SPECTRUM reviews Nowhere Man – ‘a fast-paced, slightly futuristic thriller…the ideas, story and characters demand attention’

In Short Fiction

SPECTRUM The Sydney Morning Herald: 04 Dec 2010:
Review by Kerryn Goldsworthy

NOWHERE MAN

John M. Green

Pantera Press, 384pp, $32.99

In the wake of September 11, 2001, came a wave of responses fiction, featuring the event’s effects and aftermath. We’re seeing the same with the aftermath of the global financial crisis, of which this novel is an example. The writing of Nowhere Man has an unusual history involving both disasters but it’s emerged as a fast-paced, slightly futuristic thriller.

Novels about the stock market might not sound too exciting but this also covers love and computers, with H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine providing a clue to the mystery of one character’s disappearance and making this financial thriller a generic mongrel, a sort of cousin to Steampunk. The story has two morals: don’t assume you know everything about your partner and don’t get into debt.

Green uses the standard undemanding style of mainstream airport fiction but the ideas, story and characters demand attention.