Book info

• Title Eleven
• Author Mark Watson
• Year 2010
• Genre Contemporary

Xavier Ireland is a radio DJ who by night listens to the hopes, fears and regrets of sleepless Londoners and by day keeps himself very much to himself - until he is brought into the light by a one-of-a-kind cleaning lady and forced to confront his own biggest regret. This is a tale of love, loss, Scrabble and six degrees of separation, asking big questions about life and death, strangers and friends, heartache and comfort, and whether the choices we don't make affect us just as powerfully as those we do.

Thoughts

It took a good few chapters for the sprawling, chattering nature of the prose here to really grab me, but once it did I was totally hooked. Xavier Ireland, reeling from a tragedy in his home country of Australia, has made his way to London to hide away from the world. He’s a moderately famous late night radio DJ but otherwise has few relationships and likes it that way.

The story weaves a magical story of Xavier’s gradual unwinding, of coming to terms with what happened and finding his feet in the world again. Along the way, we get to see how the smallest of behaviours affects others - with a chain of events starting from Xavier one snowy day, all the way around and back to Xavier one fateful morning a lot later.

I really enjoyed the story, and the somewhat ambiguous ending isn’t of the frustrating kind. It’s full of possibilities. I loved that we sometimes stretched out to look at people across the city of London, into their futures and pasts, people that were inconsequential to the story, or perhaps crucial to the next turn of events. It was both sprawling and intimate, and brilliant.

Rating: 5 / 5