A Lonely Man by Chris Power

​Every so often a book comes along whose narrative style just fits so well within your brain grooves that things that normally draw you in don’t seem to matter much anymore. This was very much the case with this book for me. This book, that had spy themes I usually don’t go for and a fairly dislikable protagonist, managed to really engage me on a pretty profound level. 
   Maybe it’s something to do with isolation, since this is the perfect time for such a thing. Or loneliness, which is universal and separate from politics. This book features not one, but several lonely man, though lonely on different levels. Each one meeting the other seemingly at random and each one’s life is forever changes because of it.  
   It starts off with two men casually reaching for the same book at a bookstore, which is pretty much a near perfect way to meet someone. One of them is drunk, one of them is there for a book reading, their interaction is brief, meaningless and would have been instantly forgotten, had it not continued almost immediately afterwards with one of them being attacked and the other coming to his rescue. Thus a connection is established. 
   Both men are British, both are strangers in Berlin, though to different degrees. One of them is an author desperately trying and failing to write a follow up to his published and fairly well received short story collection. The other has a story to tell, a wild story about being contacted as a ghost writer for an exiled oligarch. 
   Soon the lines between fiction and reality begin to be erased, a pervasive paranoia seeped through from one man to the other, mingled with distrust and a mutual need for company, albeit for different reasons. It turns into an exploitative relationship, but also strangely symbiotic. There’s no question that the protagonist is the one doing the exploiting, appropriating someone’s story for his own gain, and yet, immoral as that may be, it makes for a strangely compelling journey into darkness.
   There’s a fascinatingly serpentine quality to it all or maybe, more appropriately, a nesting doll motif. Chris Power himself is a British author for whom this book is a sophomore effort after a well received short story collection. It’s a story within a story within a story. It’s clever and oddly magnetic of a construct.
    And the writing…well, it’s great. The internationally set story displays a terrific ability to convey the place every time, be it the rainy London, bleak graffitied Berlin or tranquil isolation of Sweden. Every location provides a perfect stage for the characters’ development, contributing to  or echoing their state of mind, every one is their own way a place of loneliness, not aloneness but a certain disconnect with the world around. It works excellently. 
   There’s plenty of suspense too, but this isn’t exactly a thriller in a traditional way, more of a darkly psychological game for two with danger potentially lurking around the corner. 
  I enjoyed this book very much, it read quickly so I didn’t have to put it down too much, two sittings really and well worth the time. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.