#Review - Jackdaw by Tade Thompson

Jackdaw
Tade Thompson
Cheerio, 6 October 2022 
Available as: HB, 160pp, audio, e  
Source: Bought HB & audio via subscription service
ISBN(HB): 978-1800811652

Jackdaw showcases Thompson writing in a rather different vein from his previous fantasy and SF, I think.

In the book Thompson - the doctor who is the protagonist of the book, not the doctor who is the author of it - is approached with a commission to produce something inspired by the artist Francis Bacon. And Jackdaw certainly is that - following that protagonist as he spirals into an, eventually, dangerous obsession with Bacon.

In documenting that obsession, we get a lot of information about Bacon, one of those artists whose creativity and wider life were closely associated with his demons. We also learn a lot about the (fictional? I hope so) Thompson. The line between real life and fiction, between art and illusion, however becomes paper thin. Those demons step out of the shadows, driving Thompson-the-narrator into all sorts of risky behaviour - financial, sexual, and spiritual.

It's a book that's hard to describe, harder to put down, the nested layers of reality and fiction bleeding into one another and threatening our narrator's personal and professional lives. A powerful story, going to some very personal places and playing with the reader's expectations (see, for example, the episode from the earlier life of the protagonist's wife).

There are also some lighter moments (though darkness is never far away) including the scenes involving a sex worker, and those where the protagonists's agent appears.

Jackdaw is truly one of those books you simply have to experience for yourself and I can especially recommend the audio version, narrated by Thompson himself for an experience that is even more mixed-up, even more blurred, his calm voice simultaneously emphasising the horror that his life has become and complicating still further the reality depicted - even in those humorous episodes (I'd guess, for example, that the incident described at the SF convention really happened...)

For more information about Jackdaw, see the publisher's website here.