Time is running out for James Dent. On the trail of missing singer Billy K, his team has exhausted every lead. The investigation has cost Dent his marriage, his home and possibly his job. All he has left is his instinct, and a copy of 'Show Me the Sky' - the book Billy was reading when he vanished. With only the clothes on his back and GBP5000 in his wallet, Dent himself disappears. He believes he can solve this case alone. He can have little idea where this journey will take him. Mystery, adventure, historical voyage, coming of age - Show Me the Sky is all this and more. It is a dazzling novel about the power of books to change lives, which will keep you guessing until the final page.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
British author Hogg's elaborate debut centers on the hunt for self-destructive rock star Billy K, who vanished into thin air on a Cornish cliff top. After a year of fruitless searching, Insp. James Dent, a rogue London policeman, isn't giving up. The last known clue about Billy K is that he was reading Show Me the Sky, the journal of a 19th-century missionary, Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, London (formerly Naqarase Baba of Lakemba, Fiji). Taking a new approach to the case, Dent travels first to Australia, then to Kenya and finally back to London in his quest to find the missing singer. Extracts from Show Me the Sky, which chronicle Babbage/Naqarase's return to his homeland with a group of English missionaries, stand out as the most compelling of the various narrative strands, some of which are slow to develop. His vivid adventures at sea will remind many of Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Booklist
This ambitious first novel by British writer Hogg moves back and forth in time and across several continents, offering multiple narrative strands and characters. The novel’s central arc follows Detective James Dent, who has spent the last year on the hunt for missing British rock star Billy K. Obsessed with the case, Dent abandons his job to track a final, desperate lead in Australia. Intercut with the hunt are passages from a journal Billy K was reading when he was last spotted. It contains the writing of nineteenth-century Fijian missionary Nelson Babbage, whose vivid rendering of colonial oppression forms the backbone of Hogg’s themes of identity and assimilation. Other narrative strands follow motorcycle rider Cal and the touching letters he pens to his girlfriend while slowly dying in the Australian Outback, and an exhausted teenage runaway who appears to be the teenage incarnation of Detective Dent. There is so much going on plotwise that the story never quite gels, yet its hybrid nature—it’s part thriller, part historical novel—and confident writing make for an intriguing read. --Joanne Wilkinson
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Quests,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Show Me the Sky: A Novel (Paperback)
This is a masterpiece. Once you have finished, you start again, because it has so many layers, themes and linkages. The book is about quests for a person, for sense and meaning, and, deep inside, about mothers.
Show Me the Sky is divided into four Parts and an Epilogue. The principal characters are a fanatical British cop from the Missing Persons Bureau, a Kurt Cobain-type UK pop star called Billy K, who has gone missing a year earlier, a love-struck British biker in Australia, a juvenile runaway and car thief in England in the 1980's, and a Fijian stowaway, who returns to his native land in 1834 in the company of British missionaries. They have all ran away from something. How do these people connect? Each Part begins with an update of the quest for Billy K by James (Jim) Dent, the policeman, from wherever he is. We get to know pop star Billy K only through transcripts and magazine articles. Nelson Babbage (in Fiji named Naqarase Baba) records his return voyage from England to Fiji and his subsequent problems in elegant early 19th century English in his journal. The hapless biker Cal's story takes the form of a long, poetic, increasingly desperate and hallucinatory love letter to his new girlfriend Monique. The young offender's account is a manuscript written by young James ("Most people call me Jimmy"), who turns out to be the policeman, who also writes the Epilogue, 20 years after his brush with the law. There are also memorable minor characters such as a deprived missionary, a murderous ex-convict deported to Australia, the pop star's body double, a scheming band manager and an American pimp in Mombasa. The book romps through the UK, Australia, Russia, Fiji and Kenya without a let up. Thanks to the author's masterful dropping of clues, all characters and themes become connected, somehow. This tightly-structured book is compulsive reading. Each character has his own voice and register, providing utmost credibility to the whole as well as the parts. Sex, drugs & rock and roll, murder, cannibalism and violence, the quest for truth and the lures of hypocrisy, whether to go on or run away from a life, are among the themes. They are cleverly knitted into a tight fabric of a book that sweeps you away. Nicholas Hogg is a worthy companion of writers of earlier kaleidoscopic novels such as David Mitchell and Haruki Murakami. Find out yourself what a rich and fantastic debut this is.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marvelous first novel,
By BP (Europe) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Show Me the Sky (Paperback)
It's quite hard to believe that this is Hogg's first novel. It's exceptionally good for a first book, the four story-lines tied together with amazing skill and perfect timing. I love the crisp prose; and there were passages I had to re-read aloud to enjoy fully the richness and flow of the language. Marvelous.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What an amazing storyteller!,
By chistoreta (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Show Me the Sky (Paperback)
I was amazed to find out that this is Nicholas Hogg's first book. I picked up this book by accident and was immediately drawn in by the crisp and eloquent prose. I found myself being deftly swept along in the narrative which takes us around the world through several intricately woven together story threads. Tying together numerous plot lines is something I find few writers can do with much success, yet Hogg masterfully accomplishes this and more. As I came to the final pages, I was wishing this one didn't have to end! I highly recommend this book and I hope we don't have to wait too long for more from this writer.
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