Blog Tour: The Daves Next Door – Will Carver

A disillusioned nurse suddenly learns how to care. An injured young sportsman wakes up find that he can see only in black and white. A desperate old widower takes too many pills and believes that two angels have arrived to usher him through purgatory. Two agoraphobic men called Dave share the symptoms of a brain tumour, and frequently waken their neighbour with their ongoing rows.

Separate lives, running in parallel, destined to collide and then explode. Like the suicide bomber, riding the Circle Line, day after day, waiting for the right time to detonate, waiting for answers to his questions: Am I God? Am I dead? Will I blow up this train?

Shocking, intensely emotive and wildly original, Will Carver’s The Daves Next Door is an explosive existential thriller and a piercing examination of what it means to be human … or not.

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series. He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his two children.

Will’s latest title published by Orenda Books, The Beresford is out in July. His previous title Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, while Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Good Samaritans was book of the year in Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Express, and hit number one on the ebook charts.

My thoughts: as always, I wonder about Will Carver’s mind. All of his books are incredible but also deeply strange and profound in their own ways. This one was a really interesting ride. I had to read it twice. Because I wasn’t entirely sure I “got” it. I still don’t know. There are little references to some of his other books throughout, all of them seem set in the sane universe – very similar to ours but different some how.

I’m still not entirely sure how many Daves there are or whether any of them are locked in a cupboard still. Read this book and then please come and discuss it with me so I don’t think I’ve completely lost my mind.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.