Jeremiah Bourne in Time
Nigel Planer
Having read it
★★★☆☆
It started well and was seeming like a potential five out of five title, but as it plodded along that mark dropped to four, then three out of five.
There are decent ideas and decent comedy moments, even a few footnotes that were mildly entertaining yet, thinking back, really seemed a bit too much as well as being a bit like it was just not quite sure what it was really trying to be; its narrative seemed loaded with setup for an oft contemporary point to be made and (no doubt hopefully) for some laughs to be had but it felt like some of its happenings were misplaced and so intrigue and tension seemed a bit round way other.
A good passage
In theory, if you train it up, give it regular exercise, memory can do extraordinary things. Recall experiences from a past we all share. We’re all made of the same stuff that’s been here all along, after all – the same atoms. We’re all recycled goods. So it’s not impossible that we might have inherited traces wired into our hard drives. In other words, those birds fly south because other birds flew south before them and they remember how to do it: morphic resonance.
A second good passage
‘You must explain to me, Jeremiah, why you are wearing a jersey that has the name Abercrombie written on it, when, as you say, your name is Bourne.’ Jeremiah tried to explain the concept of designer labels to her.
‘So, you pay extra, well over the odds apparently, for an item of ordinary clothing, and then you walk around with the name of the person who hoodwinked you emblazoned on your chest, as if to announce, “I am proud to have been robbed by Mr Abercrombie”?’
‘Basically, yes,’ said Jeremiah.
A third good passage
What is it about some people, and it’s men, mostly, that makes them try the gently barbed mockery approach as a way of being liked? It never works, never has done. And yet they persist, at every opportunity, to pick only the phrases that sound like sarcastic attacks or silly affronts on people they would probably prefer to have as friends. Is it public school? Is it beer? Is it testosterone that makes them treat all social contact as a sparring match of semi-witty insults? Inside, are they all frightened schoolboys, trying to kid us that they don’t care, because they didn’t want to have us as friends anyway?