Thoughts

There is a structural similarity to Cooper's previous novel Brian. It's something I like about both books. Now I don't know how he goes about writing his books, but in both novels there is a combination of two things: a factual topic about which a lot of insight will be shared, and the fictional story, typically character development. In the case of Brian, the topic was art house films. And in the case of Discord, it's contemporary classical music. For me, Brian worked better. In fact I loved that book. Could partly be that I'm more interested in films than I am classical music. But I think also Brian's story is more touching.

Cooper no doubt has his reasons for combining fact and fiction this way and I might see if I can find something about this online. But for me, I find it really just another level of useful. Particulaly with Brian, where I jotted down a number of the films that sounded interesting. With Discord, you can also follow up on the musical references, listen to them, and get an extra sensorial aspect to the novel. Not to mention find some interesting music you might have never heard of otherwise.

Big respect to Jeremy for having one of his characters reference Declassified UK and even name Matt Kennard and one of his recent books, Silent Coup. I follow Declassified, and have read a couple of Matt's books. But had I not, this would have been a great discovery. I'd like to think that readers of the book are following up on these links and discovering modern independent journalism. The same character also mentions JACQUELINE ROSE who I'd never heard of but sounds worth following up.

There's no pretence in Jeremy's writing. His novels have a natural realism to them - I think. And these factual references kind of add to that. And as such, they don't feel out of place. Contrast this to the Ian McEwan novel, What We Can Know (which I have also read and written my thoughts on) and I found somewhat artificial sounding, especially as it presented facts about climate change.

It occured to me, out of the blue (which is the title of another of Jeremy's books) that the intersperion of facts through the story of a person (or two) shares some similarity with a certain kind of social media feed. I suppose I'm thinking about the type of instagram feed where there is a central topic, you are regularly presented with new facts about the topic, and overtime you begin to get to know something about the person, and may even learn something about their life story. Just a thought. I won't make to much of it. But the point of these "Thoughts" write ups is to just note thoughts that occur to me while reading.

Cooper talks about his blending of fact and fiction here on LITERARY HUB.