thought-provoking novel from the most inspiring genre crossover author show more since William Gibson. show less

interstellar gods managing the leftover refugees of humanity. our world iss nothing but a constructed barrier of safety created by them to allow us life.

think this book is sci-fi? it is not. this book is a thinly veiled series of structured thoughts showing the smallness of our universe. everything we know is insignificant. interestingly enough, everything outside our understanding is also also insignificant.

From the the Hagakure, The Way of the Samurai -
“Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige’s wall there was this one: ”Matters of’ great concern should be treated lightly. Matters of small concern should be treated seriously. Among one’s affairs there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great show more concern. If these are deliberated upon during ordinary times, they can be understood.”

These are ordinary times and the deliberation of concerns will not be fully qualified and resolved until the end of the tale…

This story revolves around, Kit Noveau, an ex-rocker from Ireland. living in Tokyo. he is also ex-military, unable to go home without fear of being arrested for being a deserter, not that he would want to go home.

for ten years he has been married and hiding out in Tokyo. his wife is an introverted world respected pottery artist. his best friend is an Australian biker in hiding, unable to return home himself. Yoshi, Kit’s wife, owns a bar called “Pirate Marys” in a rundown part of Tokyo.

Enter into the story Lady Neku. Neku carries blades and wears costume. Neku is hiding $15 million dollars in a train station pay per day locker. Kit gives her fresh coffee on cold mornings and she feels she owns him more than owes him.

When a homeless man (or an assassin) attacks Kit one morning, Lady Neku leaves a blade in the attacker’s lung, and blood pouring from his body. soon after she rips a hole in time space and steps through.

everything else is story… but it is more detective novel than sci-fi fantasy. all the elements of this book meld together into a nice blend of images. it is like reading Murakami lite with a bit of bit of gaiman and joe hill. show less

In many ways this novella is trademark Grimwood - a male protagonist who's culturally displaced/estranged meet strange young(er) girl; culture a prime mover; and a framework plot driven by a crime/mob thriller/story. However, this time he has thightened up his writing, and the result is a well paced page turner driving the reader to read and read and...
I really enjoyed this one, and I recommend it to everyone who liked the Arabesque-suite and Stamping Butterflies but like me was slightly disapointed by 9Tail Fox - this time he really proves he can stay focused and deliver!

An okay book, though there were a few moments where the descriptions of Lady Neku made me feel uncomfortable, although by the time the novel finished, the ending almost made up for those moments. I liked the world Grimwood created, though I'm not sure I'm all that eager to seek out any of his other works. Acceptable, but not as good as I had hoped.