Blogtour review - Kill Them With Kindness by Will Carver

Kill Them with Kindness
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 19 June 2025
Available as: PB, 292pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788381

I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of Kill Them With Kindness to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

A worldwide coronavirus pandemic. 

Shady but well-connected figures eager to profit from the misery. Lockdowns. 

A foppish, populist UK PM who can't keep his trousers zipped up for more than half an hour.

All signalling, then, that Kill them with Kindness has no bearing AT ALL on actual recent world history. So the speculation here that the virus, and the vaccine, was scheduled; that a third party intervened to change it from what it might have been; and that a secret cabal of world leaders knew rather more about matters that they let on - can all be safely indulged in the interests of a fascinating and knotty plot that nevertheless dramatises some of the real dilemmas that we faced a few years back. Carver's writing is excellently adapted to the. He has the rare ability - no, scratch that, unique, at least so far as I'm aware - to dramatise not only the events of a story but also the actual ethics of it.

Here, that is done mainly though two characters - the blustering, blond Harris Jackson, Prime Minister of the UK, who can't encounter a woman without seeking to impregnate her, and brilliant but modest Dr Haruko Ikeda, a Japanese scientist who works at a Chinese research centre backed by American money. Jackson doesn't care if a few million people die, so long as it serves his purposes. Ikeda wants to save lives, but he has a wider vision than that: to make life, people, kinder. While the two never meet, they are in effect the players in the chess game, well matched since one has immense political power but - seemingly - little empathy, while the other brims over with empathy but is being forced to act by circumstances.

Carver's portrayal of both men is superb, but it's only part of the storytelling here. Events, literally taking part on a world scale, are given life by vignettes of individuals, too many to list, across the nations and of all ages and social positions. This author is a master of the telling phrase, the perfect description or action, showing what people are doing or thinking. These go beyond simply the reaction - people are panicked, people are scared, people are greedy, selfish or heroes, or whatever - to engage with the rights and wrongs, the awkward unexpected reactions, the unintended consequences, of the story. 

Carver widens his canvas, I think, here, compared to previous books where events were often focussed on a small locality - a building, a village - but despite this larger stage he still makes the story connect very directly with a reader's own experience and convictions. It helps here of course that we have all recently gone through a pandemic so many of the experiences described and the trains of thought are closely rooted in observed experience. That connectedness means that Kill Them with Kindness is at the same time a deeply serious and thoughtful book - the author's argument about the value of simple kindness deserves respect - as well as an absorbing and often funny read. 

Carver never disappoints, and Kill them with Kindness is a stunner of a read.

For more information about Kill Them with Kindness, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Kill them with Kindness from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

#Blogtour #Review - Upstairs at the Beresford by Will Carver

Upstairs at the Beresford
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 9 November2023 
Available as: PB, 276pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585920

I'm grateful to Anne Cater for for inviting me to join the blogtour for Upstairs at the Beresford and for getting me an advance copy to read.

Upstairs at the Beresford is a kind-of prequel to Carver's The Beresford (can it really be two whole years since that came out?)

I say "kind-of" because, as with the other books which are set in what might be called the Carververse, while one can see repeated elements (characters, events, businesses) there isn't I think a "continuity" as one might normally define it - a shared set of events and a consistent set of facts - rather there is a sort of "moral" continuity. So I'm not sure that it makes sense to say that events of Upstairs precede those of The Beresford in a temporal sense, but they do come before, in a kind of moral, developmental (or perhaps better, decline-y)sense.

Put simply, it's revealed here that the Beresford itself - that institution to be found on the edge of any town, where drifting members of humanity find themselves tested, and often failing - is a sort of sulphurous experiment, a gambit, as it were, by the powers of darkness, to gather in more souls and not only more souls but the best souls (imagine offering your soul to the Devil and being told that no, it's not up to scratch! What a humiliation!)

The experiment, the gambit, described here, precedes the one seen in The Beresford which is now shown as simply another iteration of the same shell game. In Upstairs, the Beresford is more a hotel than the suite of apartments we saw in the earlier book, something that presents both opportunities to the management (the monthly sales conferences that it host are a good opportunity to gather product) and risks (such as potential for publicity). This both explains a bit more about what is going on in The Beresford and raises questions about where things are ultimately bound.

In particular this book isn't I think answering the question of what was going on when saw that little glimpse upstairs in the previous book, rather it's telling a story of its own. Carver portrays an ensemble of residents and visitors who represent humanity with its strengths and weaknesses: the family with an abusive husband, his wife desperately turning tricks during the day to raise money to get out with her son; the loved-up young couple living as cheaply as they can while they save for their own place; the cabaret singer who's so achingly cool it almost hurts; the raffish salesman in town for that conference; and of course Carol, the manager, who's bound to the place by some strange bargain of her own, and is adept at clearing up dead bodies, the debris of orgies, and the remnants of whatever it is happens each month down in the basement.

Together these characters - and there are others - form a strong cast, a group around whom Carver can illustrate and explore the foibles, failings and quiet triumphs of humanity. Triumphs? They are here. It would be tempting to characterise the Carververse as a dark, hopeless place but that would be wrong. His books - and Upstairs at the Beresford is particularly good at this - are unsparing of humanity's blushes, they pull no punches, but they are celebratory too - of human resilience, kindness, loyalty and especially, love. (When rarely, they are found).

We still, of course, metaphorically get to visit that crossroads from time to time - you know, the one where the Devil (or one of His minions, Old Nick is a busy chap) strikes a deal, giving the customer what he or she really, really wants for consideration of a single soul. We don't visit it for real, there are no excursions to a windswept heath or remote junction, but still the book takes us there, showing - and discussing - those who have made the journey before and pondering who may be along next, and why.

I've previously referred to these books as "moral noir" which is perhaps a bit silly because noir is all moral noir, but I was trying to make the point that for all the bloodshed and suffering here (and be warned there is plenty) the key events are, well, moral, internal, they are choices and lack or choices, responses to constraints and tight corners and above all, they derive form a calculus of self vs everyone else. Convincingly portrayed as it is - and the setting here really does draw on in - the real landscape is mental, ethical. 

Reading - and I assume writing - about this brings a sense of clarity, I think, which marks Carver's writing out as not only having real heft and importance but also as bracingly good in itself (despite the darkness billowing all around).

So - welcome to Hotel Beresford. You can leave whenever you want to. 

No, really, you can...

For more information about Upstairs at the Beresford, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Upstairs at the Beresford from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - Suicide Thursday by Will Carver

Suicide Thursday
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 24 November 2022
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585388

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Suicide Thursday to consider for review, and to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Oh this is a wickedly sharp little book. Take care how you handle it or you may end up bleeding.

In Suicide Thursday, Will Carver returns to a familiar theme of his recent books - the clue is in the title, so the reader should consider themselves fairly warned, it won't be for all. And in this book, I think the subject is handled in an even more personal and, well, creepy vein than he has yet, hard though that may be to believe if you've read Nothing Important Happened Today or The Daves Next Door.

In Suicide Thursday there's no sinister grand scheme for glory, no greater cause, to direct the action. The story is pared down, simple and stark. Three friends, Eli, Mike and Jackie.

Eli is a sort-of failed writer. He churns out first chapters, but is unable to take his books any further. Comfortably off, but not so much that can afford to leave his cubicle-bound job in marketing, he buys an abandoned bagel workshop in trendy North London and sets up his library of first chapters, available for purchase to those who can't get started. By day, he endures the tedium of office life. By night, he unloads his frustrations each night to a therapist. Who doesn't exist.

Jackie, Eli's girlfriend, is by turns haunted by Catholic guilt at her strong sex drive, which drives her to regular Confession, busy indulging that drive with Eli (mostly), and concerned for her friends Eli and Mike.

Mike is... well, Mike is unemployed and spends his life sanding and polishing the floor of his flat.

The book includes Mike's and Jackie's perspectives, and we also see some other points of view and some mysterious and unsettling text messages, but Eli is at the centre of things. 

I think it would be fair to say that Eli is trying to make his life more meaningful. His chapters reflect aspects of his own life (often, very funnily). Conversely he frets and fusses over whether his actual life is following narrative logic, and whether he ought to nudge it so it does. Ought he, for example, to break up with Jackie so that a reconciliation can come in Act 3? Eli hungrily eyes up women who could facilitate that, with little success.

Jackie sees things through a different, simpler narrative lens - one involving potential wedding bells and a relaxation of her crushing guilt.

And Mike... well, Mike sands his floor.

The three weave their dance, the story moving forward and back around that Suicide Thursday, Carver never inviting the reader to judge these characters, they do enough of that for themselves, but making three flawed people sympathetic, in different ways. I love that his books, while going to dark places, frequently - as here - do so with compassion and empathy. They may judge themselves and each other  but the author isn't doing so (yes, I know, the author is writing them judging, but that's not the same, I don't think) making the navigation of this story something of a moral journey for us and in places therefore, a sort of self-condemnation. That sense is heightened because while more or less standalone, readers of Carver's other recent book will recognise in Suicide Thursday hooks, overlaps and references to the wider Carververse, suggesting that it takes place in the same world and that concerns and threats in that world (the perverse suicide cult, the baleful Beresford) are present here in the margins even if largely unseen.

As always, the writing is simple, direct and often questioning: absurdities of modern life are exposed and highlighted without being ridiculed and the author is perfectly comfortable drawing attention to the contradictions and inconsistencies of these characters, especially to their different ways of seeing the world, without telling is who is right or indeed, whether anyone is. The Carververse is painted in a rich palatte of moral grey shades and Suicide Thursday is no exception.

The book is also often very funny, indeed there are some almost slapstick situations as well as excruciatingly embarrassing ones. Mike literally varnishing himself into a corner is one, as is the trouble that Eli's wandering eye gets him into and the reaction he gets form one young woman.

All in all an excellent addition to this writer's output and I'm glad that, in contrast to Eli, he not only starts but finishes his work, giving us more to be entertained by and to think about.

For more information about Suicide Thursday, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Suicide Thursday from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

The Daves Next Door
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 21 July 2022
Available as: PB, 277pp, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585180

I'm grateful to Orenda for an advance copy of The Daves Next Door to consider for review.

I did wonder if I should take the title of The Daves Next Door as being a bit close to home - though I'm a David, not a Dave, he doesn't (I think) live next door, and on a close reading I don't seem too be in here, I've learned never to trust Mr Carver's narratives to be what they seem...

Regardless, a return to the Carververse is always overdue, and in The Daves Next Door, we see the same moral noir as in Carver's previous writing (including a few clues to show that yes, this is the same world as that of Nothing Important Happened Today and Psychopaths Anonymous). Reading these books is like being a fly that's incautiously settled into a patch of honey: they pull you in, they'll be the end of you, but oh how sweet the process is.

The Daves Next Door is perhaps a more fractured story that its predecessors, following a number of different characters who are less obviously linked by a location or involvement in ongoing events. Those Daves, sharing a flat and a disease in mutual loathing, a much overworked and put-upon hospital nurse with an adequate boyfriend, an elderly man who thinks he's died and gone to Purgatory, two grifters, a a sportsman brought down by a seemingly random injury, and others - including a suicide bomber, perhaps. 

They are though linked, and in two ways. 

First, Carver's concern for human motivation, consequences and character comes through as strongly as ever. For example, there's a man here who was devoted to his wife, and bereft since her death. His son, rather than seeing that devotion as the wonderful loving thing it was, is rather resentful, so he's drifted away and won't be there for his dad's torment, which we see depicted here. A little vignette about human nature and a dynamic that's central to one of the plot strands here but also tells us something dark about people, something echoed across all the other mini-stories.

Secondly, one figure - that maybe-bomber - holds the story together, functioning (perhaps) as an all-seeing narrator, recounting the lives of the other characters, so therefore (possibly) a God-like figure or equally (maybe) an Author. Their chapters are composed as questions - such a barrage of questions, from the profound to the trivial, pausing at all stops in between, but especially circling mysteries to which humanity has signally failed to discover answers. The Four Last Things - Heaven, Hell, Death and Judgement - loom over this story, especially, perhaps, Judgement which is passed not only on the characters and the world they inhabit (the world WE inhabit) but also, this being the Carververse, on the reader as well. No other author I know has quite the ability of Carver to involve his readers in the awkward moral failings that he highlights is his stories, though he does it in an utterly disarming, even charming, way. (That's the honey).

He does it, especially, by refusing to let the reader stick the blame on one character or another, even one who has behaved abominably (as many do). There are no neat endings, no convenient resolutions and retribution - people you'd grown fond of have terrible things happen to them, the unpleasant can simply stroll away.

Maybe that's not quite right though. As we would expect, one person who's given an especially hard time here is God, and of course, as They may feature in the story, many of the questions a certain character poses might actually be asked of Themself. (I apologise for the clunky language but given Carver's multi-layered portrayals here, words become rather slippery). This makes for a rather convincing self-prosecution which is genuinely unsettling both in terms of what it implies for the story and as an accusation against religion and those who follow it.

(I have to say that for me, the omnipotent, all-seeing, create-everything-in-seven-days version of God who's in point here is perhaps something of a straw deity. Alternatives are available, and less absurd. But maybe that is slightly mean-minded of me - after all there are plenty of people who hold to this picture).

In short, I'd come to expect from this author, The Daves Next Door is a vivid and thoughtful, and often  angry, book that tells a compelling and absorbing story (across its many threads) but comes with a real moral punch, real engagement with ideas, and shines with compassion even at its darkest moments (of which there are quite few). 

I'd strongly recommend, whether or not you're read any of Mr Carver's previous books: this is essentially a standalone though with some clear links, thematically and in plot terms, to them.

For more information about this book, see the Orenda website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Beresford by Will Carver

The Beresford

Will Carver

Orenda Books, 22 July 2021

Available as: PB, audio, e

Source: Advance copy supplied by the publisher

ISBN(PB): 9781913193812

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for an advance copy of The Beresford and to Anne for inviting me to take part in this Random Things Tour.

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it..."

Will Carver is one of my standout favourite authors. His Detective Sergeant Pace trilogy (Good Samaritans/ Nothing Important Happened Today/ Hinton Hollow Death Trip) is a masterpiece of suburban evil, the sentences perfectly honed surgical instruments that probe the reader's morality and sense of self.

The Beresford is in the same mould in being what I will hereby name ethical noir - and at an even more heightened pitch. At the same time, it also reminded me of something completely different - the Ealing comedy, where the bodies inconvenient family members or hapless bystanders accumulate and there is a kind of grim humour in their disposal.

"Just outside the city - any city, every city - is a grand, spacious but affordable apartment building called The Beresford..."

The Beresford is where people come when they are on the cusp. Young adults striking out in life. People  looking for a change in direction, or contemplating a business move away from the familiar. Wives getting away from abusive husbands. Artists, emerging into fame, but not quite there yet. All of them find themselves ringing the doorbell, being welcomed by Mrs May, shown to a clean and empty apartment.

And they'll make friends. Go into the city, find a place to get a coffee, maybe pick up a new phone. A new life, putting the past behind them.

But The Beresford isn't safe.  As the bell rings, somewhere else in the building, a different tenant comes to terms with just what they have been capable of - and with what they must do next...

Nor is The Beresford - the book - safe. Carver is, I firmly maintain, a monster of an author. His  prose insinuates. It sidles up to the reader on the train, bags a seat - a little too close, you may think to yourself - and makes itself at home. Half a page later it's confronting you with some bit of hypocrisy you'd swear nobody knows anything else about. (How does he DO THAT?). It will unpick a little corner of your life's fabric, demolishing a fond assumption or pious cliche, asking an awkward 

A page further on, and the book's (metaphorically, or perhaps metaphysically) made off with your phone, watch and wallet. (How does he DO THAT?)

A few chapters more, and you'll probably find a bloodstained knife in your bag and that you're implicated in a murder.

I have never read a writer who has such a knack for implicating his readers in the darkness of his writing. There is no neutrality, no superiority, here. We meet Abe Schwartz, geeky nice guy. Blair Conroy, a young woman escaping a stuffy, conformist religious town (her parents' uneasy, over-quite life after she's gone is a recurring motif). Gail Castle, who fell for a strong and sensitive man - who came home from the war changed. Deftly, Carver introduces them, providing not so much a physical or emotional but a moral description (whether via their internal lives, their actions and relationships or their secrets).  It would be wrong to describe any of them as evil, but there is evil here. And Carver's task is to make us, the readers, complicit with that. In tiny steps - while commenting on, and lamenting, the whole shady process.

That process reminded me a bit of a collector of insects selecting specimens and pinning them, wings beating or legs flailing, to a board for display. We, the readers, somehow share in this, are tainted by something that Carver, as the author, is doing to his characters. It's as though The Beresford - the place, the book - is one of those ghoulish Victorian museums in a fly-blown seaside resort. We're invited to take part in the oh-so convincing portrayal of the ethical degradation that will take place here. (How DOES he do that?)

If this all sounds off-putting, be assured, the process of ethical dissolution we witness in The Beresford is quite, quite fascinating. My, my, the things people will do. The justifications they find. The sharp asides and insights that Carver uses to show us that, no, we are not better, not special, not superior to this. (And isn't that what history teaches?)

The book is located in a curiously bland setting - perhaps in the UK (there's a reference to a motorway), perhaps the US (Blair's hometown is uniformly, smugly Evangelical) - lending the story a defocused, universal feel: this could be anywhere - aided by a lack of engagement with the outside world. Regardless of how furiously the little insects beat their wings - seeking jobs, fame, business success - it's as though they've made a misstep and can't, quite, catch hold of the world again. The pins hold them. Their trips out, their business meetings and job interviews, more and more have the appearance of somebody waving from a departing liner. It's as though The Beresford exists slightly out of phase with the wider world, as though different rules apply here, consequences are suspended. That superb cover - surely based on an Escher drawing, evoking trapped internality, a dimensional snare but one is washed with blood, its surfaces etched with writhing figures - truly captures the feeling of reading this book, a feeling I can only hint at here.

It's one that stuck with me long after I'd finished the book and closed it, gobsmacked by where Carver finally takes things.

He is, I will say again, a MONSTER...

For more information about The Beresford, see the publisher's website here. And don't forget the stops on the blogtour, listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Beresford from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop dot org UK, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.