Customer Reviews

The Society of Others: A Novel

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A young English man, who prefers to remain nameless, is filled with ennui, content to languish in his upstairs bedroom, while the world moves on without him. No member of the immediate family can reach across the emotional distance that surrounds him. During a family get-together, the young man impulsively decides to take a trip, to wander freely with no particular place in mind and no expectations. He begins by hitchhiking and accepts a ride with a philosophy-spouting truck driver, not bothering to ask his destination. Upon reaching an Eastern European country, the truck is stopped by security police; the truck driver instructs the young man to jump from the truck and run for his life. From a safe distance, he watches as the truck driver is brutally murdered.

Thus begins an existential journey in which the young man is challenged to use his wits for survival, in a dismal landscape during a punishing winter. This is a country in a constant state of emergency because of "terrorism", where people mind their own business, afraid to draw the attentions of the secret police. Cast into situations that demand a great deal of courage, the young man discovers a new appreciation for his former lifestyle and the people he left behind, desperate to escape this nightmarish paranoia, fear and incipient violence. Dropped like Alice down the rabbit hole, the young man is besieged with random brutality and ignorance, as well as the unexpected generosity of those willing to offer shelter and companionship.

The journey becomes a personal metamorphosis, an opportunity to reach his finer self, to throw off the selfishness of youth. This extraordinary plunge into the unknown, the unpredictable, speaks of the consequences of actions, shattering his ignorance in a quest for survival. Terrifying helplessness is contrasted with elegiac music and the metaphysical dialog that reaches another plane of understanding, where the familiar coexists with the unknown.

Much remains unexplained, though one could make certain assumptions. The dramatic ending is confusing, leaving me unsure if this is a Jacob's ladder conundrum or a psychological crisis. I feel somewhat ambiguous about the novel, unsure if it is significant or simply entertains aspirations without quite reaching the intended metaphysical goal. It may be a quandary that only the reader can determine. Luan Gaines/2005.

One feels silly writing such a poor review on the work of someone with a resume like Nicholson, but it's hard to find much positive to say about the Society of Others, the first adult novel written by someone known for his screenplays, stage plays, and young adult. Though perhaps that's the problem, for Society reads very much like a screenplay or young adult novel, despite being otherwise intended.
The book's unnamed protagonist is a sullen, cynical young man, recently graduated from college who sits in his room all day and tries to ignore the world, whether it come in the form of his family, his girlfriend, or his economic future. The first quarter of the book introduces the character, puts him through his "world-weary" paces, and then has him use the thousand pounds gift from his writer father to "get away from it all" by hitching a ride with a trucker to an unknown destination.
The problems begin almost immediately. Though he is supposed to have graduated from college, in his speech, his sullen tone, and his cliched version of cynicism, the narrator sounds much more like a 13 year old boy brooding in his room than a 21 or 22-yr-old. His character is way over the top and while he occasionally hits some perceptive notes, they're surrounded by so much cliched and over-the-top noise that the few good notes get drowned out. And none of the dialogue in this section, mostly between the narrator and his family or his girlfriend, sounds like authentic speech. One can argue that Society has a "fable" feel to it, so perhaps it isn't intended to, but the thing about most fables is they're short; it's hard to pull off the style and tone over long periods of time--it just gets too wearying on the reader. In either case, the first 40-50 pages are a struggle to get through. The trucker whose hobby is philosophy and manages to sum up then skewer most philosophers in a single conversation can be seen as part of the fable mode or as highly contrived; in either case it didn't work for me.
The middle section of the book picks up when the trucker is let into a country that has the look and feel of the old Eastern Europe police states. Turns out the trucker is smuggling copies of an illegal book into the country. When he is discovered and violence occurs, the narrator manages to escape, left on his own in an unfamiliar, unknown country whose language he does not speak. The narrator then hooks up with a violent resistance movement, a non-violent poetry-loving resistance, a simple peasant couple trying to get by while caught between the state police and the terrorists, the state police, an absurdist television talk show host, a strange cello-playing monk with a secret identity, and a man in a grey Mercedes whom the narrator is sure has been hunting him. While the pace and sense of tension, suspense all pick up in this section, it's marred by some hard-to-believe scenes, some triteness (the peasant couple for instance), and the sense that the characters we meet are just props rather than characters. Again, one has the sense of fable here with the simplistic viewpoints, the shallow characters, the sense-of-disbelief, but it's far too extended and just doesn't seem to work.
The end focuses on his attempts to disentangle himself from the politics he's become enmeshed in and to escape the country, as he realizes that all his earlier cynicism was horribly wrong: his country, his family, his life wasn't so bad; his family loved him and he didn't do enough to return that love; life is for living; and other nice but trite sentiments. The end itself returns to fable form.
The whole book reads much more like a young adult novel (not a particularly good one) in its simplicity and obviousness of message and its mostly shallow characterization. The speedy shifts from scene to scene with little description and the changes in character that are propelled by external events (sometimes too contrived) and occur far too quickly make it feel like a screenplay. The side characters as props, the lack of names for the main character or main setting, the simplistic notions, and the close make it read like a fable, but one that should have been at most a novella, at best a long short story, rather than a 200 page book. In short, while it had a few good moments- a few times when the narrator sounded like an original, modern Holden; a few incisive comments on people or society-they were far too few and far between. Not recommended.

It's an interesting read; the philosophical musings and references to philosophers took me back to Philosophy 101 in college. It reminded me of "Crimes and Misdemeanors," the film by Woody Allen, wherein each character represents a philosopher (the blind Rabbi is Aquinus 'the eyes of god'), and this book is similar. I tried to figure out which philosopher was represented by each character, and how the interaction propelled the protagonist. The plot is fast paced and flows well. The use of poetry is not facetious; it enhances the story. I enjoyed it, although I may be admitting my ignorance by saying I didn't really "get" the ending.

No need to worry that I might give away the ending. I can't figure out what happened.

The story is too loose to be literal, too realistic to be allegorical, and too arrhythmic to be poetry.

What if Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, and Tom Clancy decided to write a movie together - then they changed their minds and published it as a novel.

Yes. It has some problems. But at least it has interesting problems.

That's why I enjoyed it. This is proof that a book doesn't have to be well plotted to be fun. It broke some of the more formulaic story-writing conventions, it explored a setting that you seldom see in novels, and it had an engaging philosophical angle. Most important of all it was fast-paced and short.

For all the flaws, it was entertaining and challenging. The story and the philosophies will stick with me.

If you find that after reading this book the subject matter, setting, style, and characters leave you wanting more (and better), try to find a copy of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

He recently graduated college, but has no goals and speculates that life is meaningless. Why bother? However, tired of parental nagging, he decides on a coming of age grand adventure on the continent. He hitches a ride from the English side of the Chunnel with a philosophical truck driver on a three day trek across Europe.

However, once they leave the land of the Euro into the heavily guarded East, thugs using a roadblock stop the truck, torture and kill the trucker, but his passenger escapes. They burn the books inside the truck, but the hitchhiker rescues one along with an envelope that the driver gave him. The hiker reaches a nearby town where he meets Petra, who informs him that the burned books were targeted to go to those names listed in the envelop. He joins Petra's revolutionary band, but when her group torture the enemy at another roadblock, he flees into the woods in despair. By himself he ponders the meaning of life.

The first half of this novel is a great coming of age tales as the unnamed narrator (apropos label for the disenchanted) finds his grand tour turn into a nightmare. Nameless struggles with both sides in the dispute who use any means to achieve their end. Once he flees from Petra, the story line turns much more introspective as the lead character begins to analyze his relationships especially with his parents even while he dodges the police and to a lesser degree the revolutionaries. This is a strong thriller worth reading due to the despairing antihero but the latter half though superbly well written cannot match the incredible levels of excitement and suspense of the first part.

Harriet Klausner

Im not going to pretend that I read a lot because I dont, every once and a while Im browsing in a book store and something calls out to me READ ME. This is what the Society Of Others did to me. I dont want to tell you much about the book, I want to surprise you. The end will either shock you or go over your head. Its a book that you will have to read in between the lines. If you want a laid out obvious plot then read Tom Clancy but if you like books to effect you then read this. Its a heart racing hypnotic book of wisdom

Book new, good condition, fast shipping. Book is written in a variety of genres,--stream-of-consciousness, fable, modernism. If one is young and searching for SELF due to Existential Angst it is OK. Otherwise, that individual's inner life is not that interesting and I could not finish it for lack of interest.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS**

It had taken me two reads to completely understand this story. Or to believe that I understand it. Understanding what the hell happens in the end was especially hard.

The Society of Others takes you on a journey through philosophy, art, literature, music and the human state. On my second reading, I picked up on references of old master paintings that Nicholson inserted into his scenes (the most obvious one being the theorbo playing in girl in the brothel; the painting is A Young Woman Playing a Theorbo to Two Men by a Dutch 16th century painter Gerard Ter Borch.I plan to go back and find others) which made the book into a hunt. I found that enjoyable. This book makes you work, and if you put in the effort, you will be rewarded (although, many people don't like that). This might be the reason why this novel would work better as a screen play (as some reviews mention), since things like music and language (which is also an important element) are easily expressed. There is a lot of content packed into 200-something pages. It is thrown at the reader quickly and it is easy to just pass it by.

Here come the spoilers.
I think the most problematic thing about this novel for people is the ending. First, I was also quite disappointed and confused by it. However, when I went back to the book the second time, I read it somewhat differently. That land, that unknown, uncharted territory, is the character's mind. All of the people, places, problems, are his mind's projection, and that is explained at the end (although various clues are dropped from the beginning). He is God of that world, and when he does realize that he can do whatever he pleases, he is left alone (although even when that happens, he still doesn't know that he is, ultimately, in control). He is being chased by himself - a lonely, cynical man.

That part was easy to work out. My question was, how did he get there? What happened between "the real world" and his mind's world? That part is not answered. My theory, however, is that he kills himself right at the beginning, just like he does at the end, at the table in the room lined by books. He is the executioner. Chapter 2 ends with "Before you know it I'll be gone." He decides to go on a journey with no destination, into an unknown land. Chapter 3 begins with him at the service station by the motorway, crossing the boundaries of the two worlds. Whatever happens between chapter 2 and 3, brings him to purgatory, where the rest of the book is spent, until he understands what has happened. For him to move on, he needed to have realized what he was, what he had and what he had missed. In the end, he is apologetic but not the people who are being killed in the concert hall, but to the ones who had loved him in life and those he had abandoned and hurt by his actions. The Concert; the final bow; "It's not over until the thin guy sings." That scene is full of imagery of death and moving on (the swelling and falling of music, his feeling of floating). The concert was his death. Or rather, his passing from purgatory to whatever lies beyond.

Of course, this theory might be wrong. The last paragraph of the book in which he talks about going home might be interpreted as him actually going back home to England. But, I don't think so.

There is a strong moral in the story. It's up to the reader to decide what it is. There are also other questions the books poses. Such as, "Who really are the 'good guys'?" It also examines the nature of totalitarian, oppressed societies. But all that is only the background for the story of the man (that can be read as "man", general, since he states right at the beginning that it could be any of us). Sure, that might be a singular, slightly vain way of looking at it, but everything about his existence in that world was self-centered (all of the characters did care about England quite a lot).

This books is definitely worth the read and the time. I won't call it brilliant, but it is multi-layered, captivating, thought-provoking, and in parts quite beautiful.

I have loved William Nicholson's writing since I was about 11 and first read the Wing Singer Trilogy. It has influenced me and my art in many ways. But it wasn't until last year - eight years later - that I read The Society of Others. I was not let down, especially after rereading it and pausing to appreciate all of the allusions and work that seems to have been put into it (but more appropriately, crammed into it).

This book is engagingly written and contains some delightful set pieces. But I'm underwhelmed. It's difficult to shake the impression that the author lost interest in the project about two thirds of the way through. The narrator's character is deftly established at the outset, but his passivity and memory lapses quickly become irksome, and his later mental development is not altogether convincing. The last few chapters degenerate into an uninformative muddle through which one can hear the author faintly screaming, "I want to stop writing this book RIGHT NOW!" On the other hand, it's a quick read and worth dipping a toe into.