Life on Other Planets - Matt Cook - Blog Tour

With a title such as this I guess I could’ve been forgiven for thinking this might be a sci-fi tale. But my expectations were wide open as I settled to start this novel from an author unfamiliar to me. Reader, I finished it in less than 24 hours! I was utterly captivated.

For a start it is wonderfully written. An easy, yet, evocative prose style that coaxes the narrative smoothly along. I had a sense of a natural, intuitive storyteller. The story is a bittersweet fusion of the tragic and the comic and I sensed echoes of John Irving, Salinger, even, as I read of adolescent Ben and his dysfunctional family, grappling with grief after the demise of Aunt Pearl and their obsessive search for her Last Will and Testament.  Matt Cook has struck an almost perfect balance between the poignant and the lighter hearted.

The characters are accessible and believable despite their eccentricities and the author is a perceptive observer of human behaviour. Not only that, he can use those perceptions to create people we care about no matter how questionable their behaviour is because he is able to identify what is hidden beneath peoples’ veneers and tease our hidden empathies towards those people.

It’s a coming-of-age story, it’s a dealing with grief story, it’s a family dynamic story. It covers a spectrum of emotion with sensitivity and there’s an implicit gentleness that so fuses prose and narrative seductively you want to keep reading, and you want the book to continue for ever.

And as for the title? I’m not going to tell you what that’s about. You’ll have to read the book but I will say there is a cult involved and planets are mentioned! And as for that final chapter………well?!?

And if you want more than a ‘mere’ a story there is some life philosophy woven into the text too.

“Nothing makes sense when you really look at it. There is no logic. Everyone behaves like things happen because of other things. Like dominoes. It always feels like if you could find a way to get high enough and see the whole pattern from above, it will all become clear. But it’s a lie. Things just happen. I can’t be bothered looking for reasons anymore. It’s exhausting.”

Well, sums up life today for me anyhow!

Hard to believe that this is a first novel. In many ways it reads like the work of a seasoned and experienced novelist. And if this is the first then I’m really hoping there’s going to be more? In fact I’m feeling more than hope. I’m feeling very excited.

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon at Fly on the Wall Press for a place upon the blog tour and a gifted copy of this book which will go on my forever shelf.