My Review: Curiosity by Helen Valentina

Book Description

Peter Graham believes the world ended some time ago and nobody noticed.  He is a young man driven by one essential quality – curiosity.  But when he couples that with his feeling that nothing matters anymore, he does something reckless that catapults him into the media eye as an unlikely modern hero.

Peter goes through the dance of media and political opportunity to further exploits, which he uncovers through his overwhelming curiosity.  All the while, he writes in his private journal, determined to prove the world has ended; his outside adventures have done nothing to dissuade him from the truth of his view.  Meanwhile, his family and friends struggle to keep up with his recklessness, understand him, and keep him safe from his own inherent, happy nihilism.

Curiosity is the darkly comedic tale of a somewhat benign sociopath who, while dancing through a celebrity-worshipping age, takes risks and burrows into a surreptitious modern world where every secret worth finding is deep and dark.

 

My Review: Curiosity by Helen Valentina

5 out of 5

Benign sociopath is right, Peter the protagonist is Curious, and we as the reader are curious as to what has made him this way.  His journal entries chronicle a personal philosophy that is hard to refute and I admit to spending some time after putting this book down coming up with proofs of my own and wondering if Peter is right.

Curiosity shows just how wrong place/right time and a little curiosity can change the actions of an ordinary person and take on a voracious life of its own.

Helen Valentina brings her characters to life in such a realistic way that I am now looking at the people around me wondering if they are Curious, or if they are obsessing over the ego driven behaviour of those around them and sitting in judgement.  Once again her secondary characters bring the story to life as they do in her first novel, “The Seed”.  Though Curiosity is a different beast altogether it is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging read that makes you question the reality and rise of the modern celebrity or politician and the media that bring them to life.

Peter’s mother had me checking for hot coffee everywhere I looked and I think I will be watching the local news programs with a slightly more discerning eye from now on.  The blog and message board entries are brilliantly written, very realistic and entertaining.  I wanted to visit the websites myself!  And then there is the politician Patrick and his incredulous plan which I have the horrifying thought that someone out there has actually attempted to bring into being!   And I had to laugh over Peter’s responses to Bridget!

Helen Valentina’s social media, celebrity and political commentary is a delight to read and in fact I think she could write a whole book just on the life and death mythology created by rampant social media and its worship of celebrity, or the reality of political power in her dry and witty questioning of morality in the modern computer age.

I really loved and enjoyed this book and can’t wait for more from this new and very clever writer.

Curiosity is now available on Lulu.com and Amazon

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